Arctic Animals

We talked about animals that live in Alaska and the Northern Lights this week. We read the books Mama, Do You Love Me? about an Inuit Mother and child as well as Baby Beluga and Alaska A,B,C's.  We also watched a few videos of the northern lights.  Here is one of the videos we watched:Northern lights video

During activity time we used watercolors and salt to create our own version of the Northern Lights.  We added an indoor hopscotch rug to our classroom. Gigi was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  Her Mom came in on Thursday and read us a super cool book called Press Here by Herve Tullet.  Ask your kids what happened when they pressed the dots in the story...it had all of us in giggles!! Then we played a game where we threw a colored dice, drew a matching color card, and acted out what it said to do. Some of the ideas were twirl around, march in place, do a happy dance, etc. Gigi sent in delicious pink frosted cookies so we could celebrate her 3 1/2  year old birthday!! Thanks Gigi for helping make our week extra special!!

Our new hopscotch rug.  Mrs. Chyko taught us how to play the game using bean bags!

Celebrating Gigi's birthday!

What a yummy pink treat with sprinkles!

Gigi and her mom reading us Press Here. 

Snowmen

With the snow we got early in the week, we had lots of fun talking about snowmen this week!  We read several books on this topic including The Snowman, Snow Balls, and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow!  We also watched, move and sang to some snowman songs on our class ipad. We played some new movement games including The Freeze and Snowman, Snowman Where's Your Nose.  Mrs. Chyko played a bean bag toss game with us.
‘

What beautiful snowmen!

The kids really enjoyed making these, they spent a lot of time working on them!

After snack, the kids read books or work with magnet letters or flannel board pieces.

Our sand table has become a snow tub!  One of the new favorite activities for January!

The winter snowstorms the kids made last week at art center.

 "Put your right hand in..."Mrs. Jenkins had her son come in and help with music this week.
Thanks for coming in, Ben, the kids had so much fun singing with you!! 

Winter

It was so good to be back at school...the kids were so excited to see their friends!   The first day back we had show and tell during circle time which prompted the kids to share some stories about what they did over break. We  talked about winter this week and read several books about winter including Tacky the Penguin and The Wild Toboggan Ride.  We also learned a rhyme about mittens. (Thumbs in the thumb place, fingers all together, this is the way we dress for mitten weather!!)

At the art center we used white paint on black paper to create a snowstorm.  We used lots of different things to put the white paint on the paper including textured stamps, race cars, and porcupine rings!  When the kids were done painting we sprinkled glitter on top to make our picture glisten, just like the snow!!

We had music and learned a song about the months of the year. We worked on how to hold a crayon using a pincer grip and practiced tracing a snowflake to help us practice  holding a crayon.

Demonstrating how to hold a crayon and trace over dotted lines.

Our "snow" painting!