Newsletter for the week of December 5th, 2008

Dear Families,
I’m sure by now you have heard that the Gingerbread Man visited our classroom and stole some of our Gingerbread cookies to take with him on and around the world tour. The Gingerbread Man left several clues for us to find and to help us learn about celebrations around the world. You can see pictures of our “crime scene” on either of the blogs. The children have put on their thinking caps are are busy making lists of suspects and clues that we find along the way.
Our week started out innocently enough--we took a picture walk through our new Big Book, The Gingerbread Boy and we then read it aloud. The children enjoyed the story very much! Tuesday, we read the story again and this time we retold and sequenced the story with pictures and the names of the characters. The children all love saying those famous words, “Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!”
Wednesday, I really talked up the graphing we were going to do in the afternoon with our gingerbread cookies. Upon returning from recess, we discovered quite a mess on our floor and we all rushed over to see what it was. We found a map of the world, passports for each of us, a book about Las Posadas, two bags of cookies (one open and empty) and a note from The Gingerbread Man. He said that he had taken the cookies and was off to learn about winter celebrations around the world--he wanted to share the cookies with everyone he met. The note said that he was visiting Mexcio first. Not too long after that, Mrs. McDaniel (our wonderful secretary!) rushed into our classroom with a packed addressed to us, straight from Mexico. We opened it and read yet another note from The Gingerbread Man. This time, he was already in Mexico, and was learning all about Las Posadas. We learned about some of the other holiday customs in Mexico, like making and hanging poinsettias. The Gingerbread Man had thoughtfully included directions to show us how to make them out of red paper. We tried, but were not very successful at that! (We will try again later!)
Thursday, the Gingerbread Man surprised us with an early morning e-mail from Brazil. We got another package (that was mysteriously delivered overnight) and when we opened it up, there was a note that told us to check my e-mail. When we did, we found and e-mail that said, “Hello from Brazil!”. We read it and saw a slideshow all about holiday customs in Brazil. The package we received contained toucan birds printed on heavy paper with instructions to watercolor them and paint them with vegetable oil to make them shine. We are letting these dry for a few days! :)
We also ended up with enough Gingerbread cookies to complete our graph (the Gingerbread Man was kind enough to leave me money to buy new cookies to replace the ones he borrowed from us). We each took one bite from the cookie and then using Gingerbread Man cutouts, we cut the same part off of them as the part we ate. We then made a graph of the results. Usually, we make a vertical graph, but this time we made a horizontal graph, so the children could see the difference, but still interpret information from it.
Friday, we got another letter--this time from Australia. The Gingerbread Man told us how the holidays are celebrated there--complete with surfboards and white kangaroos! We also made Australian bellflowers; a common flower found in Australia during the holiday season.
Friday morning, we retold the story of the Gingerbread Man using props made from wooden spoons. We sat in a circle and passed the characters around as they appeared in the story--this also let the children experience the “chase” of all the Gingerbread characters. We also made Gingerbread Man puppets for the children to bring home and retell the story to you with.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Kristen Poindexter
http://www.poindexterpress.blogspot.com
http://www.kpoindexter.wordpress.com