Post Office and Christmas Around the World

We are starting to learn about the post office and how to send packages as the Christmas Holiday approaches.  We'll open up a wrapping station where the children can choose their wrapping paper, bows, and ribbons and lots and lots of tape!  They can wrap up their presents and then take them to the post office to send them to their friends and family.


We'll also learn about other countries and how they celebrate Christmas!  It will be great fun!

Dates to Remember:

Thursday, December 8-Swimming

Saturday, December 10-Breakfast with Santa at Brooks-Yates

Tuesday, December 20-Santa Bob visits Brooks-Yates and we'll take pictures of your child with Santa.

Wednesday, December 21-Christmas Pinata in the morning and our Christmas Around the World party at 2:00. This is the last day of school and we resume school on Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

Handwriting without Tears

After the Thanksgiving break, I will send home a paper about the new handwriting system that we're using this year.  It's called Handwriting without Tears and you can get a preview of the tools that we're using by clicking here.


I am very excited about the program as it came very highly recommended by our Occupational Therapists since it's developmentally appropriate for preschoolers to use.  The part of the program that we're utilizing is called Get Set for School which is specially made for preschoolers.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

This week we'll be finishing up our Indian headdresses and necklaces.  We still have our tents set up in the play area for the children to pretend they are Indians.  We're also finishing up our Pumpkin Counting books. These books are made by the children and we'll send them home as soon as they're completed.  We hope that they will want to read their books often!


We only have two days of school this week.  On Monday, Josie is preparing cupcakes for our snack time and on Tuesday we'll be cooking French Toast in our classroom for snack time.


On Tuesday, the whole school, students and staff, will eat together at lunch time and we'll have our Thanksgiving dinner prepared by our kitchen staff and our wonderful bus drivers that come in to help.  The children have made special place mats for this occasion and we'll send them home that day.


We're looking forward to a great week this week and we want to wish you and your family a very Blessed Thanksgiving!

Native American Indians and Thanksgiving

     This week we'll start learning about Native American Indians and Thanksgiving.  We'll read about how the Indians lived, what they wore and how they lived.  We'll make some Indian crafts too like a headdress, a necklace, and we'll make a Thanksgiving place mat for  when the whole school eats a Thanksgiving dinner the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.


We'll also continue to observe our celery experiment where we put celery stalks in colored water to see how the water is drawn up into the stalk.  We planted our seeds last Thursday so we'll observe our first sprouts soon!  We planted sunflower, gourd, pumpkin, and corn seeds so we'll have a lot to observe!

Dates to Remember:

Swimming-Thursday, November 17

Last day of school before Thanksgiving and our school Thanksgiving lunch-Tuesday, November 22

November Plans

     We'll continue learning about pumpkins, apples, and farms for the first week of November.  We'll do our experiments this week with things that sink or float.  We'll make our predictions first and then test them out by putting the pumpkins, apples, and gourds in the water and then observing what they do.  We'll also plant our seeds this week and begin observing the changes from week to week.  We'll plant pumpkin, apple, gourd, and sunflower seeds and anything else that we can find in our classroom that has seeds.  We'll be eating some fruit this week and discuss the seeds and see if we can plant those as well.

Then we'll begin our study of Indians and Thanksgiving.  We'll read many books about them and see if we can come up with some questions that we want to learn about Indians.  Then we'll go to our library or the bookmobile and see if we can find out the answers.

Dates to Remember:

Bookmobile-Monday, November 7 and 28

Swimming-Thursday, November 17

Thanksgiving Vacation-Wednesday-Sunday, November 23-27