HOLIDAY TIME IS HERE!

Dear Parents,

We began our holiday unit by learning about Christmas, Hanukkah, and Krampus.  If you celebrate a different holiday please let us know, so we can celebrate your holiday as well.

We had lots of fun this week preparing for our holidays.
This week our focus was on Christmas. We introduced our holiday unit by doing an excellent fine motor activity.  First the children cut out stockings and then sewed them together with a needle and yarn. They glued cotton balls on top of the stocking (representing fur).   The children then created a fireplace by sponge painting "bricks" and then hanging their stockings on top of it.  

Finally we painted a menorah, which we placed on top of the fireplace.  The children marble painted the candlesticks.  On Friday, we ended our week by making delicious gingerbread cookies.

We continue to work on learning our alphabet letters.  This week we learned the letter "Q."  The children brainstormed a list of words that begin with the letter such as: Queen, quick, quit, quiet, and quilt.  So far the letters we have learned are: L,  E,  F,  H, T,  I U, C,  O, and Q. The children have done amazing job learning the letters and their sounds. They have also been learning how to sound simple words.

We celebrated Siddharth's 4th birthday on Friday.  Thank you to his family for the delicious cupcakes.

Happy 4th Birthday Siddharth!

Notes from Yuting:

This Wednesday we used an abacus to count from 1 to 20 in Mandarin. We also learned about hands and fingers and read a book about the amazing things they can do!  Then we learned the Chinese version of the finger play "Open, Shut Them.

Yuting

Other areas of fun in the classroom:

 

             

In music this week the children have been practicing some holiday songs  - "Jingle Bells," "The Dreidel Song", "O Hanukkah" and  "We Wish you a Merry Christmas."

Love,
Ms. Bonne and Ms. Barbara

THANKSGIVING IS HERE!

Dear Parents,

This week we continued our unit on Thanksgiving.  We had a great discussion about the meaning of Thanksgiving.  We learned that we celebrate Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday in November by having a feast.  We came up with a list of traditional foods we eat on Thanksgiving such as: turkey, stuffing, rice, squash, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn and pumpkin pie. The children were surprised when they discovered that Native Americans did not have stoves but cooked their meals outside on a fire.  They were also surprised when they found out that they didn't have supermarkets back then.  The Native Americans hunted and fished for their food and bathed and washed in the river.

The children made colorful teepees and added straws to the top (representing branches).

Other fun areas in the classroom and playground:

We had two special visitors this week.  Drama Kids International came and did speech and movement with the children.  We also had an interesting visit from the mad scientist. She taught the children about dry ice and about air and the way it moves through different things. The children were fascinated with her experiments.

The children created turkey placemats which they used for the Thanksgiving feast.  First they painted the turkey's feathers with their thumbs, drew feet, and then added a sticker with their face on it.

We also baked delicious pumpkin muffins for the feast.

Do you believe he cracked an egg all by himself?

In addition we turned our classroom into a campfire.  We sat around the "fire" and toasted marshmallows.  We also turned off the lights, used flashlights, and sang campfire songs.  

We ended our week by having a fabulous concert and Thanksgiving feast.  We hope you had a good time at our Thanksgiving celebration.  The children worked so hard preparing for this day. They did an exceptional job singing at the concert.  They looked absolutely adorable in their pilgrim costumes.  I am sure you will all agree!

Love,

Ms. Bonne and Ms. Barbara