Polar Express & Winter Pajama Fun

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Our Class Winter Party:

As you probably have gathered from our other class parties, we like to keep the routine as familiar as possible for our students so they can enjoy the festivities without too much craziness. Here are our plans for our class Winter Parties which will be during the AM and PM sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. The only exception is that we will have a short film instead of small group on Thursday afternoon since our assistants will be tied up in a required (but don't worry, still festive) 'meeting'. The short film will probably be a Caldecott winner book put to a movie. Ms. Jeana has a DVD of quite a few so we might have the students help pick which one. All of our parties will be as follows:
Pajama Days! Send you child in the PJ's if they want to!
Small Group: Snow activities (see above lesson plans)
Snack: Cookies and 'hot' cocoa (with marshmallows)
Large Group: Christmas Caroling at the front office. We will be singing Jingle Bells and Must Be Santa with musical instruments.

For the Polar Express Large Group, click here for pictures and a synopsis.

For Must Be Santa Large Group, we will be practicing our Christmas Caroling songs with musical instruments and visual aides including focusing on the "wh" word, "who?".

The Mitten and Polar Express

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Due to unplanned scheduling conflicts, last Monday's AM and PM class missed the Mitten Large Group and they still want to do it so it's back on the lesson plans for this coming week.

Mitten Large Group

For our Mitten large group activity we will tell the story of the mitten with pictures from the book. The students will then be given a mask of one of the animals in the story. We found these on Jan Brett's website:  http://www.janbrett.com/mitten_masks_main.htm. We will hold out a blanket over our large mitten shape taped on the floor and sing to the tune of The Farmer and the Dell:

The mitten in the snow

The mitten in the snow

Help us please. . . so we don't freeze

The mitten in the snow

Carter squeezes in

Carter squeezes in

Help us please. . . so we don't freeze

The mitten in the snow

Once everyone in the whole class is under the sheet we will all sneeze "Ah, Ah, Ah, Chooo!!!!!" And everyone will rush out of the "mitten" and back to their seat.

Polar Express Large Group

"All aboard!" Students get to take their tickets and go on an obstacle course to the North Pole. Under the table, around the mountain, through the tunnel, over the bridge, on the tracks and stopping at the north pole. For more details, here is a link to the last time we did it with just a 'train theme' (click here)