I want to say thank you for coming to our holiday pot-luck and meeting our lovely dear Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus! The children truly enjoyed themselves and this is what it's all truly about, bringing pure joy and beautiful smiles from their faces.
Today we finished up most of the gifts the children will be giving you next week. Yay! They all worked really hard on them and did such a wonderful job. I know you will love it. Can't wait until you see it!
This week we have been so busy! We have been working on family portraits, a special family gift, and making beautiful ornaments. These will hopefully be ready to go home next week. The children have truly enjoyed covering themselves with paint and glitter.
This week we have also noticed the children have had a lot of extra energy. We have been using our gym time to help get that energy out (especially since it has been a cold week). Each day we have changed the mats in different ways that will help with their gross motor and keep them motivated to move around. Today we decided to move a couple of the gym mats into our classroom as well since extra movement was needed. We really enjoyed it and will try to add it to our routine when needed.
Tonight we meet Santa!!! I hope the children enjoy it and we have a wonderful potluck!
This week on our family unit, we have continued to listen to international/traditional music in our classroom. We were able to listen to Dutch, Polish and Spanish nursery songs. We had quite a few dancers, and although they did not understand the language, they knew it was music they could dance to. We'd like to give credit and say thank you to Soeske (Eloise mom) for giving us the name of the nursery song from the Netherlands. It was great to see Eloise and Isabelle's reactions!
We also worked on family portraits. We took a photo from our family wall, showed it to each child one by one, and had them "draw" members of their family on a cardboard. Although we saw squiggly lines, circled shapes, and many dots, we could see there was intent in their drawing. This will be an ongoing project that will approximately continue until next week.
Because the children were interested in painting, we let them use the table and their bare hands. No paper! (No shirts or pants either) We added shaving cream on top to give it a softer squishier feel and let them have at it. They truly enjoyed getting messy.
We also took out air dry clay and used the pine branches to create different shapes with. The children were really engaged, with the activity lasting 20 minutes. Some were poking holes on their clay and others were lining up their little pine leaves one by one next to each other.
Today we had so much fun! We were playing hide and seek, exploring our pine tree in our sensory table, and since it was a sunny day we even had time to go outside for a walk.
In the morning, Silas mom Daniela came over and helped make a hand print that was needed for the classroom. Silas eyes were wide and filled with excitement. He couldn't believe mom had paint on her hands. In his classroom! It was such a beautiful moment.
On our walk today we had a buggy with four seats, however we had 5 children. What to do? We had Scarlett walk a little bit since she showed interest in doing so. She had such a huge smile. Once she got tired, we switched Scarlett for Silas. He was also excited about it. They did such a great job holding hands and walking really nicely with the teacher.
We are back in action after the Thanksgiving break! This week we went to the park, and since the weather has been beautiful, we ventured out of our buggy rides and roamed a little bit by the grassy area. On our way back to school, something wonderful happened when we decided to stop by the Christmas tree post. As we were looking at the trees and touching them, the vendor said we could take the branches of the pine trees for FREE!!! So exciting! We got to use some of the branches today to paint with.
This week we have also been listening to different kinds of music. On Monday we listened to Bollywood from India. Laura listens to it when celebrating a wedding, or at different family functions. We saw a couple of kids swaying back and forth to the music. We were all surprised when Isabelle got really into it. She would shake her hips, move her shoulders, and clap her hands. Today we listened to music from Israel. We captured Barak and he was turning around and holding the radio, with a huge smile on his face. Such beautiful moments! Here are the pictures of today.
