St. Lucia

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We are finishing our unit about winter holidays from different cultures this week.  Yesterday, we were treated to a special lesson about the Swedish traditions of St. Lucia by our very own Ms. Svedlund.  Did you know that Ms. Svedlund has Swedish heritage and that she even speaks Swedish?

Ms. Svedlund shared that every year she participates in a celebration of St. Lucia with her local Swedish women’s group. She explained the themes of the celebration for our class, along with giving the reasoning behind the holiday:

Ms. Svedlund shared that the story of St. Lucia tells about St. Lucia bringing food to people hiding in underground tunnels in winter.  Her hands were so full of food that she wore candles on her head to light her way in the dark tunnels. For this reason, each year, one young lady is selected to play the part of St. Lucia in a procession.  She wears a crown of lit candles and walks slowly and carefully.  She is followed by other women, girls, and boys as they sing various songs.  You can see a procession and learn more here:

A traditional St. Lucia celebration includes saffron buns and cinnamon buns.  Ms. Svedlund was kind enough to bring some saffron buns to share with us!  They were received with mixed reviews, as saffron isn’t a common ingredient here, but most students gave them a try.

Ms. Svedlund also shared some pictures from her own St. Lucia celebration.  Can you find her below, with her daughter, Wren?

Finally, as we listened to a medley of St. Lucia songs, we created pomanders!  This is an easy holiday craft to make.  You will need:

oranges or mandarins (mandarins are easier to work with)

whole cloves

twine, ribbon, or string

To create these beautiful and delicious-smelling ornaments, simply press the cloves into the peel of the fruit in concentric circles or whatever design you like.  Tie your ribbon, string, or twine around, and hang wherever you like!  The cloves will help preserve the fruit so that you can enjoy your pomander for a long time.

 

Busy Prepositions

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So far this year, we have learned about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  This week, we tackled prepositions.  We learned that prepositions tell us about direction, location, and time.  (We also noticed the word position in the word preposition, which helps us remember the meaning.). We practiced identifying and using prepositions by relating a bunny to a log:

“The bunny goes through the log.”

“The bunny went on the log.”

“The bunny ran beside the log.”

Next, we gave the bunny a friend and added some time-related prepositions.  “The bunny hopped with its friend while the wind blew.”

To see prepositions in action, we watched this classic video:

We followed it up with our own Busy P’s activity.  Each student was given a picture of an empty jar, six ants to color, and some instructions.

I love this activity because it allows students to practice so many skills at once: reading, direction-following, cutting and coloring… and identifying prepositions!  Some creative workers highlighted the color words in the instructions with the appropriate color to help them figure out what to do. I also like how the same set of instructions can be interpreted many different ways.  No two jars ended up alike.

A Turtle-y Amazing Field Trip!

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Wow!  Today we went on one of the BEST field trips I have ever had the privilege of attending!  The Kindergarten and first grade classes took a long bus ride to my hometown of Ojai.  We gathered at the Carolyn Glasoe Baily Foundation, where we met artis Yassi Mazandi.  She is the artist in residency there at the moment, and she has been painting watercolors of the turtles at the Ojai Turtle Conservancy.  She explained her work to the students:

She gave the students the chance to investigate some of her other clay work.  They got the chance to pass around one of her pieces (which made the teachers very nervous, but it got back to her in one piece.). She left our students with the inspiring advice to believe in our ideas:

Next, we met Matson and Jonas, two boys who created an app called Turtle Friend.  These students, who are now 12 and 13, created the app when they were 8 years old, and ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of Turtle Friend.  Turtle Friend promotes awareness of endangered sea turtles.  Through the app, you can track various sea turtles, watch videos, and learn more about these amazing animals.  They also explained how their organization, Paso Pacifico, uses artificial sea turtle eggs loaded with GPS trackers to track turtle egg poachers.

After a quick snack on the bus, we drove to the Turtle Conservancy.  This amazing place is not open to the public and typically does not host groups of young students, so we were very privileged to have the opportunity to visit.  When we arrived, we learned a little bit about their organization before splitting into two smaller groups:

We took a tour of the facilities.  The students were able to interact with lots of different species of turtles and tortoises.  At the end, we even had the chance to feed some giant Galapagos tortoises!

This field trip was so beautiful and special.  The Conservancy gave each child a turtle book, patch, sticker, and pin.

We owe a huge thank you to Yassi Masandi, The Carolyn Glasoe Baily Foundation, and The Ojai Turtle Conservancy.  Thank you, as well, to Mrs. Delwiche for coordinating the trip, our bus driver for getting us there safely, and Ms. Svedlund, Mrs. Riley, Mrs. Guay, and special guest teacher and Ojai resident — and my mom — Mrs. Atkinson for joining us.