Valentine Valentine~~

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

This week we will be celebrating and learning about the holiday Valentine’s Day.  This holiday can be tricky for little ones so we will focus our attention on loving one another and how to be kind and nice to our friends.  Our Bible Story this week is about Jesus Loves the Little Children.  We continued to learn about the number 7, the color pink, and the shape of the heart.  Our letter for the week is the letter U.  We will be nearing the end of the alphabet soon.  When we do so we will spend the rest of the year reviewing the letters and working recognizing the letters in our first name.  We had fun today passing out valentines to our friends and placing them in the valentine box that each friend got to decorate.  It was very very cold outside today so we stayed in our classroom and had a great time playing with our friends. 

VALENTINE BOXES

Each child will be able to decorate a valentine box this week.  On your child’s last day of school for the week they will bring home their valentines they have received through out the week and their box.  Their box is theirs to keep.  This is the first year my class has made their own boxes and we have really enjoyed this project and they loved passing out valentines to all their friends. 

WHERE IS YOUR CHILD ATTENDING SCHOOL NEXT YEAR?

I hope that your answer is they will be attending at Zion!  If you have not registered for ELP (formerly PDO) as of today I encourage you to do so in the next few weeks.  Classes are beginning to fill up and would want you all to be sure you had a spot secure in our program.  If you have friends or family members looking for a place to send their child please feel free to tell them about our wonderful school and all it has to offer.  They can call the main office to set up a tour.  If you are in a moms’ group or play groups please pass along our schools name and tell them about your experience at Zion.  I would be more than happy to answer questions about our program and school if any of them have questions.  They can email me at hhorn@zionharvester.org.    We at Zion are so thankful for all God has granted us and we hope to continue to see our school grow so we may continue to teach little ones the love of Jesus. 

Enjoy reading and viewing the pictures from our great day in our classroom.  If you do have questions or concerns please do not hesitate to talk to me or email me hhorn@zionharvester.org I would be happy to talk to you.  Blessings to you all this evening and stay warm!

Free Choice/Centers

Today we listened to some classical music played on the piano.  It seems to help us move about the classroom with a quieter and more calm nature when we have light music playing in the background.  Some of us had a hard time today sharing with our friends and making sure we were being kind to each other.  All of this is typical behavior for this age group and is something we work on and talk about all year long.  

Letter U 

Today we learned about the letter U in our alphabet books.  Some of the words we heard were Umbrella, Unicorn, Unicycle, Under and Up.  

Imaginative Play 

If is fun to see how much our friends are not only growing physically but to watch how their "play " has evolved from the beginning of the school year.  I am seeing more interactive play and not as much parallel play from some of our friends.  

Pink Play Dough

We enjoyed playing with the pink play dough again today.  We worked on rolling out the dough and making different heart shape designs with the cookie cutters.  

Decorating a Big Heart 

Today we got to use the bingo daubers to decorate a big heart to replace our big snowflakes that are currently on the wall.  Over the course of the week we will be taking down snowflakes and hanging up our hearts that we make.  Using the bingo daubers helps us with our fine motor skills and pre writing skills as we are holding a writing tool and working to make it make a mark on the paper.  Our heart turned out beautiful!  

Working Together 

It is always neat to observe to friends working together to complete something that works for the both of them.  Isaiah and Carson worked together to link these pieces together to make a track for their race cars to drive on.  

Drew got in on the action as well as he linked some of the pieces together to add to their long track.  

We have shape magnets on our magnet board for this month.  So we had fun placing them on the board and learning and recognizing the different shapes and colors we had up there.  Many of the students were able to identify all the shapes and most of the colors.  It is neat to see how much they are learning this year.  

Water Color Painting

Today we had the opportunity to paint with watercolors a picture of different conversation hearts.  This is another activity that allows to work on our pre-writing skills as we are holding a writing tool and we are also able to work on staying in a small space and also able to work on letter recognition.  

Friends working together to complete and alphabet puzzle.  Sometimes we need to use team work to get the job done.  

Morning Meeting 

Happy Tuesday!

We counted two orange squares on our calendar so far for the month of February. 

Mr. Weather Frog was dressed nice and warm from the blustery and cold day we are having today. 

