The week leading up to Christmas Break

There was lots to do during the week leading up to our Christmas Break. While making some ornaments for out tree, we were sure to work those tiny fine motor muscles that are oh, so important.

We also created our shape angels. This activity reinforced our knowledge of different shapes and our following direction skills.

Our Swedish Dala horses showed us that different places have different types of ornaments and traditions for their trees. Decorating the horses also made us work our finger muscles.

Many of us were sure to wear our Christmas finery to school!!!!

And here is a quick look at our classroom tree that the children took great pride in decorating.

I hope all of you had the Merriest of Christmases. Love to all!

THESE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF DECEMBER

December has greeted us without the storms that seemed to have plague the area in the past few months. The sun has been shining and we have been taking advantage of our time on the playground. It's the best place for us to work our large muscle groups and socialize with our friends. Good times for sure!

Meanwhile, back in the classroom, we have all kinds of new things to work with. We can decorate Christmas trees over and over again until we get them just right. We have nativity scenes to play with as we learn all about the Christmas story and the true meaning of Christmas. What a great time of year.

We have also been working on creating festive ornaments for our own trees at home. For now, they are being used to make our tree in the classroom beautiful.

It certainly is the busiest and the most fun time of the year!

GETTING READY FOR THANKSGIVING!

As you can see, we were super busy during the days leading up to Thanksgiving Break.

Here we are working on our Thanksgiving centerpieces.  Working our little finger muscles is hard work, but oh, so necessary. While you are home with your child, be sure to have them work with small things - strong finger muscles are needed for future writing skills.

We also were able to work on our fine motor skills when we made our Story of Thanksgiving bracelets. This project also had us working on our listening and following directions skills. 

In the end, we all had our bracelets finished and knew the story of the first Thanksgiving - or at least, most of it!

We spent several days in the Sanctuary practicing for our program. We had to be patient, sometimes quiet, and sometimes loud (when we were singing). It was a lot of work for sure, but we needed to get ready to perform for all of you!

Finally, we were ready to dress up as Pilgrims. Don't we look awesome?

Here we are all lined up and ready to walk to the stage. We worked hard getting ready for Thanksgiving!

FALL IS UPON US!

 After a crazy October, Halloween finally came and with it all the excitement only a young child can muster.

Our classroom was full of princesses, super heroes, bumble bees, and others. We spent the morning trick-or-treating at Summer Breeze and singing our Halloween songs to the residents.

With the arrival of November, it was back to work. We've been focusing on the signs of fall that are all around us. We are also back to working those tiny muscles in our fingers, as this is important in developing proper grip and pre-writing skills.

We discovered a new way to paint by using a salad spinner. We created some awesome designs that we used to make the turkeys on the big hall bull

Finally, in making our November place mats, we practiced our facial recognition skills and our ability to place facial features in the correct place on a face. Here we used our hand prints to create owls.