Last week, we wrapped up our GBM theme with letters from 2 more countries. Germany and The North Pole.

I started off the week knowing where we wanted to end up, so I decided that our theme would be Polar Animals.   We read a Big Book:

and this got us started.

We then made a KWL chart so I would better be able to focus my instruction:

We then read several books over 3 days about Polar Animals:

During our whole GBM theme, we were keeping track of all the places we learned about with the GBM’s travels: (it is not updated)

Look what was also delivered to our room this week:

The GBM also shared with us that there are no penguins at the North Pole, but there are ice bergs.  I showed the children how to make them:

After reading one of our books on Polar Bears, some of the children wanted to know what the predators of Polar Bears were.  I was telling them about how humans are the only predators of the PB.  They wanted to know more about how we were hurting PB’s, so I showed them how acid rain and other chemicals we put into the air/rain are melting the icebergs:

This blue water was meant to represent the chemicals we put into the air.

The children were asked to see how fast the ice berg would melt with the “chemicals”.

We then got another round of icebergs and put salt on those (acid rain) and compared how fast they melted:

We graphed our favorite Polar Animals (don’t you love my spur of the moment drawings???!!!  I can’t draw!)

This is our package from Germany!

We were left with instructions how to make cinnamon applesauce ornamanets.  I decided to show my kids how to do this without measuring anything!  Bad idea!!!  We ended up adding all sorts of extra things (oats, glue, powerded tempra paint, more cinnamon) to get it to thicken and harden, but after leaving it over night, no such luck.  Next year, I’ll measure!! 🙂  Lesson Learned!

We also colored and hung these NOEL banners I made a few years ago, but the GBM brought them this time!

We got a package from the GBM on Wednesday (we are in our jammies).  He sent us our last package from the North Pole.  Inside was a copy of the Polar Express movie, the soundtrack, tickets to ride the Polar Express, a letter and these puzzles:

The children had to work in their table groups to put them together.  It was very intersting to see who took charge and divided up the pieces and who just sat there waiting for direction.  It took them about 10 minutes to get it all together.  We did this as a time filler right before lunch and after their puzzle was all put together they had to get their lunch boxes and sit quietly, so we would know that they had finished their puzzles.

All the puzzles were the same:

I found an image of the book cover somewhere and cut it into puzzle pieces.  The kids had such a blast with it!

We also wrote about where we would go if a train came to our door and could take us anywhere we wanted to go–there were lots of Hawaii’s !!! I imagine they all wanted somewhere warm! 🙂

If you look at my previous post: December15plans, you can see how all this fit into the week.  I posted my lesson plans for last week in that post.

I’ll be back in a few minutes to post the plans for our first week back (I like to plan ahead!!  I’ll be getting the rest of January in order by Friday).

Kristen 🙂