Clay Creations and Festive Fun — The Early Learning Community First-Second Grade

This week was a whirlwind of fun and learning as we wrapped up projects before winter break. First, we were delighted to get our clay creations back from the kiln. We applauded as each artist shared their creation with the class. Thank you, Ms. Casey, the leading this phenomenal project! This week we also created top secret holiday gifts for our families. We wrote cards and decorated gift bags for our family gifts. On Wednesday we worked in small groups to read and follow a recipe for sweet bread in preparation for Thursday’s Bread Celebration. Thursday morning Ms. Libby came in to share about a tradition in the UK called Christmas crackers. This tradition involves opening a “cracker”, which makes a noise and then reveals a joke/riddle and small gift. Ms. Libby helped students write jokes and riddles for their own Christmas crackers. We decided to save our Christmas crackers to enjoy during our afternoon bread celebration. For the bread celebration we lit candles, read a Gingerbread story, and enjoyed opening our Christmas crackers before sampling several types of bread. A huge thank you to Libby for the fun project and for donating the extra loaves of bread for us to sample. We got to try sweet bread, brioche, marzipan, focaccia, and banana nut bread. Yum! This afternoon Ms. Robin came in to teach her next elements of design art lesson. We reviewed the primary and secondary colors. We learned about a color wheel and complementary colors. This week we also learned two new spelling patterns, wrapped up our Chapter 3 math modules, and finished our informative writing unit. Students have been enjoying learning materials gifted by ELC families this week. We learned how to play a game called Mountain Raiders and have been loving our life cycle puzzles and models. We also enjoyed hearing some Flat Stanley updates, including a presentation from Claire and Juliette about some behind the scenes adventures. Tomorrow we are looking forward to a cozy pajama day before we depart for winter break.