Pizza, Pizza!

This week we will center our activities around a pizza theme. We will follow a recipe to make pizza, learn about where the toppings for pizzas come from, create our own pizza recipe, taste various pizza toppings (including anchovies), and turn our dramatic play center into a pizzeria. Pizza anyone?

Please remember to return your completed I Can forms in your child's folder no later than Tuesday. I hope everyone has a great week!

Using Chopsticks

Our girls and boys found out that using chopsticks is not as easy as it looks. We're going to have sets of chopsticks in our manipulative area so they can take time during the week to practice. They can also visit our class play Chinese Restaurant to practice eating pretend Chinese food.

Chinese New Year

This week we will learn about the Chinese New Year and will celebrate the 100th day of school. Today we tasted chow main noodles, Pocky, and fortune cookies and graphed if we liked or disliked each. We also enjoyed reading our fortunes together. I hope mine comes true! We had a lot of fun using chopsticks to try to pick up dried noodles and pom poms. Believe me, it looks a lot easier than it really is. On Tuesday, we will celebrate being in school for 100 days! Where has the time gone? We will count 100 objects to show what 100 looks like, draw a picture of what we think we would look like if we were 100, and make a book about things you can do when you are 100. It's going to be a great week!

Arctic Animals

Last week was a fun week for the boys and girls in our class. We had an alphabet snowball fight, made snowmen using modeling clay to learn about small, medium, and large, and counted snowballs. This week we will discuss winter animals in our class. The children will listen to the story Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You See? By Eric Carle and will make their own polar bear using various art materials. After learning about penguins, the children will use a ball (for the egg) and try to balance it on their feet as they pretend to be a father penguin holding a penguin egg.

Please remember to send apples and folders daily. Have a great week!

Let It Snow

This week we continue the winter theme in our classroom. We will go on pretend sled rides using our own block sleds, have a letter snowball fight with letters hidden in each of the snowballs, explore with pretend snow in our sensory table, explore small, medium, and large by making snowmen out of modeling clay, and count snowballs and match them to numbers. It will be a busy week for our girls and boys!
On Monday, January 9th, our class will welcome Miss Amber Hynes to our class to begin her student teaching experience in our classroom. We are very excited to have her join us and look forward to all of the wonderful things she has planned for us.
Have a wonderful week!

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing winter break. I am happy to be back and look forward to the new year with the children. This week we will be beginning a unit on winter as well as reviewing our classroom rules and routines. I would like to thank everyone for all of the donations we received for our winter party prior to our holiday break. The boys and girls had a great time and we had so many yummy treats. I would also like to thank everyone for the very thoughtful gifts I received. Thank you so much!
As we start the new year, I would like to ask that each child bring in a complete change of winter clothes to keep at school. I will send home the other set of clothing when these are received so I have at least one set in the classroom at all times. Also, please remember to send your child to school each day with the following items: apple tag, folder, and book bag. Blankets for rest time should be sent to school on Monday and will be sent home on Friday to be laundered.
Please continue to help your child with the following skills at home for extra reinforcement: writing his/her first and last name, cutting on a line with scissors, capital and lowercase letter recognition, number identification (0-20), and shape identification. Practice, practice, practice!
Have a great week!