December 2025 at GAP School!

Yellow Superstars with Emily

In the month of December we spent time gathering close, reading by the fire, laughing and creating in the snow, and making memories together.

In ELA, the Yellow Superstars have continued to explore a letter of the week each week. Sensory activities allow learners to play, explore, and really get to know each letter. Learners are committed to their work as they practice writing letters, CVC words, and sight words on lined paper. As the Superstars write, they are determined in their learning of how to write their first and last name. Here, we are intentionally showing focus on letter order within last names, letter reversals, spacing, and appropriate uppercase and lowercase letters. While reading, learners continued to participate in reading fluency together as a class. They practiced this while reading simple sentences as well as reading books independently. As a class we focus on phonemic awareness, letter identification and sound production in order to support learners in their reading. 

In math this month, we continued, completed, and celebrated our class "goal setting" data! Our goal: roasting marshmallows together as a class. After days of teamwork, dedication, and a lot of smiles, we earned the 100 stars needed to roast our delicious sweet treats! Learners learned how to count by 5's, what numbers added up to make 5, as well as learning how to tally mark and record data daily. 

In science, we became fascinated with hibernation and played the now Superstar class favorite game of "Who Woke the Sleeping Bear?". Along with our hibernation fascination, we also enjoyed observing snowflakes! We learned about how a snowflake is made and played in the snow together. Learners have been watching winter birds. Our nature journal of a vibrant male cardinal became a classic. All year, the Superstars have had a passion for African safari animals. Learners love to play with class toys and action figures together. While learning the letter Zz we decided to make them their very own zoo! Here, we learned about reusable materials. We looked into how one item can be reused for something completely new and different. Our model zoo animals had fences, a gate with a "zoo" sign, trees, rocks, and even a watering hole! 

Red Rubies with Virginia and Sapna

Happy 2026! The Red Rubies worked very hard in preparing for Community Day this month! We hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday break full of joy and cheer.

In ELA, the Reds have really been focusing on writing. Our novel study, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, was central for our ELA community day project. This book was such a special part of Virginia’s childhood, and it was so special to be able to show it to a new generation. We have started another Kate DiCamillo book, The Tale of Despereaux, which has also been a hit so far. We are continuing to dive into structured literacy and sounding out words, and we are looking forward to seeing their growth in their upcoming assessments. It has been so exciting to see the learner's confidence grow and seeing them branch out to reading books on their own, including chapter books!

In math, the Red Rubies have been learning the strategies they can use to solve addition and subtraction problems. We can use a number line, place value blocks, pictures, manipulatives, and the standard form. We learned that addition combines numbers and subtraction finds the difference between numbers. During astronaut camp, we measured our height and width in inches and feet, our age in years, our speed in miles per hour, and our jump height in inches. This allowed them to understand the different units of measurements in relation to themselves. For our astronaut mission we took a trip around our solar system, we added the learners mile times together to get a speed of 43 miles per hour. We used the distance from Earth to the Sun (92 million miles) as a constant reference point. This allowed us to find the distance from Earth to the seven planets and our favorite dwarf planet, Pluto, by subtracting the distance to or from the Sun to those planets. Then, we calculated how many years it would take for us to get to those planets based on our travel speed. Because we used miles per hour, we converted hours to days, and days to years. Finally, we added our age today to our travel time to find out how old we would be when we traveled to the other planets. For community day, our astronauts measured a scaled down version of our solar system using inches and feet and we used inflatable planets to represent a display we were so proud of.

During astronaut camp, we measured our height and width in inches and feet, our age in years, our speed in miles per hour, and our jump height in inches. This allowed them to understand the different units of measurement in relation to themselves. For our astronaut mission, we took a trip around our solar system. We added the learners' mile times together to get a speed of 43 miles per hour. We used the distance from Earth to the Sun (92 million miles) as a constant reference point. This allowed us to calculate the distance from Earth to the seven planets and our favorite dwarf planet, Pluto, by subtracting the distance to or from the Sun for each of those planets. Then, we calculated how many years it would take for us to get to those planets based on our travel speed. Because we used miles per hour, we converted hours to days, and days to years. Finally, we added our age today to our travel time to find out how old we would be when we would arrive at the other planets. For Community Day, our astronauts measured a scaled-down version of our solar system using inches and feet, and we used inflatable planets to represent a display that we were so proud of.

