Today, we started our 12 Days of Winter celebration. We are basing the next couple of weeks on the picture book The Twelve Days of Winter, and doing a craft or activity each of the next 12 days. Today we made (as you probably discovered in your child's backpack) a pinecone birdfeeder. It was really fun, and a surprisingly small mess.

We spent the first part of the day doing that, and it went right up until it was time to go to the library for Media with Mrs. Hennen. After media, we came back down to the room, and Lisa Mellas (a kindergarten parent from Mr. Wold's room) came in to teach an art lesson as a part of the Art Adventure program from the Minneapolis Institute of Art. (for more information on the MIA, click here, and to see some of the works that we looked at, click here -- we saw the portrait of the woman by Vigée-Le Brun, the Hmong ceremonial skirt, and the Ojibwa beaded cape). Art Adventure is a really cool program that brings works that are a part of the permanent collection at the MIA to schools, and invites kids to really take a close look at the works, and think about them. The kids also had a chance to make beaded bracelets, to get a sense of how the beading on the vest worked.

By the time we finished all that, it was time to pack up and head home!