Forest Animals

This week we learned about animals that live in the forest. We talked a lot about the foods they eat and how they live. 

On Wednesday we talked about deer and made our own deer with our hands and feet!

Friday was all about bears. We learned a little about hibernation and talked a lot about baby bears. 

We also had some of our own bear visitors in class! It was so fun to have the kids' teddy bear friends with us. We learned the song "Teddy Bear Picnic" and had a picnic with our bears. 

The kids also (all on their own) set their bears up to have their own class!

Of course, you have to be in disguise to go to a teddy bear picnic, so we made our own masks so that we could sneak in!

Arizona Animals

This week we learned all about animals that live in Arizona.

On Monday we talked about woodpeckers. We made bird feeders to put in our yard. We practiced being woodpeckers and tested what surface around our classroom made the loudest tapping noise.

We also learned about how woodpeckers get their food out of a tree or cactus and tried it ourselves by getting beads out of play-dough.

On Wednesday we read a book called "Cactus Hotel" that talks about a lot of animals that live in or around the saguaro cactus. After we finished, we each made our own cactus hotel.

On Friday for centers we pulled out numbers bowling! Each child draws a card with a number on it and then uses the call to knock that number over.

We also learned about coyotes and roadrunners. We had fun getting outside and practicing running like roadrunners. We also learned how to do a relay race. It's a hard thing to wait your turn and run at the right time!

Pets

This week we focused on the letter O. This is a fun one because the kids usually know it already, so we get to do some extra things with it and work on the rest of the alphabet.

One fun thing we did was a game called "Alphabet Explorers" The kids were given a letter and had to find the card that matched around the room. I love this game because the cards show pictures of things that start with the letter for kids who are ready for that, or they can look at the word that is written there or flip the card over to just see the letter on the back. It allows each child to work at their level.

We also learned about pets this week. On Monday we brainstormed what kinds of animals can be kept as pets and discussed what makes a good pet.

We also learned about cats and dogs and how to take care of them! The kids each chose a dog and cat to take care of for the day and went around the room to different stations to wash, brush, feed and play with their pets.

On Wednesday we learned about pets that live in cages and had some special visitors. Speedy and Roo, the gerbils, came to visit and show us what pets who live in cages do all day. The kids had lots of fun watching them!

We had lots of fun practicing our fine motor skills by making some cages of our own. It was hard work to remember which hole to go through next!

On Friday, we spent lots of time on shapes, rectangles in particular. The kids made pictures out of rectangles and I was so impressed with how creative they were! We had a turtle, a gate, a wolf shadow, a person and some letters.

The picture of the turtle was probably inspired by our other topic for the day and out visitor, Myrtle the Turtle! Myrtle is a snapping turtle, the kids loved watching him pull his feet and head in and out of his shell. Myrtle also helped us learn about how to take care of a turtle.

We got to make some of our own turtle shells using our math skills. We made the ridges on the turtle's belly with numbers, that the kids had to put in the right order, and made the pattern on their backs with our own shape patterns. Patterns are hard work and they all did a great job.

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!