Dear families,
December already! Alfie, our Elf on the Shelf, made his appearance on Santa's shoulder on December 1 which the children were very excited about! December is such a wonderful month full of hope and good wishes, especially through children's eyes.
Last week we introduced the letter sound "Ee" like "egg" and the children helped create many words with S A T I P N C K E with magnetic letters. At another centre, they used clothes pins to put pom pom decorations on paper Christmas trees (great for fine motor skills!); sorted hundreds of beads into colours; made stick puppets for their "Oh the Places You'll Go" Balloon Art and Writing; and made a "Countdown to December 25" by patterning 25 beads on pipe cleaners. The children should move one bead over each day, and when all the beads are moved over, they ring the bell because Santa is coming!
We are also making an Advent Calendar of Kindness; each day the children share a new idea about how to be kind and we put it on our calendar. We will be learning about other December celebrations this month as well.
We continued our Dr. Seuss author story this week with "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Ble Fish" read by Caelan's grandfather who was visiting all the way from Australia! We also read "Green Eggs and Ham" again and the children listened for rhyming word families. The are learning to use the strategy of using their "Eagle Eye" to loo at the picture to help with meaning. They also learned the "Stretchy Snake" technique, which is to slow the word down by saying each sound, i.e. C-A-T... CAT.
Thank you Hannah and Alexandra for sharing your Dr. Seuss story books with us! After reading "Oh, The Places You'll Go," the children made rainbow balloons and they will wrote where they would like to go. Look for this soon on our hall bulletin board!
The children did a wonderful job singing Baby Beluga with Ms. McGee at the Sharing Assembly! Congratulations to Alexandra, Elea and James for receiving a certificate for Empathy. Well deserved!
The children completed their November Calendars and "This is Me is November," a copy of which will be sent home.
The children enjoyed listening to Cosmic Yoga this week, especially the one called, "Peace Out!" It is important for children to learn mindfulness and relaxation skills at an early age in order to help them as they grow. Look for other awesome Cosmic Yoga videos on YouTube!
That's the news for this week - see you tomorrow!
