06 Dec Newsletter | November 30-December 3, 2015

What a great week! The children are very excited to be talking about different holiday traditions. This week, the holiday we focused on was Hanukah. Next week we will continue our theme of holiday traditions.

Miss Courtney joined us on Monday for calendar craft. The children water colored and put together a beautiful winter picture for the December calendar. New games were introduced – a game to practice positioning (above, below, beside, at the top/bottom of, etc.) and Jack-be-Nimble, a gross-motor game that reinforces color recognition and small, medium, large. We made a graph of the children’s favorite Thanksgiving food. Pie seemed to be the favorite with most of the children!

On Tuesday, Coach Jane came with Inky and “Mean Dog.” She talked to the children about ways we are the same and different and how different is not wrong or bad, just different. She lit a menorah and told us the story of Hanukah. She also taught us how to play the Dreidel game.

Tuesday was also our letter-of-the-week day. We put jello on J. Not only are the J’s colorful, but they smell good, too!

Miss Rebecca and Stanley came to read stories on Wednesday. We were able to work with small groups on a menorah craft to put candles in number order. We also worked individually with children on fine motor and handwriting samples. Since the weather kept us inside, we used the parachute and cotton balls to make our own snowstorm in the classroom!

We talked about pine trees being the type of tree that are used for Christmas trees and asked the children what they know about pine trees.

Asher – “They come down with sticky stuff.”

Nila – “They are green.”

Cassidy – “The branches are brown.”

Kane – “You know there’s spikes on pine trees?”

Rebecca – “Tree sap.”

Elise – “They have spikes.”

Hadley – “They are sticky. That’s all I know about pine trees.”

Vera – “We use them for Christmas trees.”

Eliza – “They are tall.”

Luci – “There’s pinecones on them.”

Race – “They’re Christmas trees and you decorate them.”

William – “They have spikes on them. You decorate them for Christmas and then bring them home.”

Elizabeth – “They have sap.”

Thursday was a most delicious day! We had Miss Alba and Miss Stephanie to help us make latkes! The children helped peel and grate the potatoes and mix them with egg. We enjoyed the finished latkes with some homemade applesauce! We played the beanbag gross motor game – the children threw the beanbag to a numbered shape and chose an exercise to do that many times. We were finally able to enjoy some outside play as well!

The children worked all week on a new snowman bulletin board. They are also all working on painting snowflakes to use as new winter naming items.

 

Our stories for this week included:

Joseph had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback

How do Dinosaurs say Happy Chanukah? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague

Hanukkah! by Roni Schotter

Here is the World-A Year of Jewish Holidays by Leslea Newman

 

Quotes of the Week:

Race – “You get Christmas trees from trees.”

Cooper – “It’s like an acorn! (while spinning a dreidel.)

Cooper – “Hey, Miss Chris! I forgot and you remembered!”

Rebecca – “This is fun, Miss Chris!” (while playing with the parachute.)

Vera – “If I use all the colors, I make a new color!”

Hadley – “Thank you for making my birthday so special!”

 

Audrey – “Hey, you know what? They never let poor Rudolph join in any more reindeer games.”

Nila – “That’s really sad, you know.”

Audrey – “And at the end they shouted with glee!”

Nila – “Who’s glee?”