Thursday, December 19, 2013

Reminder - Holiday Performance

REMINDER...

Our Holiday Performance will be this Friday, December 20th at 3:30 pm in the Blue Room. We have been working very hard to learn our holiday songs, and would love to share them with all of our family and friends.

Please let me know if your child can join if being at school on Fridays isn't part of their normal weekly schedule.

Hope to see you all there.

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina



J's 5th Birthday and Letter W

We started last week celebrating our friend J's 5th Birthday!


He was so excited about his "I am 5" shirt! J is our second friend in our class to turn 5 and the first to lose a tooth!


Thank you to J and his mom for bringing cupcakes to share.


Making a wish!


Time to dig in! Happy Birthday J we are so lucky to have you as a part of our class. Your laugh is amazing and you are such a great friend to everyone. I love to watch you build Legos and blocks and I'm always in awe of what you create.


During gymnastics we "W"alked on the balance beams for "W" week.


Collaging our letter "W" with "W"orms, "W"agons, and "W"inter scenes. During circle time we sung a song called "Willoughby Walloughby", which is a funny song about rhyming names. The kids thought it was HILARIOUS!


E and J drawing in their journals.


It is always a good challenge and so neat to see our class using awesome team work while making a puzzle.


Our Christmas tree needed more so we decided to add lights.


Pom poms of course. The girls realized the Pom poms stuck better to the trunk than the branches. Our beautiful tree slightly resembles Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. :)


Making spaghetti, glue, glitter ornaments.


S making a house for her penguin out of many different things: feathers, pom poms, marker caps, little blocks, and jewels.


Making "W"affles! E using the whisk to stir in the eggs.


Enjoying our yummy "W"affles outside. Everyone loved the waffles so much that they were eating them faster than we could hand them out.


Yay it's "W"inter time! In the Blue Room we have been talking a lot about the snow and so I decided to bring in my snowboard, boots, helmet, mittens, and goggles to share. We went over to the Purple Room to show them as well.


Teaching L how to strap his boot in the binding.


K and P packing their bag -- ready to hit the slopes!


Here they go!! Knees bent and arms out for balance.


J's legs could barely reach both boots.


One boot for J, one boot for E, and a free ride for I.


You should always wear a helmet for safety, even if it is backwards! ;) S wearing my mittens too.

It was really special for me to share one of my favorite things to do with my class. I didn't really realize how big I am compared to my class until my kiddos could slide their feet in my boots while they were tight and my boots went all the way up to their knees. I pushed them back and forth on the carpet and we even pretended to go off of jumps. It was a very fun Friday!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Letter "D" and Its starting to feel like Winter

Hello Blue Room Families,

We will be having a Holiday Performance Friday, December 20th at 3:30 pm. The children in both the Blue Room and Purple Room have been working really hard to learn some new songs and we would love to invite family and friends to join us. We are making shirts at school to wear for the Holiday Performance. We are very excited and hope that you all can make it!


We have had pine cones on our nature library table for quite some time, and this past week, in honor of "D" week and the holidays, we painted and "D"ecorated them. A lot of the children remarked how the pine cones looked like little Christmas trees.


It was fun to see the children mix a piece of nature with our art supplies to create their own masterpiece!


During group time we talked about wreaths and looked up some different pictures of wreaths and what they were made of. The children found one that they really liked, which inspired us to make our own. The children laid out our branches by size, ordering them big, medium, and small, and we started to glue our biggest branches together first. We shared a lot of laughs as J, K, and S would give me itty bitty pieces of branches and tell me to glue them as if they were big enough. Your children are developing very good senses of humor!


Starting to "D"ecorate our wreath. Getting creative! Be sure to check out our finished product hanging on the "D"oor.


Going on a stick hunt to build ourselves a Christmas tree.


Our class painted these cardboard tubes a couple weeks ago and we decided to make our our Christmas tree out of them. Our class found some bigs sticks so we had to "D"rill bigger holes.


A working hard to add a stick to our tree for a branch.


E, E, and P worked hard to add more branches to our tree. P stated that, "we could just go buy one at Home Depot." :)


As we were trying to build our Christmas tree it fell over quite a few times, so we decided that we needed to build a stand for it. What better way than with a handy dandy tissue box. J decorated it and later that evening we glued our tree in and filled the stand with sand.