Our studies for the month of February.  Ask your child if they can count to seven can they identify the shape of a heart?  Where is their heart at?

Our PINK Board this board is designed for us to work on learning the color for the month as well as increase our vocabulary and verbal skills.  Ask your child if they can identify any or all of the pictures on the board and what color they are.  If they are able to do that see if they know where they may see these objects or what types of sounds they make or where they wear some of these items.  

Patter for the month of February is Heart and Cupcake.  After we figure out the pattern for the day we practice counting to 10!  This group is doing a great job counting to 10 without me helping them.  When we are done we always say God Gave Us 10 fingers and 10 toes!!

Each day during morning meeting we work on learning the alphabet song and then talk about the letter we are learning for the week.  We always have a picture of that letter and an object to go with it and we try and listen for other words that begin with this letter.  

Our morning meeting book was about Biscuit the dog's Valentines Day and how he celebrated it.  

Transition

Today we had to listen for a our name and what the first letter of our name starts with.  We then had to place our heart on our board.  This activity allows us to work on our listening skills, following directions, waiting turns and letter and name identification. 

Snack Time 

Remember please make sure your child's name is labeled on their snack and cup!  We had a lot of friends today that did not have things labeled which makes it difficult to figure out what belongs to which friend. 

Jesus Time 

Today we talked about how Jesus loves the Children and if we love God and accept him like a little child if you want to enter heaven.  We sang a new song that we will continue to work on the rest of the year, Jesus Loves the Little Children.  We also continued to review the Christmas Story and all that has happened after that glorious night when Jesus was born.  My friends are doing an awesome job at telling "THE STORY"

Music and Movement 

We had fun doing some new songs, The Freeze Dance and Put your Finger in the air.  Both required us to listen and follow the directions.

Circle Time 

We spent our time together reading a book about Llama Llama getting ready for Valentines Day and how much he loved his Mamma! 

Our flannel board story this month is about Six Valentines and their friends.  Not only are we being introduced to the beginning concept of counting 1-6 and adding and subtracting, but we are also hearing rhyming words.  

Matching Valentines! 

We had fun playing a Valentine Matching Game at the end of our circle time.  Today each friend was given a valentine and when their name was called they came up to the front of the carpet and held their valentine up and the friend with the matching valentine came up to show the match!  

Free Choice/Centers

We continued to listen to classical music as we moved about the classroom working on various activities and centers 

Decorating our Valentine Box

Each friend was given a box wrapped in red or pink paper.  Their named was glued to the front and they were given free reign of all the stickers to decorate their box with. This allowed us to be creative, work on our fine motor skills with peeling the stickers placing them on the box.  Not to mention the verbal side of this project as they were able to discuss the different stickers they were putting on their box and what they were doing.  We have some pretty decorated boxes and I am so pleased with how much they enjoyed doing this project! 

Imaginative Play 

Working on learning our Shapes on the Magnet Board and in the shape box! 

Stamping and Sorting 

Today we were given a piece of paper that was divided in half one side was purple and one side was red.  We had to stamp seven purple hearts on the purple side and seven red valentine mice on the red side.  We were able to work on our counting skills and our sorting skills as well as work on recognizing the shape of heart and the number seven 

Building and Learning 

Painting a Red Heart 

Today some of my friends had the opportunity to paint red hearts that we will begin to put on our wall to replace our snowflakes.  

Passing Out Valentines

After our boxes were beautifully decorated we worked with Mrs. Wegener to "deliver" our valentines to our friends.  This gave us the opportunity to work on our sorting skills as well as our fine motor skills as we had to put our valentines into the slits of the valentine boxes.  

Circle Time 

We read a story about When it starts to snow and what different animals and people do when it starts to snow. A very appropriate book for us today as we woke up this morning to a little more than what we had thought was going to happen.   

Transistion 

After we prayed for lunch we had to listen for our names to be called to come take off our name of the name board.  Some of us did a really great job recognizing our names right away!  

We ended our day with lunch and our Goodbye Song.  I hope everyone stays warm this evening and I look forward to seeing you all later in the week. Remember that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.  Zion will be holding services at 3:30 and 7:00 with a light dinner in between the services.