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Christmas and giving

12/18/2017

December 22nd, 2017

If you do not want your child’s Christmas gifts to you to be spoiled, do not read this until after Christmas!

The kids have been working hard making Christmas gifts for parents this week! They made a reindeer card where they had to trace and cut out their hands to make the antlers. Hands are definitely hard to cut out. The looks of concentration were too funny!

We reviewed some of our 2D shapes this week while making a Christmas tree forest out of a variety of different shapes. We made gingerbread cookies this week. It’s always tons of fun decorating them! We also made handmade Santa and Christmas tree soaps that smell like peppermint this week.

The Christmas elves have been quite the excitement over the past two weeks. Although I believe that kids shouldn’t just want to behave during the holiday season to receive gifts from Santa, I do think it is a lot of fun to have magical elves visit close to Christmas and appear in different locations to watch and see how kind, respectful, patient and understanding the kids can be. We have had some in depth conversations about how Santa is a very forgiving person; maybe you are not being as kind or patient as you could be one day but if you try your best to change your actions and problem solve, then he will forgive you. We also continue to talk about what it means to be grateful; we may not always get the new toys we want but we have to remember that there are many children and adults that do not have much in comparison to us.

We cannot forget about our two PJ days. It's always fun to wear PJs to school!

Have a Merry Christmas and we'll see everyone in the New Year!

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Hanukkah

12/15/2017

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December 15th, 2017

Happy Hanukkah!

This week we learned a bit about Hanukkah. We started by reading the story called Shmelf the Hanukkah Elf by Greg Wolfe. This story explains why Santa does not visit Jewish kids. Shmelf learns about Hanukkah and some of the traditions surrounding it. The kids were quite surprised to learn that Santa doesn’t visit all children. It was a great opportunity to talk about diversity in holidays and our families.

We learned about some of the traditions surrounding Hanukkah, ie: the Dreidel game, fried foods like Latke to represent the oil last 8 days, the lighting of the Menorah, opening a gift on each night of Hanukkah, etc. We made our own drawn menorahs with eight candles that represent each day of Hanukkah and the middle candle to light the rest. We used pasta noodles for the candles and tissue paper for the flames. Each day someone adds another candle to our drawn menorah.

We also touched on Kwanzaa; the colours of Kwanzaa (black, red and green), who celebrates this holiday and the Kenorah. We made Kenorahs from paper shapes and added a glittery star as well as the written word Kenorah. We also made original artwork using a variety of materials in the Kwanzaa colours.

Our numbers this week were three through seven. We practiced writing them, spelling their number words and representing them through hunts for sets of objects and drawings.

We have also been working on addition of single digit numbers. It is great to see them using their adding skills in our everyday routines and tasks, ie: at snack/lunch they will figure out how many boys and girls there are and add them together, or how many people are sitting on each side of the table and add them that way.

Love the game Sorry!, which is a great way to practice recognizing numbers, counting, following the rules of the game, and understanding that certain moves happen in the game that may set you back but it is just part of the game. I am starting to see some of the kids strategizing as they play.

Our movement songs this week were the Reindeer Pokey and Christmas Freeze by the Kiboomers. They definitely are looking forward to more Christmas themed movement songs this coming week!

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Snowflakes

12/11/2017

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December 8th, 2017

This past week was all about Snowflakes, which was ironic because we didn’t have any snow!

We learned that snowflakes are made up of tiny bits of ice. We tried to melt ice cubes into a tray with watercolour paint chunks, to see what will happen.

Some snowflake art and crafts we have done this week include:
- Q-Tip glitter glued snowflakes made from rectangle strips.
- Beaded pipe cleaner snowflake. They are getting good at twisting the pipe cleaner to keep the beads on.

Snowflake tape resist paintings.
Cut paper snowflakes.

Our movement songs this week included Snowflakes Snowflakes and Winter Hokey Pokey by The Kiboomers.

It may seem crazy but we have spent time working with each letter of the alphabet already this year! Letter Y was our last this week. Towards the end of the week we started focusing on our numbers; writing and representing them, as well as recognizing number words.

We also adventured out to the Green Park twice this week. What nice weather we have had to be able to do this!

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Penguins

12/2/2017

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December 1st, 2017

We started our week by talking about what penguins are, what they have and what they can do. It was neat to learn about the different types of penguins, that the mommy lays the egg, and that the daddy cares for and keeps it warm, and that the mommy goes fishing to feed the baby later. Some of us thought it was really yucky that the moms penguin spits up partially digested food into the baby’s mouth! We also learned about the neat webbed feet that penguins have that help them swim…if only we have those too! We thought it was so odd that penguins were still considered a bird even though they cannot fly!

We played with symmetry by painting half a penguin on one side of the paper and then folding the paper in half to see the same half penguin replicated on the other side. This technique was really fun to play around with too. Some would make a full picture and find replication on the other side, and some would make half of something to find the other half that completed their painting after folding the paper.

How do penguins stay warm? Fat/blubber and feathers. We did a science experiment where we put our hands in ice water to feel how cold it would be for us to live in cold water. Next, we used a mitten, to be the fat/blubber and put it inside of a rubber glove, to be the feathers. Wow! We could not feel the icy water at all, with the mitten and glove on!

We practiced identifying some shapes this week. Everyone already knows their basic shapes and therefore we have also added in shapes such as Parallelogram, and Trapezoid. We practiced a little more with independently following multiple steps for our penguin shape craft. After listening to the steps they worked on their crafts; choosing a shape, cutting out the shape and penguin feet, gluing together the shape and the cut shape and the feet, gluing on the eyes and beak, writing their names on them, and putting them on the black mat when they were done. With the help of their friends they were all able to figure out what they had to do next. As a teacher, I really enjoy taking a step back and watching how they converse, direct, and help each other out. We have some really great little leaders!

Our movement song this week was “Penguin Dance”. What a fun action song to practice our left and right side! We also listened to/watched to a song with a story called “My Penguin is Not Polite” by Play Kids (YouTube).

We have been learning about French colours over the past couple of weeks and this week we are really starting to catch on! Everyone is beginning to identify objects using French colour words while they are eating snack even. The kids played a Twister type game on the button rug where they were given anywhere from one to four colours to find and put their hands and feet on. It was pretty funny to watch and they did a great job!

Our letters this week were X and Z. We learned that when X and Y are neighbours they sound like Z.

We watched Happy Feet this week for our Friday movie day. The kids pointed out all the things we had been learning about penguins that happened in the movie. After we decided to paint a part of the movie that we liked; whether it be a certain type of penguin or a particular scene.

Of course we cannot forget about the very special 5th birthday we celebrated as well. Mmmm cookies.

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Christmas and giving

Hanukkah

Snowflakes

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