Merry Christmas!
Christmas Break is now upon us and what a great couple of months we have had. I am excited to see what the rest of the school year has in store for us when we return. We had a very busy day in our classroom today. We did some glittering, reviewing our studies of the triangle, the color green, the number 5 and learning about the letter O. We also were busy hearing and reviewing the Christmas Story that we have started to really get to know. We will continue our journey of the Christmas Story when we return to school in January. We talked about Christmas and continued to increase our vocabulary with Christmas words new and old. A couple of reminders are below:
Christmas Break begins on Friday, December 18 at 12:00 and the school campus will be closed until school begins again on Monday, January 04, 2016.
Christmas Presents from Mrs. Wegener and myself to our little friends came home today as well as presents your children made for you.
Preparations for the next school year are underway here at Zion. Over the weeks after Christmas Break you will be hearing a lot of what we have to offer for your little one in terms of education. Our Parents Day Out Program is being re-designed so be on the look out for information concerning the 2016-2017 school year to be heading your way. If you have questions about Zion I would be happy to answer them for you or questions about what would be best for your child to next year I would be happy to discuss options with you. Zion is an awesome place for your child to learn, grow and hear the word of God. We have a wonderful Early Childhood Staff who are some of the best out there. My three children have or are currently going through the Early Childhood Program here at Zion and I can not say enough about great and wonderful it is.
Our early childhood parents help to purchase $910 in gift cards; our door offering the Early Childhood Advent Service was $851.50; we will be spending the Thrivent seed money of $250 plus $100 on toys or actual gift items. Our total comes to $2111.50 for Friends of Kids with Cancer. Thank you for embracing our service project. It means so much to the families of Drew Albritton and Glenn Markway. We cannot change the events of the past, but we can help others face the future in the Name of Jesus :) .
Enjoy reading and viewing pictures from our day!
We started our day with our Special Advent service that we held in Zion's Church Sanctuary. Pastor Rouland started our service for us and the remainder of our service was led by our Early Childhood Director Cheryl Haun. Arianne Sthur our DCE intern closed our chapel in an echo prayer. Thank you to all the parents who took time out of their busy schedules to join us for our Chapel service. We had a great time hearing the Christmas Story and singing songs. We really enjoyed ringing our special jingle bells and singing Jingle Bells before we left to return back to our class.
Free Time & Centers
When we returned from our Chapel service we got busy with our centers and playing. We listened to a wide variety of Christmas music and had a wonderful time playing as you will see in some of the pictures below!
MAKING A CHRISTMAS CARD
Today our friends picked out a Christmas Picture and practiced gluing their picture on some green paper and then decorating the back of the paper. These special cards will becoming home with your child's special gift they made for you.
SPECIAL GIFT FOR MOM AND DAD!
Today we got in touch with our sensory side as we painted our foot today for a special gift that came home today for you all to cherish in the years to come and to look back on this great time in your child's life of when they were so little. When they say time goes by in a blink of an eye it does
LETTER O
This week we worked on the letter O. Today we worked in our Alphabet Books on the letter O. When working in this book we are hearing the sound the letter makes and hearing different words that start with the letter we are studying. This is all exposure to help your child take the first leaps into preschool and beyond.
Candy Cane Patterning
Today we used a red ink pad and our finger to decorate the red parts of the candy cane to make a red and white candy cane. When we were finished we got to use some Green glitter to make the bow on our candy cane sparkle! This was a great activity to work on our sensory skills, fine motor skills and patterning skills
Coloring a Nativity Picture
Today with Mrs. Wegener we colored a picture of the Christmas Story and talked about it as well. We used our crayons to help us work on our pencil grip and pre-writing skills.
Imaginative Play
We did a lot of play today. Most of my friends had done a lot of the centers earlier in the week because of our Chapel Service today. Sometimes play is good too. We had a great time as you will see from a few pictures below.
Reading was on some of our agendas and Mrs. Wegener was happy to read away!
Yep, this is what happens in our classroom. We learn hard and play even harder! Now we just really have to work on our clean up skills. We have had a really hard time with that task, we love to play but then don't want to clean up. We had lots of talks about cleaning up this past week and how it is important for us to clean up after we make the mess.
Morning Meeting
Happy Thursday!
The rest of our Morning Meeting went on as usual (the pictures are after our snack pictures)
Transition and Snack
We decorated our Christmas tree with ornaments with our name on it one last time. Your child's ornament came home today. This is a great way for your child to work on learning their name and color identification.
Calendar today had the three wise men on it and we will be talking about them when we come back from Christmas break.
BRR!!! it is cold outside today so we bundled up Mr. Weather Frog
Last day for our December Pattern.
Our review of the number 5 the shape of a triangle and the color green!
We studied the letter O this week
We read one Santa book this month and this was it…Careful Santa was a great way to help us remember to listen to our moms and dads!
Our prayer for the month of December
Snack Time!
Jesus Time
Today we talked again about the Christmas Story and what happen on that one Spectacular Night!
Circle Time
We did not go outside today or to the commons we had a lot going on and so we moved right onto circle time So during Circle time we read a book about getting ready for Christmas with Llama Llama and we used our jingle bells from our chapel service to ring during the book and then we had fun singing Jingle Bells a couple of times.
Our flannel board story for the month has been about 5 Yummy Gingerbread Men. We did a follow up center about the 5 Yummy Gingerbread Men today.
Center Time
More Christmas music was played during this time as we worked on centers and playing with our friends.
5 Yummy Gingerbread
We had to cut 5 Gingerbread Men out and then glue them onto a plate. Once they were cut out we told the flannel board story and glued our gingerbread on our plate. We did a great job with this activity. Some friends are still needing help using the scissors and that is ok we are in the exposure phase and everyone is working and learning at their own pace.
CHRISTMAS VOCABULARY
Today with Mrs. Horn we were given a variety of different Christmas pictures we had to identify the picture and then glue it on our green paper. Some of the pictures were pictures of Baby Jesus, Mary Joseph, Star, Angel, Christmas Lights, Wreath, Christmas Tree, Presents, Stockings and Santa Claus. This helped us with identification as well as working on increasing our vocabulary and language skills.
Music and Movement
We had a great time dancing and singing to lots of different songs. We had quiet the workout during our Music and movement time.
At the end of our music and movement time we read a book that helped us tell the story of the birth of Jesus.
Transition and Lunch Time
Good-bye friends we will see you all in January!
What a great way to end 2015 together. Our day was a little different but we did great with the break in routine and we had fun enjoying our time together. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Blessings on a wonderful New Year. I look forward to seeing you all in January.
