Sample Post: Creating a Winter Wonderland (Week 13)

Hi everyone!

This was a fun week of playing with and learning about dinosaurs, learning about the letter H, reviewing our sight words, and changing the decorations in our room to reflect the wintry weather. We also spent quite a bit of time working on a surprise for the parents that you'll all see when it's done :)

Switching from our fall scene to snowflakes. Having
the kids help with the decorating reinforces them learning
about the seasonal changes, works on their fine motor
skills, gives them an opportunity to practice their
creativity, and gives them ownership of their classroom. 

Kids will naturally make activities more challenging for
themselves as they master previous skills. Having already mastered
the ability to manipulate play-doh with her hands and scissors, S
moves on to doing the same skills with putty, which is much tougher. 

Sight word review

T, P, and S built a "butterfly house" outside.

Watching the ABCMouse H song

Our H word list. You'll notice the kids are
starting to invent words that start with
the letter we're working on. This is a wonderful
thing as they are experimenting with how words
sound and appear. While creating the lists, I'm
now asking the kids to help me spell them
out, giving them an opportunity to practice their
phonetic spelling.

The kids have been asking for more dry erase pages to "play" with.
We created some this week to practice matching upper and lowercase
letters and number sight words.

S and O decide to cook for the dinosaurs. You'll
notice that they understand the difference between herbivores
and carnivores and can identify which dinosaur is which
based on the food they give each dinosaur. They asked to use my
camera to take pictures of their dinosaurs eating after
being inspired by last week's book: What the Dinosaurs Did at School.

O and S had an interesting discussion about
whether or not eggs were "meat". They
eventually concluded that since eggs
come from a chicken, it must be meat
and not a vegetable. 

O informed me that these two dinosaurs were
having a fight over the lettuce. The loser of
the fight gets to keep the lettuce. The winner
gets to eat the other dinosaur since it's a carnivore.

New sensory bottle! This one is colored
rice with alphabet beads inside to find. 

Experimenting with using chalk on embossed paper.

S built a device to measure head sizes!

O builds a scene where firefighters have to put out fires.
Pretend play is essential for developing social skills,
story-telling skills, and giving them practice using their
 gross and fine motor muscles. 

Morning share time!

Reading "Dot" from the BOB book series.

Working on our surprise for the parents. No peeking! ;)

Books we highlighted this week:





Extension activities:

• When reading with your kids, pause before finishing the sentence and point to the last word of the sentence. See if they'll fill in the blank. You'll be surprised at how many words they'll get correct based on picture clues, initial word sounds, and/or rhyming patterns. 
• If you decorate your house for the season, chat with your kids about why you're decorating. Is it for tradition? Is it for your family's religious beliefs? Is it because you like the aesthetics? All of the above? Are there any decorating tasks they can help with? Some of my personal easy favorites are window clings, items that hang from inside or outside trees, and art work taped to walls or the fridge. Including your kids on this process creates memories that can last a lifetime and helps to strengthen the family bond.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Friday, Dec 14 and Thursday, Dec 20: Pajama Days! Come to school wearing your comfiest pajamas :)
• NO SCHOOL Friday, Dec 21- Jan 6 for winter break. School starts again on Monday, Jan 7th.