December | January | February
THE DIRECTORS’ CORNER
Welcome back! We hope you’ve enjoyed your February winter break. It seems like this winter season is here to stay for a bit longer. The ice is certainly lingering… It’s been difficult for the children not having as much outdoor time. They like to run around and we all realize they need to do this. Unfortunately, ice has been limiting their space for running and continuous zero degree weather has kept us indoors more often than we like. As you can imagine this time of year can be challenging for the teachers to keep the children’s energy tamed for indoor play. It was resourceful creating an indoor skating rink along with a hot chocolate stand to alleviate the desire for an outdoor setting. Routine can get tiresome during the winter especially when you’re a young child constricted indoors. The teachers have been actively designing new games and activities with lots of movement to keep the children entertained as we continue to follow our daily schedule and maintain a pleasurable environment for the children.
Perhaps due to the winter holidays and the children having new toys at home, we have noticed a great interest in toys being brought to school. This isn’t something we’d like to encourage. We realize how the children enjoy showing one another their treasures from home and other children may need transitional objects to help them come to school. But, as educators we would prefer books. We’d like to emphasize limitations and hope you can understand the need to keeping it appropriate. Some action figures tend to encourage aggressive play. Please consider the repercussions of these being brought to school. We’d like to keep a peaceful atmosphere at school and would appreciate your support.
We hope you have had the opportunity to review your child’s progress report. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. A follow up to your child’s progress for this school year will be given out in June.
Thank You:
We’d like to thank a few families who have contributed to class activities this winter. Kate’s mom, Katherine shared a fun snowflake activity, which excited the children for the snowy season. Alex and Patrick’s mom, Maggie shared a great book and helped the teachers with ideas for celebrating Chinese New Year and Anna’s mom, Deborah shared some beautiful Chinese clothing, decorations and amusing traditions for the children to learn.
Summer Camp:
It seems early to be mentioning summer camp when we’re still experiencing winter weather. But, it’s time for us to start planning for our summer camp. We will run our camp for two weeks, Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Children can participate for one or two weeks. We will try to work out the best weeks, which will accommodate the majority of our families. If you are interested, please let us know ASAP. We feel this can be used as a nice opportunity for our current enrolled children to spend some time together during the summer break and the children entering our program in September 2004 an opportunity to become familiar with the teachers and other children in the program.
Parking Concerns:
During the winter season, Together we Grow’s parking situation can become difficult. Added snow on the road makes for a narrow street complicating the turn around and limiting parking spaces. Please be sure to park in a space that allows other vehicles access on and around the road. Please keep in mind this situation and make pick up and drop off a quicker transition averting chaos for this residential area.
Congratulations:
Congratulations to Miss Tammy for the birth of her daughter, Danielle Geraldine. Alyssa and Christopher are thrilled to have a new baby sister! Miss Tammy will be returning to teaching once she is well rested and she and Danielle become acquainted with one another. We look forward to her return!
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Curriculum Overview
December
The children enjoyed decorating our school in preparation for our holiday party. We decorated bulbs, dreidals, candy canes and doughnuts with lots of colorful sparkling glitter and hung them on our walls in celebration of the holidays. We read many stories about Hanukkah and Christmas during story time. The children shared holiday books from home and they took turns telling one another about their anticipated holiday celebrations. We had discussions at circle time about our giving baskets. The children gladly participated and enjoyed the show and tell presentations of their gifts for those less fortunate. Our baskets were filled to the rims and the D.A.R.E services were so appreciative of our generosity. Once more, thank you!
We reviewed shapes, sizes and counting by tracing small, medium and large circles as each child created a snowman almost the size of them. They enjoyed using big size bowls for tracing and many of the children sat on the bowls as they traced around them. It was fun to paint them and add two eyes, a carrot nose, a smiling face and three buttons. We hung them on the stairway as they became apart of our winter greeting to all that entered our school.
We enjoyed cutting out snowflakes and hanging them from our ceiling. Our school quickly became a winter wonderland. The teachers thought it would be creative to put together a winter village and the children took to the task of painting little wooden houses, snowman, gingerbread people, sleighs, reindeers and trees. We added snow forts made out of sugar cubes and glue, a big snow mountain made with lots of cotton and an ice skating rink made out of cardboard and aluminum foil. We placed little winter figurines skating on the ice rink, sledding down the mountain and playing in the cotton snow. The undertaking of making the objects stand upright was challenging! But, the eagerness for the children to see the finish project kept us determined. It was a terrific group effort! This scene became a fine-looking winter village and we displayed it on our train table. It was neat to observe so many of the children bringing their parents to the train table to show them their part in making this village.
We practiced singing “Frosty the Snowman” and “Jingle Bells” for our holiday party and the children loved adding hats and bells to their performance. The children were elated to perform this show to their parents at the party.
The holidays arrived so quickly and all enjoyed our party as the children made holiday decorations, snacked on special treats and sung so beautifully to their parents.
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January
Returning from our holiday break and with the start of flu season… It seemed fitting to review “All About Germs.” We introduced the subject with a great story by Judith Rice, “Those Mean Nasty Dirty Downright Disgusting but… Invisible Germs.” This entertaining story helped the children understand the importance of hand washing to get rid of germs. We did a fun group activity as we divided into colored teams and placed our hands into glitter. As the “blue” team shook hands with the “red” team and then the “yellow” team we all discovered how quickly our germs could spread when we found blue, red and yellow glitter in our hands. We reviewed washing our hands thoroughly with soap and water and learned the importance of drying them too!
Outdoor play was becoming limited with the zero degree weather and the children were eager for movement. We turned our circle rug into and outdoor skating rink and added a hot chocolate stand. The children enjoyed pretending to skate and took turns serving hot chocolate. We created a counting center with hot chocolate mugs and cotton marshmallows. The children reviewed counting and matching of numbers. Our Pre-Kindergartens were busy working with numbers as they created a counting book, used pegs, the computer, number games, etc…
We painted hot cocoa mugs and added cotton marshmallows to create a “Hooray for Hot Cocoa” wall. We snacked on hot cocoa and marshmallows as the teachers shared our new puppet “The Three Bears and Goldilocks” its terrific how many children recall this story so well. This puppet has a front and a back and flips inside out and can becomes all three bears and Goldilocks too! The children really enjoyed this new puppet as they checked to see if their hot cocoa was too hot, too cold or just right!
The children enjoyed a colorful glitter glue snowflake activity with Kate’s mom. It was fun having a new face helping out with activity. We painted ice-skates for “Ice-Skating is Fun” wall, we punched holes and practiced using our fine motor skills lacing our skates with colorful yarn and hung our skates near our hot cocoa mugs. We celebrated Chinese New Year and pretended to be a dragon and lion under colorful sheets as we paraded around the school. Alex and Patrick’s mom shared an informative book that was filled with stories and pictures of Chinese traditions. We chose to do a couple of activities from this book and made Chinese decorations on red paper with black paint creating Chinese symbols for good luck and prosperity. We also made Chinese lanterns by rolling and cutting paper. Anna’ s mom shared a beautiful decoration that showed all the animals for each New Year and we learned this is the year of the monkey. Anna dressed up in her beautiful and delicate Chinese clothing and showed us the tradition of bowing to one another. We all took turns bowing as Anna handed us a special red envelope with a coin inside.
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February
The snow outside was piling up and the children enjoyed bringing it inside. We made snowballs and found icicles and brought them inside to our science corner and most of us were not surprise how quickly we ended up with slushy water. Regardless, bringing snow indoors was fun! We read Ezra Jack Keats, “The Snowy Day” and worked on our comprehension skills as we played out this story into activities and experiments. Although, the children quickly agreed putting snow in your pocket was perhaps not a smart idea. We made footprints in the snow just like the character Peter in “The Snowy Day” instead we used blue paint on white paper. Most children liked with this messy activity. It was fun and they were able to practice taking on and off their socks in the process! We mixed shaving cream with glue to create “pretend” snow and it was neat to form a snow scene, a snowman or anything we liked from the story. We added cuts of paper for color. It was amazing how once it hardened it looked like real snow piled on the paper! We made sparkling icicles with glitter and white paint. We held the paper in a downward position and squirted the paint out from an eyedropper as it moved downward on the paper we sprinkled the glitter. As it hardened it gave the appearance and texture of real ice.
The weather was not cooperating for outdoor play and we knew we needed movement activities. Since we had been reading stories about penguins we knew how penguins loved to play on ice. We formed iceberg shapes and water areas with paper and rugs. We turned the music on as we waddled around like penguins; once the music stopped we had to find the nearest iceberg to hop on. We played this game and added galloping, skipping, backward and frontward walking, one-foot and two foot hopping, etc… anything to generate movement for the children. We made penguin puppets with paper and Popsicle sticks to add to the fun.
We spent some time reading about winter animals and where they live especially since groundhog day this month had sparked interest why the groundhog was in his hole hiding… We covered a brown snowshoe hare with cotton and learned how they wear a white hare coat in the winter to stay warm. We made a squirrels nest with sticks and hay to show how they build a home for the winter. We learned how many animals hibernate in the winter. The children all preferred being awake during the winter. According to the children napping is not fun!
With Valentines Day approaching, we cut out hearts and decorated the school with red and pink hearts. We made our parents a special Valentine. We read Valentine’s and friendship stories talked about why we like our friends and families. We ended our week with Valentine day celebrations as we exchanged Valentines and happily collected them in the bags the children prepared. We used licorice and fruit loops and a big marshmallow heart to create an edible necklace. We made a Valentine craft with red and pink tissue paper. Played with our big parachute as we tossed our hearts aflutter. We played musical mats. The Pre-Kindergartners also played candy color and shape Bingo and a numeral-recognition game matching together big broken hearts with half of each heart with a numeral and the remaining half with a corresponding set of hearts.
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Upcoming Curriculum
Fun, Games and Activities with Nursery Rhymes
Fingerplays and Poems
A visit from the Fire Department (Thanks to Emma’s dad, Steve)
Safety and Precautions
Spring Season
Pre-Kindergartners:
Fun with Early Literacy
Create a Rhyming book
Dramatic Play:
We will be creating a Post Office with a mailbox, paper, stamps, envelopes, cash register, costume, etc…
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