Dear families,
We finished our last folktale this week - The Gingerbread Man - and started our Christmas and Hannukah activities to get into the spirit of the holidays! On Monday we made gingerbread cookies, baked them, and frosted them when they had cooled down. The children also helped me write instructions about "How to Make Gingerbread Cookies" which I will send home. I've also sent a recipe home if you would like to make them yourselves! Our painting centre only had two colours - brown and white - so the kids could paint gingerbread men. We retold the story, compared the traditional story to others we read (The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Girl), and wrote down adjectives to describe the gingerbread man. The SK homework for this weekend is to write down 6 adjectives themselves and to draw a picture. Since this was the last folktale we read, we also talked about what all the folktales we read had in common (a trick, often 3 characters that are the same, a wolf or a fox, etc.). With our Book Buddies this week we read and coloured a Gingerbread Man story booklet and a Sharing Cookies pattern booklet.
We also did some holiday activities, which we will continue next week. The children did a mitten match, and a dot-to-dot 1-20 reindeer. Our Science Centre has become a cinnamon- and peppermint-scented North Pole, and we also have a Holiday Card writing Centre complete with a mailbox. I love that the children are writing cards to their friends and family! In our building centres, the kids built "gingerbread houses" and in art we all made Elves out of wallpaper. These small motor activities are very important for young children to practise regularly. They also squeezed various colours of glitter glue on a large letters (of their name i.e. P for Peter) and spread the glue around. When it dries they can hang it on their tree at home. The ornaments I cherish most on my Christmas tree are the ones my children made when they were little. The children also had fun in dramatic play, playing with my Christmas puppets. The children learned more about Hanukkah from Miss Nisker and made clay dreidels. We also finished making the special gifts for mom and dad that went home in a white paper bag. I hope it is a keepsake you cherish for years to come.
A special Thank You to Dylan's grandmother who read "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" and "The Day the Crayons Quit." Christopher's mom helped out in the Computer Lab, and Tessa's, Alexandra's and Martel's moms helped out with Pizza Lunch on Friday. Thank you so much for your time and energy!
The upcoming week we'll write our Elves' "To Do" list and we'll do some Santa patterning and beginning and ending sounds. We'll read lots of holiday books and will sing songs at the piano. On Tuesday it's our last Sharing Assembly of the year (your children can wear festive hats if you have them), and on Thursday morning it's our Holiday Craft Party. On Thursday afternoon I will be with the Seeds of Hope group at the Kingsway Retirement Home. There will be a supply teacher to assist the children.
Please keep your Christmas Cards rather than recycling them, and send the picture halves to class after the holidays. We'll use them next year to write new cards to our friends!
That's the news for this week - there is supposed to be snow, finally, on Thursday!
Mrs. Tyndall :)
