Merry Christmas

We wish you a Merry Christmas! These little ones had a great week celebrating Christmas. Here are a few highlights:

• talking about the birth of Jesus and the nativity
• playing "Santa Says" and doing an obstacle course
• counting, sorting and graphing bows
• making special gifts and then wrapping them
• making peppermint bark to give to others (if they didn't tell you- one bag is to share with their families and one bag is for someone special)
• playing jingle bell freeze and dancing with bells
• doing yoga and making letters with our bodies
• exchanging gifts and reminding me that it is more exciting to give than to receive
• and much more!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. We'll start up Preschool on Tuesday, January 11th with winter week-snowmen and of course a snow ball fight!

Cultural Christmas

I LOVE Christmas time and I've been anxious all year to start the preschool festivities. We focused this week on the different ways other cultures celebrate the holidays. The children really liked the idea in Germany of putting the presents on the tree and had a great time marching around the backyard with tree limbs singing "O Christmas Tree". Our Swedish Saint Lucia day began with a candlelight classroom and lots of cozy blankets for story time. It's been fun to teach them that the holidays are more than just about Santa Clause.

The children literally jumped out of their seats with excitement when they saw Porsche walk in with her snack. Snack time couldn't come soon enough!
Cutting food into quarters and halves- fractions that are fun!

Making a "Q". After everyone gets in a circle they stick one leg out to make a Q- then tumble to the ground in giggles.

Whose that hiding behind the tree?

Decorating our Christmas Tree ornaments.

Kyler really liked all the glitter glue.

Boston focusing hard to get the ornaments just right on his tree.

The finished products! Sierra thought we should have a contest and judge them, however we determined they were all unique and all winners!

This new toy doesn't quite go with the Cultural Christmas theme, but due to a delay in shipping it arrived just after builder week and it was too fun to put away. They worked on drilling the bolts into patterns and every one of them did perfect! (This toy was a huge hit so I'm sure you'll see more of it than just during building week)

St. Lucia Day! Boys in Star Hats, Girls in Wreaths (I opted not to light candles on the wreaths!), warm rolls and hot chocolate. We watched a short video of an actual St. Lucia procession so of course we then had to have our own procession around the house.

Dancing time! They actually each did a solo performance for me of a snowflake dance. Next time I'll try to video it so you can see them in action- truly priceless

Jack be nimble...

Jack be quick...

Jack jump over....

the candlestick!

Budding Builders

A while back a wheel came off a trike and the preschoolers swarmed that bike and began seeking solutions to the problem. They asked me for all sorts of tools as they sincerely wanted to fix it and did not doubt in the least their ability to do so. I knew then, that we must include a week on building in our schedule and I'm gad I did. It was a fantastic week that gave us lots of opportunities to learn our preschool skills while having lots of fun.

Sand paper letters were so much fun to rub into the journals. We will certainly be doing this again to help with letter recognition and fine motor skills.

Kyler working hard at rubbing the letter "k". He enjoyed the process so much there are about five pages of "k's" in his journal.

Sierra ready for a busy morning of building.

Boston deciding just how he should use the tools to build a house.

All the children spent playtime busily fixing the preschool room. Sierra was the "Chief Builder" and did a good job of supervising the group and of course making sure they all took breaks.

Despite the cold, our pea plants are still growing! At snack time the children peek out the window at their plants then tell me just how tall their plant is going to be.

Cooperation was key as the children worked together to build tall skyscrapers then topple them right down.

Gideon spent playtime building roads for the cars with our magnets.

Kyler just loved the tools and got pretty creative with his building projects.

Safely practicing climbing a ladder, of course they all wanted it to go much higher.

Happy Boston pausing for a moment at the top of the ladder.

Tap, tap, tap went the hammer.

Round and round went the screwdriver.

Up and down went the paintbrushes and paint roller.

More tapping of the hammer.

Pretty Porsche basking in her ladder climbing accomplishment.

Kyler measuring everything around the house.

I didn't get pictures of the children acting out the Three Little Pigs story, but trust me they were hilarious as fierce wolves who huffed and puffed quite a bit. Acting out some songs about building also brought out the inner actors in them all. They are such a wonderful group!

What's Cooking?

The delicious aromas coming from my house on Tuesday morning were created by your kids! They did a superb job working together to measure and mix ingredients, shape cookies, roll out pizza dough and top pizza. The end result was quite tasty. Preschoolers typically enjoy helping out in the kitchen which is like a classroom all in itself. I hope you take advantage of the many opportunities (and great memories) to cook with your children often.

The Chef's ready to get to work and fill the table with yummy food.

Cracking eggs for the cookies. The children unanimously decided that cooking cookies was the best start to cooking day.
Both eggs cracked and in the bowl without a single eggshell!

Even chefs need to take a break from all that cooking.

Pounding the pizza dough. If you noticed flour in your children's hair it is because the flour transformed into a flurry of snow.

Kyler rolling out the pizza dough. They all did such a great job of taking turns and helping each other out during cooking.

Their masterpieces.

So much going on at the end of the day- coloring, cutting, journal writing, and a waitress taking orders! Anything and everything can happen during preschool.

The pilgrims begin their journey across the mighty ocean waters!

Native Americans eager to help the Pilgrims out.

The children loved snack time where they got to create turkeys, helicopters, soccer players, and boats. I think they could have done this all morning.

Building the pilgrim town of Plymouth.

More practice with fine motor skills. These are all dry now and should be in backpacks soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

ROAR!

There was lots of roaring going on at preschool this week as the children learned all about the world of dinosaurs.

After a dino hunt the children discovered a mama dinosaur sitting on her nest of eggs (yummy chocolate eggs that we just had to sample). Then they discovered the preschool room had been overtaken by numerous dinosaurs!

I love the expression on Kylers face- as if he was the T-Rex.

My idea was to have the children paint the dinosaur then use their hands to make the stegosaurus spikes. The children's idea was to cover every square inch of the paper with paint. Looked good to me so out went the hand prints and in came the paint brushes.

Kyler got lots of practice on his fine motor skills covering his dinosaur.

Day2 of dinosaurs brought even more roaring and dinosaur stomping. The rhythm sticks were lots of fun to use with our Dinosaur marching songs. The children's improvement in finding the simple rhythms of the music has increased dramatically. Not only are they following me, they are creating their own routines and following each other.

Again! Again! That's what I kept hearing as the volcano erupted over and over again. Those poor dinosaurs!

Making fossils out of salt dough gave them a good opportunity to strengthen the muscles that help with fine motor skills. Plus, it was lots of fun to make dinosaur footprints everywhere.

Sampling some herbivore snacks at our Brachiosaurus picnic.

I'm sure the entire neighborhood hear the squeals of delight when a fossil was discovered by our little paleontologists.

Dino Ball fun turned into T-Rex tag. These children sure are fast and catch me everytime

I love teaching your little ones and this week was no exception. We had so much fun discovering the world of dinosaurs together. Sometimes a week just seems too short for some themes so we may just have to revisit the world of dinosaurs again.