In PreK, Teacher Karen talked all about Hanukkah and played Dreidel which is a four sided spinning top. Each of the four sides of the dreidel has a different letter from the Hebrew alphabet. The four different letters stood for nothing, half, all, and put in. Teacher Karen brought gold coins for us to play with. We really enjoyed playing, and we realized that spinning a top was much harder than we thought.


We have started to read some winter and holiday books, many of which have really neat winter landscapes. So in our books, we took a look at the mountains, snow falling on the trees, the snowmen, etc, and we decided to depict a winter landscape of our own using white chalk, black paper, and some winter stickers.


The pictures were really creative with regard to what our friends envisioned the snow to be like.


We talked all about letter "D" this week. We see the letter "D" everyday for the month of "D"ecember. Our friend S brought a "D"rum for sharing. He showed us a couple of different ways to hold the drum and play it.


A brought a remote control "D"og. The children were really excited to see her walk the little "D"oggy.


Teacher Romina brought a "D"og to school for sharing too. It was a poodle and it would shake its head and wag its tail. The children asked the poodle many questions to see if the poodle would shake its head back and forth, indicating no, or would the poodle wag its tail, indicating yes. Many great questions came about, such as: Do you like me? Do you want to play with me? Do you like Tangled? and many more. The poodle shook her head no for so many things but one that surprised us was when J asked, "do you like Star Wars?" And the poodle wagged its tail. We all laughed!


P is taking a turn at stirring our hot chocolate.


Yay Pajama Day! Our class chose to "D"rink their hot (warm) chocolate outside on the "D"irt hill. It was soo yummy!


Science time. Friday afternoon we set up a science experiment and talked about "D"issolving. We tried to predict if a piece of corn starch packaging foam would dissolve faster in warm water or in cold water.


The children noticed that the corn starch packaging foam dissolved noticeably faster in the warm water.


Teacher Karen showed us what corn starched looked like. As the packaging dissolved the children noticed that the water got bubbly and kinda sticky.

We had a very fun week and have been really excited about winter and the holidays. Please dress your children in warm clothes as we will continue to play outside throughout the winter. When it starts to rain please bring rain boots, rain jackets, and an umbrella. Thanks for all your support.

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina



Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving, Letter "T", and C's Last Day

Happy Thanksgiving Blue Room Family and Friends,

I just want to say, "T"HANK YOU all for your support in and out of the classroom. I really appreciate the feedback in the comments section at the bottom of our blogs, and please feel free to approach me or email me if you ever have any questions or suggestions about anything. I have been enjoying working with your children everyday and I just feel so blessed to be part of the Creative Minds Family!


Parents - "T"hank you for taking the time to sit down to work with your children on their "T"urkeys and to talk about what your child is "T"hankful for. You're children were so excited and proud to talk about the materials and colors they used to decorate their "T"urkey projects. They came out beautiful!


There were so many "T"hings to use to collage our letter "T": T-Rex, "T"eddy bears, "T"ractors, "T"urtles, "T"rucks, "T"ennis balls, "T"ennis rackets, and many more "T"hings. "T"wo of our friends from last year K and M came to visit and we really enjoyed have kindergarteners to set an awesome example for our preschoolers and to teach us some cool new things.


Once a month we have been drawing a picture of ourselves and we will be saving them to see how our drawings change over the course of the year. It is already so neat to see the progression.


During gymnastics I looked up to see 15 slithering snakes coming towards me. I acted very scared and the children got a kick out of it and started to go faster. I Love moments like these.


"T"hank you very much to all of our families who contributed to our "T"hanksgiving feast. The children were so excited to eat all the yummy foods, drink juice, and enjoy dessert too. I'm so grateful for your constant support!


Thank you to Teacher Romina, C's mom, A's mom, and I's mom. I really appreciated your help serving everyone and helping our "T"hanksgiving lunch run smoothly.


Everyone "T"ogether is always the best! My favorite way to celebrate a meal - family style!


Smiles!


Cheese!


Always so silly!


Yummy!


We are soo "T"HANKFUL!!!


Trying to take an organized picture is always an event in and of itself. :) Happy "T"hanksgiving!


As November ends we are sad to say goodbye to one of our friends, C. You will be greatly missed in many ways. I know I have only known you for a few months but I feel so blessed for the time we shared. I am excited that I was there to be part of your 4th Birthday. I will miss your humor! Thank you for always being a great friend! And I know I can speak for all of your friends and all the teachers at Creative Minds when I say that you and your family will be missed! Love you and please come visit us soon! Have fun at your new school and just be the awesome little guy that I know you are!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina