Meet Gwendolyn!

Well here we are, one day before school begins in my district. This is the first year in five that I actually feel ready for the children to come! And when I say ready, I mean planning two weeks ahead of time rather than shoving the last of everything in cabinets thirty minutes before Meet the Teacher. Life is good...

I am so excited for many things, one of which is moving to a new school (still teaching kinderbabies of course). But there is something very special to me about this school. This is the school I attended K-5 and where I fell in LOVE with school. I knew in kindergarten I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. But enough of the sappy stuff...

Something else I am so excited about this year is our giraffe, Gwendolyn.

She had some other possibilities (Genevieve, Guinevere...) but I decided that would just be too cruel to my sweet kinders.

I had toyed with the idea of a send home buddy for quite some time, forgot...thought about it again...and...forgot. Well, after a conversation with a retired QUEEN of K (this woman is so knowledgeable!) I remembered that it was something I wanted to do. So Travels with Gwendolyn was born.

You could of course choose any animal that you wanted! My room is decorated in mostly animal print so I found it only fitting to choose an African animal...and more fittingly, a giraffe. I like that she is washable, small enough to tote in a bag, but big enough that she will be a little harder to misplace. Gwendolyn will have a special bag that carries both her and the binder containing the letter, previous adventures, and blank writing paper to record the new adventure. I bought "Gwendolyn" from Amazon because it was quick and easy for me using my Prime account and exactly what I wanted.

This special task has so many benefits! Academically, the children are given an added opportunity to write and share their writing. It allows the students to write at the level they are best able. But not only does Gwendolyn provide this writing opportunity to the day's line leader, she teaches the children something even more valuable. Responsibility.

Do I think something may eventually happen to Gwendolyn? Absolutely.
She may get lost, eaten by a pet, etc. but Gwendolyn can be replaced.
It will be the reaction and the consequence that will be the real lesson. Not only will it be sad that Gwendolyn is gone, but it will be even more disappointing that you didn't get to share what you and Gwen did together. And it will be ok to feel that feeling of sadness and disappointment. It is good to experience this at a young age where the consequences aren't severe.  Sound Love and Logic-y? I sure hope so!

But ultimately I hope Gwendolyn always returns each morning, unscathed with a fantastic story to tell. And the responsibility lesson will hopefully be, "I took good care of her and now she gets to go home with someone else." I can't wait to see the children's writing grow as the year goes on and the stories they can come up with.

I struggled a little at first deciding what to write in the letter, but this is what I came up with. If you like the idea of using Gwendolyn the Giraffe in your classroom, visit my TPT store for this including differentiated writing pages to go along with it.

Do you have a special buddy that you like to send home? Do you send it daily? Weekly?
Happy teaching!

Gingerbread Week

This blogging thing sure is hard! I never imagined how difficult it would be to get started and keep up! But here it is, a day late (ok, month) and a dollar short but here are some of the activities we did for our always fun and always enjoyable Gingerbread week!

Of course we completed our semantic feature chart comparing several gingerbread stories including The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl (my personal favorite) and The Gingerbread Baby. Something else I like to include around this time is a listening comprehension activity The Cookie Girl by David Novak.  You can purchase this MP3 from Amazon or here is a YouTube video of him reciting this story at an elementary school in San Diego.  But that is another day and another post.

We also sampled gingerbread men to build that ever-so-important background knowledge of what exactly gingerbread is and what is more fun than snack turned into a math activity? (Well, I can think of a few things actually, one of which I will show you further down!) Here is our chart. One of our daily routines for snack is “Wait for your friends!” I simply told the children to take one bite from their gingerbread man and then put him back down.  Then I revealed the graph and the children placed a sticky note with their name on the corresponding column. We ate our cookies and compared our data. I have seen many teachers distinguish on the graph right leg, left leg, right hand, left hand, etc. but I like to keep it a little more basic so there is more but less data to compare…if that makes any sense. 

Since we were getting closer and closer to winter break, I wanted to make sure the last day before the last week was super fun and exciting to draw them back that Monday before break. Here is where the real fun began.

I first posed the question, “Why didn’t the gingerbread man jump into the river?” I allowed the students to make and record their predictions. Then, we retold the gingerbread man story together but when the gingerbread man encountered the river, I plopped a real gingerbread man into my fish tank. If you did this experiment, of course you could use any bucket or tub you had on hand. Treasure #2 sadly passed away last year and so this is what I had handy. I like using something clear so the students can really see what is going on. This could also be incorporated into a science lab for the week and the students could complete this in small groups or however you see fit!  We then let Gingy sit in the tank while we worked on some other activities and kept a watchful eye over him. After some time, Gingy appeared to be floating along just fine until I reached my hand in to help Gingy out of the “river.” MUSH! The children then recorded what really happened. This illustration cracked me up!

Finally, it was time to break out the best activity of the week. I gave my first crack at a S.T.E.M activity (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and created my Gingerbread STEM Activity. 

We wrote down the problem the gingerbread man was facing. Then it was time to learn what materials would be available. Groups were made and the students discussed their different ideas to develop a plan. They were allowed to “shop” for materials (straws, tape, tin foil, and cups) as I had limits on certain ones. For example, they were not allowed to request more than two cups. They got to work and once they were finished with the vessel as a team, we tested its ability to float and once that task passed inspection, we allowed a new Gingy to board.

Some worked the first try.

And some of the other Gingys weren’t so lucky. Life sure is rough when you are a gingerbread man (ok, sugar cookie).

Teams who were successful got a small prize (a sugar cookie version of a gingerbread man to eat) and teams who were not were given a chance to revise and rebuild. Ultimately everyone got to eat a sugar cookie Gingy and fun was had by all. It was so exciting to see the groups of students working so hard and getting along together in their cooperative groups!

We came back together, shared our results, and recorded our data. I was really impressed with some of the boats and am excited to complete more S.T.E.M. activities in the future!

What are your favorite activities to do for the Gingerbread Man?