Merry Christmas!

Here are a few pictures from this past week. Enjoy!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas. See you in 2008!

Halei's Birthday & Santa Visits

Happy Birthday Halei! Halei celebrated her 5th birthday yesterday. We were treated to cupcakes made by Halei, herself! What a treat!Santa and Mrs. Claus made an appearance today. Some of the children even got to ride on Santa's ATV!

We have one more week of ornament making. This has been a fun activity for all of us. I love seeing the creations that the children come up with. Each ornament has been unique just like each child.

We will find out next week what God wants for Christmas when we open boxes 5-7. Also, our hot cocoa party will begin at 1:00 on Wednesday. Please send your child with a mug that day and bring one of your own if you plan to join us. See you next week!

P.S. Andrew is a big brother now. Rachel Cole was born on Wednesday evening. Andrew seemed to like the baby but was most excited about spending the night with Grandaddy!

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

We had another great day! I enjoyed having a little more time to work with the children this week. The children especially enjoyed playing in the woods this week. We were able to stay out longer than usual. Did they tell you what we saw while we were together? We saw a few snowflakes fall! We have lots of birthdays this month to celebrate. Andrew is turning "3" next week so Ms. Laura brought in a cookie cake for us to share. It was delicious! I've posted a picture of Andrew in the birthday crown. The birthday child always looks forward to wearing the crown. Also, each child gets a paper candle to blow out while the birthday child gets to blow out the number of candles on his/her cake (as you can see in the posted picture). This is fun and I usually turn it into a math lesson for the children. Did you see the beautiful ornaments that we made? I know that the children enjoyed creating such wonderful works of art. We have two more weeks before our Christmas break so the children will make at least two more ornaments, if not more. We read a Christmas book about the very first Christmas. We had some wonderful discussions about the book. We also learned a new finger play rhyme about the first Christmas. I'll try to print those and send them home so that you can work on them as a family. We did not get to view the Christmas movie this past week due to problems with the audio. I told the class that I would work on getting it fixed so that we can see the movie next week. Also, Santa and Mrs. Claus will be making a visit next Wednesday. They will be arriving around 1:45 so plan on staying around on Wednesday if you are interested in seeing them. See you next week!

We missed Michaela today. We prayed for her and hope that she and her sister feel better soon. We finished our apple unit today and we completed several fun math activities. After the children enjoyed "apple rolling art" we got a jump start on our ornament making activities. The children are looking forward to making lots of beautiful ornaments for our Christmas trees. Next week we will meet from 9:30-3:00. I hope that you all can get some Christmas shopping done! See you next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, I have a lot to be thankful for today. I just found my camera that I have prayed for over a week to find! I felt lost this week without it because I was not able to take pictures of the children or our field trip. I do think that God cares about the things that we consider "small". Now, I'll be able to take pictures this Thanksgiving and I'll be able to post pictures when we get back after Thanksgiving. Speaking of being thankful, thank you all for coming out to the farmer's market for our field trip. I had a wonderful time. It was nice to be able to enjoy a meal together. I was thinking ahead to next year (which I should not do) and it made me sad to think about the fact that we won't all be together. Your children are so dear to my heart. I feel blessed each Wednesday when I get to be with them. They are a lot of fun and while they are busy learning and exploring, they teach me so much about life! So, this Thanksgiving, I am adding you all to my "thankful for" list. Last week, we got to discuss things that we were thankful for. I enjoyed helping the children write down what they were thankful for. I hope that you were also blessed as your read the leaves on the "thankful tree". We talked more about apples and we made little books about Johnny Appleseed. We also read a short story about him. We'll spend one more day learning about apples and then we will move on to our Christmas unit. If you have pictures of the field trip, please send them to me and I will post them online. Again, I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Apples

This past week, we spent most of the day talking and learning about apples. We tasted three varieties of apples (red, green, and yellow ones). The children used their math skills to count and graph our favorites on two apple graphs. We also learned that there is a star inside of the apple which holds the seeds. We all enjoyed the "Apple Star" flannel board story. Ask your child and see if she can retell the story. There was a star that was looking for a house with no windows, no doors, and a little brown chimney. At the end of the story, the star found an apple. We then sliced an apple in half and found the star. We are learning new finger plays also. The finger plays that we work on encourage fine motor development. They are fun for the children because they involve repetition, rhyme, and movement. Some of our finger plays include numbers and math. See, we are learning new skills all of the time! Thanks for sharing your delightful children with me. I am enjoying watching them learn and grow. Oh, no pictures this week because I forgot my camera but I will post a picture of our apple graph. See you on Wednesday.

Hayride

Comments about the Hayride:

Syan: "I saw Rooney going beside me. I liked the hayride."

Michaela: "I liked finding leaves on the hayride."

Halei: "I liked when we were picking the leaves and picking the nuts (acorns) and I liked when we were riding on the hayride."

Allyson: "I liked when we were singing and picking leaves. And I liked when we were sitting on the cushions."