Happy Holidays!

Before I wrap up the 2014 holiday season and pack away the Christmas trees I thought I'd take a little time to reflect on some of the holiday activities I shared with my Kinders.  I wish I had made more time to blog while it was happening because we had so much fun while learning 21st Century concepts and applying the Common Core!

Our Gingerbread Unit on engineering involved designing new houses for the Gingerbread family and decorating our child-sized house! 

To culminate the unit, students decorated their own small house to take home!

Our second holiday unit was on Santa's Economics.  Students learned all about wants, needs, consumers, producers, goods, and services in the context of Christmas.  Each Kindergarten class on my team worked to develop a stand and we sold reindeer food to the first graders at our "Reindeer Food Marketplace" in the cafeteria. 

All our students learned so much about consumerism and economics and, most of all, it was fun! 

And it wasn't just fun for the kids, either!   It gave me chills when one teammate told me, "You know, I thought this project was way over the top at first, but these kids get this stuff.  This is the most fun I've had teaching all year!"

I can't wait to work on this unit over the coming year to have it ready for other teachers next Christmas! 

For now, here are a few shots of our project...

The advertising team made posters...

...and hung them in the first grade hall.

The production team formed an assembly line and produced 80 bags of reindeer food in under one hour!

No assembly line is complete without quality control!

Our sales team set up shop in the marketplace!

The sales team worked hard to sell as many bags as possible using our school-wide rewards as currency.

"Team N" sold out of reindeer food after issuing coupons!
Why didn't we think of that?!?

 I hope you and those you hold dearest have had the happiest of holiday seasons!