It's been an extremely busy week! The Ernestown Secondary band also preformed for the school on Monday. We've had lots of practices for Thursday's Holiday Concert. It was great to see how all three grade two classes worked together on the songs. We spent quite a bit of our Language and Social Studies time on learning about other celebrations. We read a book on Kwanzaa and then completed a worksheet. The students made Kwanzaa wreaths using the colours of Africa, red, green, and black. The wreaths also had the 7 principles of Kwanzaa on them.
We learned about la Posada, which is celebrated in Mexico. Christmas is celebrated for 9 days and this time represents the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. We also learned about Three Kings Day, which is on January 6. This is when children get presents in their shoes in honour of the presents the Wise Men (Three Kings) gave to Jesus. Because of time constraints, we made piñata wands instead of actual piñatas.
The last celebration we learned about this week was Christmas in Italy. The traditions in Italy depend on the region. In some areas, St. Nicholas Day is celebrated on December 6. In Northern Italy, St. Lucia Day is celebrated as in Scandinavian countries on December 13. In southern areas, the children receive gifts from La Befana on January 6. She was a kind witch who told the Wise Men that she was too busy cleaning to go with them to Bethlehem. She went on her own later but got lost. Now she leaves gifts every year for children, hoping that one of them is baby Jesus.
On Wednesday we made Mexican hot chocolate. It's a slightly spicy version of a slow-cooked hot chocolate. The class enjoyed it with marshmallows, gingerbread men sprinkles and Christmas sprinkles. To go with this, they also had Italian "S" cookies for St. Lucia Day.
We continued to learn about 2-d shapes. There continues to be some confusion for some between hexagons and octagons but we will continue to work on this in the new year. I hope that everyone gets a chance over the holidays to check out Prodigy.
For our final Christmas craft, we had a lesson beforehand on how to tie reef knots. For some it was quite easy and for others it was a challenge. There are no pictures of this craft as the students made it as a present.
I was surprised by how calm it was in the class today, especially after two concert performances yesterday where most were quite wound up all day. This morning we did a fun shared reading called "Le père Noël qui voulait changer de couleur". We did some follow-up comprehension questions after. We then had some quiet time to finish crafts and Ketchup work while watching a French Christmas movie. We did some math and then the class went outside for gym since they had missed their gym time yesterday because of concert set-up. This afternoon the class enjoyed a dance with all the other grade 1-4 classes. We then had a special dollar auction where all students could buy something and watched some more of this morning's movie.
Thank you very much to all the families who sent in treats this week. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas with their family and I'm looking forward to seeing all the students in 2015!
Joyeux Noël.
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