Celebrations

I absolutely love December. So many holidays in one month! I am sometimes tempted to start celebrating all of them. Probably not the best plan, but it has been fun to learn about them!

Here is what we've been up to the past two weeks (since last week's post just didn't happen).

Last week we learned about the letter N. One of our games was 'Mixed Up Alphabet' where the alphabet got all mixed up and the kids had to put it back in order. They worked in teams and I have to say that I was very impressed. I did not expect them to get past N, but they got the whole thing done! They did a lot of it on their own and problem solved for the letters they didn't know. They found many solutions like singing the alphabet song or looking at one of the several places that the alphabet can be found around our classroom.

In our travels last week we visited Mexico, Italy and Sweden.

In Mexico we learned about some of the many holidays they celebrate during December. There are quite a few feasts honoring different saints and one of my personal favorites, Night of the Radishes, when they carve radishes into elaborate decorations. Since poinsettias play a part in a lot of these celebrations, we made our own paper poinsettias to decorate our classroom with!

In Italy we learned about La Befana, who brings the children gifts. We made our own broomstick ornaments to remember her.

In Sweden we learned about St. Lucia Day. On this day, children dress up as either St. Lucia or Star Boy and take part in parades, religious services or just serving breakfast to their family.

The kids made pictures of St. Lucia and we read a few stories about St. Lucia Day.

This week we learned about Christmas in England, Australia and the USA.

In England, the first Christmas card was sent many years ago. The kids made some Christmas cards that hopefully they gave you today!

In Australia, Christmas celebrations are very similar to our celebrations here. The biggest difference is that it's in the summer time. Children in Australia often go to the beach on Christmas and build sandmen instead of snowmen. The kids had lots of fun making their sandmen!

Today, we learned about Christmas in the USA and since the kids were so good this month and definitely earned a party, we had some fun with it! I sent home the hearts they earned during the month so you can see some of the nice things they have done.

Today we made snowmen, gingerbread men, gingerbread houses and wreathes. We also spent time reading stories, playing games and singing songs.

Thank you so much for sharing your kids with me this month! Have a great break and I will see you in January! (January newsletter will be coming home in the next few days via email, since I did not get it done in time to send home today.)

Christmas Around the World

Our letter of the week this week was M. Since we have several kids who love monsters, I had to use that! They had so much fun making their M into a monster.

We also learned about the number 6 and worked on number order this week.

Our unit this month is Christmas Around the World. We will be learning about Christmas and many other holidays that are celebrated around the world in the month of December. 

We started off our day on Monday by reading "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". We now have this Grinch hanging in our classroom. Each time I see the kids doing something kind they get to put a heart on him. If they cover him up by the end of the month we will have a party on the last day before break! I will send the hearts home at the end of the month so you can see the kind things your child has done. 

We also made our suitcases on Monday. For each place we 'visit' we will be adding a flag and a symbol of their holiday celebration to our suitcases.

On Wednesday we started our travels by visiting Israel and learning about Hanukkah. We read some books and talked about why and how Hanukkah is celebrated, we made latkas for snack, 

learned about menorahs, 

and made one of our own.

We also learned about dreidels and played with them.

On Wednesday we traveled to Germany and learned about St. Nicholas Day. On St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6th), children in Germany leave their shoes out and St. Nicholas comes and fills them with candy. We tried it out and the kids found some candy in their shoes at the end of preschool! My favorite moment from the week was when we found it, one of them ran to the front door and yelled, "Thank you St. Nicholas!"

We also made salt dough ornaments, which is a common tradition in Germany. They are not finished yet, they should hopefully be ready to send home next Wednesday!

Police Officers and Thanksgiving

This week we got some practice with the shapes and colors that we've already learned. The kids put this puzzle together and did an awesome job. There were even some shapes that we haven't learned about (octagons, pentagons) and they were great at figuring it out.

On Monday we finished up our 'People In Our Neighborhood' unit by learning about police officers. We had another special visitor come to talk to us about his job as a police officer. It is one of the funnest jobs to learn about because they have so many cool tools to use!

