TIS THE SEASON

The Christmas season brought many happy and serious moments to our classroom. Our group enjoyed decorating, cooking, eating, glittering, stringing, singing, and sharing during the last three weeks. Our friends also listened to Christmas stories some old and some new and we tried to focus on Baby Jesus. We hope you have a blessed Christmas and a Happy 2011.

Our stockings were hung so we could admire what a fantastic job we did on them.

Each candy cane needed a pattern. It could be a copy or an original. Then an inspection was to take place with the magnifying glass.

We're not sure what was the most fun-the stirring of the ingredients or the cutting of the dough for our gingerbread boys and girls.

The weather outside was frightful, but we still got in our gross motor skills.

We took an imaginary trip to the North Pole. Upon arriving each child found their name on Santa's good list and proceeded to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. How very interesting!!!!!!

Two activities that reminded us of the real meaning of Christmas were to make a manger scene with stickers and to make individual birthday cakes out of a marshmallow and a pretzel candle. Singing happy birthday reinforced the idea that Christmas is a celebration.

We got to make our own snack. Ice cream cones covered with green icing and decorated with chocolate chips and marshmallows. Yummy.

Thanks for giving

Thanksgiving has been our focus for the last two weeks. Counting, sorting, reading, graphing, tasting, and creating are only part of the fun we've been having. We have learned about the friendship of the Pilgrims and Native Americans, and that sharing helps everybody. We would like to share some of the highlights of the last two weeks.

Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let this food to us be blessed. This is our prayer before we have snack daily.

Our favorite Thanksgiving food was an interesting project.

We really tried to stress the importance of Thanksgiving. It really should be thanks for giving.

We made blessing trees with each leaf representing something we were thankful for. It was wonderful having such good help to sort the leaves.

The hot air popcorn maker intrigued us, however eating it was familiar to us.

With a gobble gobble here and a gobble gobble there, turkey week provided several opportunities to learn more about this bird.

The Hokey Pokey was a lot more fun with turkey actions- like put your tail feathers in.

We love our new long tables that Ms Jennifer got for us. We can stand on one side and draw with dry erase markers or work a puzzle on the other side. Thank-you Ms Jennifer.

A big part of preschool is creative play and that's exactly what the students get to do when they bring the puppets to life.

Many activities are much easier with a team effort.

Clipping clothes pins to the paper plate for tail feathers was a fine motor skill in this activity.

Hard at work with his tools.

FALL FUN!!!!!!!

Leaves, squirrels, corn and plants were our focus for the last two weeks. We painted, danced, experimented, and learned from them, but most of all we had fun with our friends.


To their amazement, I explained that when you eat celery, you are eating the stem of the plant. We did an experiment to show how the stem carries water to the plant.

We all know our initials. This skill was reinforced by outlining the letters with corn kernels.

We painted over and around the leaves. Then we removed the leaves and a beautiful print remained where the leaves were.

We've got the beat as we kept time with the music and our leaf creations.

The leaves provided fun and games for us. Letter recognition and beanbag tossing were among them.

We didn't need a paintbrush for these trees. Our arms were the trunks, our hands the branches, and our fingerprints were the leaves.

Rice in the sensory table gives us the opportunity to measure and scoop and pour.

After adding the rice we play with cars, funnels, pitchers and all sorts of things in it. Here we were little squirrels hiding our nuts for the winter.

Every Monday we check our pumpkin seeds for growth, watering, and of course some encouraging words.

While looking for leaves, Jake's family discovered a real bird's nest. We predicted what kind and color of bird might have had its home in this nest. Thanks to Jake's family.

Friends engaged in marble works-a class favorite