Merry Christmas!

Well, we are here to our last week of school for the year 2015.  It has gone so fast and it is crazy to think that when we come back after Christmas break it will be 2016!!  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 will becoming home this week as well as presents that your children made for you.    

Our Advent Chapel Service will be held this Thursday… If your child does not attend school on Thursday, I hope you will still join us for this time together in our church sanctuary.  This service will last no longer than 30 minutes and I encourage you to attend with your child if you can.  We will be walking to the chapel at 8:05.  If you are attending with your child we would love for you to walk with us to the church.  If you could please let me know if you will be attending before Thursday that would be great.  We will be leaving at 8:05 if you arrive after this time you will have to meet us in Zion's Church Sanctuary.  You may invite whomever you wish.  We will be worshipping on the floor, down by the alter.  Mrs. Haun will have copies of the service to share with you all.  Pastor Rouland, Arianne Sturr(Our DCE Intern), and Cheryl Haun will be leading the service.  After the service is over we will walk back to our classroom and those who are staying for school on Thursday will come back for a fun filled last day of school and the rest of my friends will go home with mom and dad.  

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!

Free Choice 

Today we continued to listen to a variety of Christmas music during our Free Choice Time….Mrs. Haun has made it possible and is moving small mountains in our program and was able to purchase a 40 Inch Flat Screen Television for our classroom.  We will be able to listen to music and view different things through out the school year with this awesome addition to our classroom.  Whats even better is we are able to play our music to the television a slide show will run during the day of what the kiddos have been up to in the classroom kind of like the blog.  Please be sure and check it out and Thank you Mrs. Haun for all her hard work and efforts to make our program better than it already is!  

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.  

Puzzles

We had fun doing a variety of puzzles this morning.

Decorating the Christmas Tree! 

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. 

Ella was excited that she had drawn a picture of Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus on her card for her Mom and Dad.  

Magnet Board

Each month we have something different on our Magnet Board.  Some months it goes with something we are learning and talking about and other months has to do with just exposure to numbers and letters. This month we have a nativity magnet set up there.  It is great to see my friends use the board to tell the Christmas Story no matter their age or numbers of days they come they are all learning something from this activity and are taking away something.  

Imaginative Play 

I am starting to see more interactive play in the classroom rather than parallel play.  I am seeing friends working and playing together.  It is so neat to see the transitions happening in our classroom.  Play is such an important part of our Early Childhood Program and it is highly encouraged in our classroom and the Preschool classrooms here at Zion.  

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.  

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.  

More Imaginative Play 

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.

Morning Meeting 

Happy Wednesday! 

The rest of our Morning Meeting went on as usual (the pictures are after our snack pictures)

Transition and Snack

We continued to decorate our Christmas tree with ornaments with our name on it.  Your child's ornament will come home this week on their last day of school.  This is a great way for your child to work on learning their name and color identification.  

Today our calendar card was of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus 

Mr. Weather Frog is ready for some very strange weather here in the STL

Review of the studies for the month of December 

Our pattern for the month of December 

Letter O

Our morning book was about "The Christmas Story"

Our prayer for the month of December 

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 another book about the Christmas Story (sorry I forgot to snap a picture of it)

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.  

Building with Blocks

We have really been having a lot of fun building with these blocks this month.  Today we were seeing how high we could make our towers go and were working on counting the number of blocks we had and the color of blocks we used.  This activity was a great way to work on our counting skills, problem solving skills, color identification and working sometimes as a team.  

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.  

Christmas Stamping

Today we got out the Christmas stamps and had fun making a stamp collage of different things we see and hear during the Christmas holiday season.  As we worked on this activity we were working on increasing our vocabulary, picture identification and using our fine motor skills as we had to pick up stamps. 

  

Merry Christmas!  

We had a good day in our classroom our clean up skills were a little on the lacking side today so I don't have any pictures from our end of the day because we spent so much time trying to clean up after center time that we ran out of time for a final story and music and movement for the day.  After lunch we ended our day with our Good Bye song.  I hope to see many of you tomorrow morning for our Christmas Chapel and for those of you that I will not see tomorrow.  I wish you many wonderful blessings on the Christmas Season and look forward to seeing you in January!