Here is a look at what we have been doing during December. I know this is a rather short post, but you will see below where you can get more ideas!  BTW, if you like the idea of doing this with your own class room, I am putting a button on my Kristen’s Kindergarten Store blog for you to purchase the GBM Kit complete with the letters that the GBM left for the children, a book list, supply list, a GBM store “shopping list”, and a resource list  where you can get more ideas.  The cost will be $15.00 plus $2.00 shipping or just $15.00 if you would like them e-mailed to you as a PDF file.

I’ll also be adding some materials from the winter Farmer’s Market workshop I did and will be presenting in the weeks to come (that will be in my next post).

On with the GBM!! 🙂

You can also reference the GBM things I posted last year.  I kept everything mostly the same, but changed the letters that the children received significantly.  This post will be mostly just pictures with the new things I added:

This is our GBM Store.  The children worked very hard for the week and a half before this store to earn lots of Bulldog Bucks (our Kindergarten currency).  The children could then purchase their GBM felt cutout and items to glue on to their GBM.  I had two wonderful parent helpers come in and hot glue all the items on so the children could take them home the same day.

You can click on the picture for a larger view.

These are pictures from our GBM spoon chase that helps us work on retelling.  I copied the pictures from the Mailbox Magazine’s December Grades 1-3 book about 8 years ago and laminated them and taped them on to these spoons I purchased from the Dollar Tree.  We retell the story and pass the spoons around the circle, adding characters as needed.

This is a sampling of the books that we read during our GBM theme.  When you purchase the kit, you will get the list in its entirety as well as many others.  I ordered all of them from Amazon.com and received most of them within a week.  I think 10 books cost me $40, so if you don’t mind a gently used copy, it’s a good way to get them for your classroom library!

Again, search my blog for what we did last year…I like it at this point and will only be posting new things I add for this theme each year.  One of my colleagues had children in her room who celebrated many different holidays and could not get to them all, so instead, she had the GBM visit other countries and the children learned about those countries from folk/and fairy tales tied to those regions! 🙂  What a great alternative! 🙂  I will have to try it some year! 🙂

Kristen 🙂