Wednesday was all about Thanksgiving! We did some fun Thanksgiving crafts and learned a little about the first Thanksgiving.

We had our own little Thanksgiving with some of the foods they might have eaten at the first Thanksgiving.

We also made turkeys and talked about what we are thankful for. I loved the things they came up with. These kids make me smile and I am certainly thankful for them!

Pilots and Doctors

This week was all about the letter L. We love this letter because it's such an easy sound to make and so many great words start with L! I also discovered this week that Sesame Street has created podcasts for every letter of the alphabet. We watched the letter L one today and it was fabulous. The kids were singing the song from it for the rest of class.

On Wednesday we learned all about pilots. We did a little pretend play and took turns being pilots. They, oh course, had to add the chairs on the side so the airplane could have wings. I loved some of the places they decided to fly to. My favorite was New York, so they could freeze into icicles.

After that we learned how to make and fly paper airplanes!

The kids also made collages of places they would fly to if they were a pilot. This turned out to also be a really great geography lesson as we talked about the places in the pictures they were cutting out!

Today during centers we broke out some puzzles. Learning and fun all at the same time!

We also learned about doctors, nurses, radiologists and other people who help us stay healthy! Really, at 3-4 years old, they all count as doctors. We even had a special visitor today! She talked to us about her job as a radiologist and showed us some really cool x-ray pictures. She also helped the kids make fish x-ray pictures that turned out super cute!

Firefighters and Dentists

Thank you parents for bringing your kids to the fire station on Wednesday! It was so much fun to see everything (especially the truck :) ) and to learn a little bit about fire safety.

After we got back from class we learned about the letter k and talked more about fire safety. We talked about 'stop, drop and roll' and did a fire drill so that the kids will know what to do if there is ever a fire here at school. If you have not done a fire drill recently at home, please take this time to do one and make sure you have a family meeting place outside the house!

Friday was all about dentists! During centers we spent some time doing a few dentists themed activities that reviewed the alphabet and helped us practice our handwriting.

We also learned about how to take care of our teeth by brushing and flossing!

Of course, we also had some fun painting teeth,

and making our own mouths! These mouths were such a great activity. The kids got to practice their fine motor skills by breaking the styrofoam into pieces and gluing them on. After that was done we talked about estimation and the kids got to estimate how many teeth were on their mouth. Then they counted to see how close their estimate was!

Construction Workers, Teachers and Mailmen

We have been putting more tools in our tool belt this week as we learned about some different people in our neighborhood.

Monday was about construction workers! The kids played with Legos during play time to get in the spirit!

During class we talked about the tools that construction workers use and the different things they can build. We then did some building of our own! My original plan was for them to build buildings, but they all wanted to make robots. I am all for letting them use their own creativity, so robots it was!

On Wednesday we talked about teachers. We read some books about teachers and talked about the different kinds of teachers there are. The kids each took a turn being a teacher and teaching all of us something that they know about. We learned some karate moves, a princess dance and a spinning trick.

Friday was about mailmen! We started by writing letters to our favorite Disney characters, getting it in the envelope, getting the envelope ready to go and walking it down to the mail box. Hopefully they will write back to us soon! We also wrote letters for the kids to send to whoever they would like. It could be a grandparent, cousin, friend, whoever they want! It was also a nice mini assessment of where their writing skills are at. We definitely still have work to do but I am seeing a lot of improvement from the beginning of the year!

We also worked on numbers on Friday. One game we played is pictured below. The kids counted the items in the bag and then found the number that matched.

Halloween!

This week has been all about the letter i and Halloween! 

On Monday we learned about things that start with the letter i and made decorations for our Halloween party.

Wednesday was our party and we had so much fun! We played games like bingo and pin the spider on the web, painted pumpkins, made pictures and ate treats! I love seeing all their cute Halloween costumes!