Silver Sparrows with Furn and Elijah

December might have been a shorter month for school, but we definitely did not let it go to waste! In science, we continued to work super hard on our energy museum. Silvers were incredibly independent and determined as they researched, created, and built their exhibit features that engaged all of our visitors on Community Day. In math, we continued to build on our multiplication and division skills. We also addressed any areas from the whole year that we felt like needed more attention. So far this year, we’ve covered: place value, number forms, rounding, addition (with and without regrouping), subtraction (with and without borrowing), multiplication facts, fact families, multi digit multiplication, and division (some of us are even long-dividing!). We also worked with our chip-tasting data from last month and got into graphing! So much progress has been made at only half way through the year, and we are so excited to move into fractions and decimals in 2026.

Emerald Eagles with Lauren

Emeralds dove deep into projects this December, applying many of the concepts we’ve been working on this year. Their ideas during a days-long group thinking activity led to choosing migration as the big topic for their science project. Each learner sifted through pages of information about their animal of choice to learn details about their migration habits and find maps that track their journey. Some students chose a summary while others took on five-paragraph essays about the habits of their animals. It was impressive to see the artistic skills, writing, and perseverance that led to the ‘glowing’ final products for Community Day!

In math, patterns were the backbone of study, from looking at different base systems, finding missing numbers in patterns, and using algebra (letters and eventually colors) to represent mathematical sequences. The culmination of the pattern play were handmade potholders that each student created for Community Day. Similar logic is used in coding and other math projects still to come.

In ELA, the Emeralds went another layer deeper into practicing their research skills and learned first-hand how challenging it can be to find the article that has all of the things you want to know; it’s often the culmination of many articles that make for the best research! Some students began to practice writing works cited this month and continued to refine their summarizing skills. 

SEL with Janelle

December brought us many opportunities to focus in on how to be caring and kind throughout our day, no matter where we are. This looked like talking about and practicing ways all Learners can do their best to care for both themselves and others. There were lots of ways we did this! Some learners helped with Community Day preparations, including helping each other. Some learners were helpers and collected extra fire wood for our learning spaces. Some made notes and small gifts, like the flurry of snowflakes that the Yellow and Red flocks created to share with someone special at home or at school. As we continue to focus on the topic of caring at GAP School, we will make sure we take time to be grateful for the others in our lives that care for us!

We hope that these 4 key concepts are things you catch your learner discussing or practicing at home: 

● Being caring and kind throughout the day! 

● Being grateful for those around us! 

● Looking for ways to be helpers! 

● Showing kindness and compassion to others!

Projects with Max

We got crafty the month of December in Projects. Leading up to our Community Day Learners worked on a variety of crafts and skills to support the Holiday Craft Fair. We explored what it means to give and recieve gifts along with how to put value on a gift made by hand and given to a loved one. As we drew closer to the craft fair a variety of discussions were had about the price tag for each craft. Would it be based on the quality of the final product? The time it took to make it? To settle this dilema we looked at our original ideas about how it feels to give and recieve gifts. It turns out, that no where on our poster of ideas did we mention money. With this information each flock determined that the best price would be to ask families to pay what they wanted. "Pay what is in your heart." In the end, our payment system reflected the values we placed on giving and recieving gifts. We far exceeded our goal of raising over $500 towards flock field trips.

In addition to crafting we took advantage of the snowy start of the month by getting out and doing some tracking. Fresh snow on the ground is the best time to practice your tracking because the soft snow makes tracks easily visable and provides more detail than you normally might see in a track. A set of tracks is called a trail. Can you figure out who left this trail?

Tracking also supports integrated learning as we can do the same analysis of a track that Learners might use when practicing reading skills. We have to make inferences and ask ourselves the who, what, where, when and why? Ultimately, tracking is telling a story about how the track came to be.