Merry Christmas

Christmas is coming so quickly this year. This week we enjoyed making candy cane striped

cookies, lots of "C" activities and Christmas songs, and we especially loved decorating our little Christmas trees. Have a great Christmas, and we'll see you back in January!

"R" is for Reindeer

Some of the activities we did this week were fun large motor skills games. We played Reindeer Ring Toss (cute reindeer root beer bottles given to me a few years ago by a preschool parent), and Rhythm Sticks. Of course we always do our regular routine too: story time, letter practice, singing, etc.

Deck the Halls

We are having a great time getting ready for Christmas. The kids are busy playing Santa, decorating the room, and of course learning lots.

I am Thankful

We talked about the reason for Thanksgiving and read a book about many things that make us happy or thankful. The kids then shared the things that they are thankful for or that make them feel happy. (Some of them "borrowed" lines from the book)

Caitlin - my eyes to help me see
Emma - toes that are ticklish
Savannah - for my house and for driving in the car
Garrett - the whole world
Sarah - my house
Sam - my bed
Lawson - Mom and Dad
Felicity - my bed

Ridge - my family
Landon - Mom & Dad
Mallory - for Dad bringing us chocolate
Mikinley - laughing with friends, and watching movies
Ashley - summer days and winter days and trees and animal and lots more
Rachel - hot chocolate on rainy days
Carter - playing with my friend
Oliver - Mom & Dad and hot chocolate

Miss Pam - I am thankful for the amazing children I get to teach and for the love of my family

Thanksgiving

We have been busy, busy, busy. We made Indian necklaces and headbands, and chose our own Indian names.



We played a fun bowling game building and knocking over the letter "I"



We made delicious turkey cookies, and much, much more.

Teddy Bear Week

A BEARY fun week. Here's a picture of our Teddy Bear Picnic.

Teddy Bear Poems

It seems to happen quite often this year that we seem to run out of time near the end of the day. We didn't have time today to do our final circle time/large motor activities including the teddy bear bounce and the teddy bear dance - we were having so much fun doing our teddy bear picnic. I told the kids I would post the words to the dance and maybe they could do the dance at home. You might want to do the bear toss at home too - just get a small blanket or bath towel and put the bear in the middle, hold the corners with your child and toss the bear in the air and try to catch it again. Here are two songs.

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground.
Teddy bear, dance on your toes.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch your nose.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, climb the stairs.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn out the light.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, say good night.

TEDDY BEAR DANCE (to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle, little star)
Pick your bear up off the ground,
Then go dancing all around.
Hold him high and hold him low.
Twirl him fast, and twirl him slow.
Round and round and round you go.
Now hug him tight, don't let him go.

Happy Halloween

We had SPOOKtacular Halloween. We made yummy witches brew, played Halloween Bingo, reviewed our letters, played stick the wart on the witch, and a halloween bean bag toss game. Hope you had a fun and safe Halloween. Thanks for the fun extra treats a few of you sent in!

Hats and Halloween

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, so we'll do two weeks at once.

On HAT DAY we read the story "Hats for Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina, about a peddler who carries all the the caps he is selling on top of his head; they are stolen by monkeys, and he has to figure out how to get them back. We took turns stacking our hats on each other's heads.

We've been doing a lot of fun Halloween songs and games, and of course working on our letters - H and G. We've also done 3 more pages for the color books. We did cutting and folding to make a BLACK spider page. We did stencilling to make our WHITE ghost page. Then we did fingerpainting mixing yellow and red to make ORANGE for a pumpkin page.

A is for Apple and Autumn

Thanks for remembering to send the apples and autumn leaves this week. We sorted the apples, peeled them, tasted them, and made them into apple sauce.

We also sorted the beautiful autums leaves, and made hand trees with torn paper. (This was a challenging small motor activity for some of the kids.)

We also finished two more pages for our color book.

Special Thanks!

I just wanted to say a great big thank you to Mikinley's mom for bringing her pet turtle, Shelly to our Friday class! I was amazed at her long toes/claws. What a fun experience.

We also had a very fun and unique snack in our Thursday class - Thanks Garrett's mom. We had fish crackers and fishing poles (pretzel sticks). We caught the fish with peanut butter bait. YUM

Fun with Frogs and Turtles

Here are some of the frog and turtle activities we did this week