Friday was the first day of our new unit, "The People In Our Neighborhood". We talked about grocers today. We talked about some of the tools that grocers use, such as scales and cash registers, and then turned the classroom into our very own grocery store. The kids sorted all the foods so that similar items were shelved together and the took turns being the shopper, the cashier and the bagger.

Rain, Rainbows and Back to the Farm!

Sorry this post is a little on the late side, time has definitely gotten away from me!

Last week we talked a little bit more about rain and how it happens! We did a science experiment and made rain in a jar. The hot water on the bottom and cold air on top causes water to condense on the plate and 'rain' in the jar!

We then got to make our own rain sticks!

On Wednesday we had our long awaited trip to the farm! The kids had a good time learning about cows and seeing the other animals.

I think my favorite part was the baby calf! She was only a few minutes old and we got to watch her learn to stand up and walk.

Friday was our last day about weather as we talked about rainbows. We learned about some of the science behind rainbows and made our own rainbow in the backyard using the hose. We also made a rainbow in a bowl! This took forever for some reason, so the kids didn't actually get to see it. I'm sure they would like to see the picture if you want to show them!

This week we also learned about the letter h. One of our activities was charades with words that start with h. We then used those words to make the objects out of playdough.

We also introduced alphabet bingo this week and the kids did a great job of matching the letter on the card I held up to the letter on their board. Later in the year I will make it harder by just telling them the letter names, rather than showing them the cards!

Curious George

My kids were just watching Curious George and watched an episode that fit so perfectly with our unit this month! It talked a lot about clouds and wind, George even makes his own windsock! It's season 3, episode 9, called "Red Sky At Night, Monkey's Delight". If your kids are wanting to watch tv, this is a great way to re-enforce what we've been learning!

Columbus Day, Wind and Snow

This week started out with a Columbus Day celebration. We learned a little bit about Columbus and then made some boats and telescopes of our own. The kids had lots of fun sailing their boats!

We also introduced the letter G on Monday. It is always fun to learn about the letter's that the kids' names start with because the kids are already familiar with them! We talk about the letters in our names so often as we practice writing our names.

On Wednesday we talked about the wind. We played "Will the wind move it" and blew on different objects to see if the wind would move them. The kids didn't a great job of making predictions and figuring out why some objects would move and other's wouldn't. After that we made our own windsocks.

Friday doesn't have any pictures. We talked about snow on Friday! (Totally foreign concept around here! ) We had fun during centers with counting snowflakes and making patterns with them. We also got some cutting practice in! We read several books about snow and talked about how we dress differently during the winter, which was also kind of hard to explain. Flip-flops are definitely worn year round around here!

Weather Watchers

On Monday this week we finished up our farm unit with some acting! We read the book, "The Hat" by Jan Brett and then the kids used stick puppets to act out the story. They also got to make their own stick puppets to take home.

On Wednesday we played a little bit of alphabet matching to work on letter recognition. They did really good with the letters we've already learned and got a few of the others right as well!

We also had some fun on Wednesday with pajama day! October is National Popcorn Month. Just the kind of thing I love to celebrate in preschool! We read a fun story about Paul Bunyan accidentally covering Minnesota in popcorn and then made some popcorn of our own.

Wednesday was also the start of our weather unit. We watched a little bit of Sid the Science Kid to introduce weather and clouds, in particular. It's tough to learn about weather here in Arizona when we don't see much besides the sun!

On Friday we got more into clouds, starting off with some cloud counting. We made our own rain cloud counting mats and then used cereal to make different numbers of raindrops. This is an activity you can continue at home! Use whatever you have on hand for the rain drops and give your kids different numbers to count out. Challenge them and see how high they can count!

We also got to make our own mini rain storms! The kids got to squirt colored water into a cloud of shaving cream and watch as the cloud filled with water and then started to rain!

Once too much rain had gone through the cloud, it turned into fog in a bottle. (Which was also a new concept for these weather deprived Arizona kids!)

After that we painted cloud pictures with white paint and cotton balls.

Have a great Fall Break everyone!