Multicultural Gingerbread Books

Season's greetings everyone!  I hope you're all having a restful and happy vacation.  I think most of you know that I have a fascination with books that have similar themes.  I think that the gingerbread story is one of my top favorites.  It's so wonderful how every culture has their own version of the story.  I've been doing research this week on even more multicultural versions of the story, and they're displayed above in the carousel.  I did further research by asking the cutest little Russian boy that I saw about half an hour ago if he knew the story of the Kolobok.  He told me that it's a roll, like a gingerbread boy, and that his grandparents read him the story.  I was thrilled to find out that it really is a popular story with Russian children.  I haven't read The Runaway Tortilla yet for this year's students, but I think they'll adore the sassy little tortilla.  It takes place in Texas and the kids will really get into the Spanish words as they learn about another part of the country.

The kindergarten team at my school decided to compare and contrast The Gingerbread Boy with The Runaway Latkes.  We made sure that they had a strong foundation with The Gingerbread Boy by retelling the story and singing Jack Hartmann's song "The Gingerbread Man," which is basically the same story.  We then looked at the cover of The Runaway Latkes and predicted whether they would get eaten or not.  Next we read the story and discussed what was unique about each book and what they had in common.  We took dictation, noting each child's name along with what they said on a smaller Venn diagram.  Then we made a larger poster version over the holiday break.

Venn Diagram to Compare Gingerbread Stories

We let the children taste gingerbread cookies and latkes.  Susan, a retired teacher from our county, was kind enough to come in to school for the whole morning and make latkes for all five of our kindergarten classes.  The children were able to see how the latkes were cooked, smell the delicious aromas, find out why latkes are eaten during Hanukkah, and finally taste them.  Our students were so into the experience that they begged for seconds!

I would love to discover more versions of the story, or how you use them in your classroom.  Please feel free to leave me a comment below.  Happy New Year!

Holiday Magic

Playing Bells

Happy Holidays, everyone!  I don't know about all of you, but the last month has been very intense for me.  There has just been a lot of testing.  So, I'm not going to talk about the testing but I will talk about some fun things that really lifted my spirits and made my students very happy.  Hopefully you can use some of these ideas if you're still teaching before Christmas, or even afterward in the long month of January.

I purchased some bells at a conference and then completely forgot about them.  I do things like this ALL the time because I have too much stuff and I'm just a little ditzy.  Organized, but ditzy.  So I took them out and placed them on the shelf in my classroom, and wow!  When I started playing "Doe, a Deer" and "Jingle Bells", teachers would come in from other classrooms to see what was happening.  The music teacher came in.  Now, the funny thing is I believed he was one of my students, and thought "Oh my gosh!  I have a prodigy on my hands!"  After he played the song, he said hi to me, and I have to say I was a little bit disappointed that it wasn't one of my students.

These bells are SO easy to play.  My students started picking up how to play "Jingle Bells."  You just tap the top of the bell and it rings.  It's a little more challenging to play them as a completely blind person, because of course I'm doing it by ear and not by the color coding at the top of each bell that also matches the disc you can buy.  But it worked beautifully and my assistant, who also plays the flute, played "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "The First Noel."  I guess the great thing about these bells is even if you're not musically talented you can look at the screen and just follow the colors.

Another really nice thing that happened was a little girl who couldn't count to 8 came over and played the scale with me.  I showed her how to count as she tapped the bells, and the second time we did it she counted by herself.  She doesn't have much English, and this is the first time that she's counted to 8 and back down again with the bells.  Sometimes music really does act as a bridge to other subjects.

Sight Word Christmas Tree

We practiced sight words with this Christmas tree that I made a few years ago.  But if you didn't see that post, here are the ornaments again if you'd like to make the tree.

Sight Word Christmas Tree by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I also laminated it and added velcro to it so the children could play with it in ABC and Word Center.  It's really amazing to see children who know their sight words use this tree to help those who are having a little trouble.  If you'd like to purchase some easy-to-use sight word coloring sheets, take a look at this product.  I used them all week and the kids said they were super fun.

We were also working on solid shapes and I found that using real objects is so much better than using pictures.  It's just more hands on and the children can actually roll and slide the objects to see how they move.  I think there are so many things we have to do that are just flat; it really excludes those kinesthetic, 3D learners.  I sat the children in a circle and assigned each child a 3D shape.  Then everyone sorted the real-life objects.  Here is a free solid shape book where the kids can color each solid shape on its own individual page.

The last thing I'd like to tell you about is a really awesome solid shape video where a girl, with help from a fairy, is decorating a Christmas tree with solid shapes.  It talks about faces, corners, and angles, and it's really perfect for kindergarten.  It's just so festive and it's a fabulous connection between the holidays and mathematics.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.