December

We have continued our Gingerbread Unit this week with more stories.  We have read lots of different versions of "The Gingerbread Man" and are having fun comparing each of them.  Ask your child to tell you some of the characters in the different stories we have read.   

Graphing with Gingerbread Cookies

We had a great time graphing what part of the gingerbread cookie we ate first.  Ask your child to explain how we did this.  Mrs. Slegers class also did this activity.  The results of our class is on the left side.  We thought it was interesting that she had exactly the same number of children who ate the head of the gingerbread man first!

   We wrote about our favorite part of the Gingerbread story.  We put all of our stories together to make a book.  Mrs. Critchell is so proud of the progress we are making in writing!  YEAH!!

We used the flannel board to help us recall details of the story.  Then we worked on sequencing the story with Mrs. H.

  Everyone made their own gingerbread man with Mrs. Bergman's help. 

We made our own muffins in little paper cups and cooked them in an electric skillet.  Our room smelled really yummy!  Almost everyone liked our muffins, too.   

We all had fun sharing our favorite part of making our Gingerbread people.  We are using all of them to decorate. 

We made snowmen and Mrs. Slegers class made the reindeers.

We have been reading about Hanukkah and other winter celebrations.  Then we made our own Menorahs using handprints for the candles.

Singing our months of the year song together.  

    Each month we make a self portrait for our Memory books.  

Mr. C is working on his special snowman.    

       We would like to thank Miss Tonja for all of her help in making our snowmen doorstops.  We hope that everyone enjoys their snowman for many years!

VIP of the Week                                                                                 

 Our VIP of the week is Miss G.  We really liked seeing all of her pictures and hearing about her family.  She likes to draw and wishes she had a German Shepherd dog.   Her favorite color is pink, and she loves McDonald's chicken nuggets!  We look forward to seeing other things that she has to share.

  Reading

We played a new phonics game that helps us in learning the alphabet letter names and sounds.  We have also started working on the "blends."  These are two letters that are commonly used in our language such as bl, fl, gl, sc, sp, st, etc.  This is something that everyone can work on at home while reading with your child.  Ask your child to tell you about our how we play the new Fire truck game.

 Writing

Mrs. Slegers helped us with writing in our journals.  We are making great improvements, too!

                                                                               December Reindeer Blocks 

Our "Reindeer Instructions" books were lots of fun to make.  Everyone loved the reindeer pointer to help us learn to track our words as we read.  Please continue to practice tracking the words as your read with your child at home.

We looked for periods and exclamation marks.     

We found the title of the story. 

    We are learning to graph information for math. 

VIP of the Week

  We learned lots of interesting things about Mr. S this week when we interviewed him for his book.  We know that his favorite book is "The Balloon Farm."  He brought it to school to share with us, too.  We know that his favorite color is green, he likes winter and his favorite holiday is Easter!  We loved seeing all of his pictures of his family and his dog, K.C. 

                                                                   He loves to swing!

  Making Gingerbread Houses

A big thank you goes to our "Gingerbread House" crew.  We would like to also thank everyone for sending in all of the wonderful goodies to decorate our houses.  They were the best ever, and everyone had so much fun decorating them!

Our November Award Winners

MATH

   We are learning to tell which numbers are more and which are less.  This is something you might work on at home when writing the numbers as homework. 

    Snowman Fun    

        Making Santa cards for our family.      

Mrs. Slegers played reading and math games with us.  We loved the prizes, too!

 Mrs. Critchell's daughter, Miss Katie, came to help us make patterned necklaces with red, white and green beads.   

      We had a great party.

There was a special delivery bag that arrived at school.  It had "Magic Reindeer Food," special reindeer bags for us to make, and a golden spoon! 

     We made the bags.    

Everyone put three scoops of "Magic Reindeer Food" in their bag with the golden spoon.

     We are all set to help Santa feed his reindeers!

     We played Holiday Bingo with Mrs. Bergman with special prizes.    

We dipped pretzels and added lots of sprinkles with Miss Tonja.  We hope everyone enjoys their special treat.

 Fun Photos

1.  Please remember to put your child's name in his/her jackets, sweatshirts and sweaters.  We have a collection of unclaimed jackets each day in the rack. 

2.  We would like to thank everyone for all of the help that you have provided during this busy season.  It is greatly appreciated, and we couldn't do it without you.  THANKS!

2.  Please continue to read each night for 20 minutes for our RAH program.  When each child returns their RAH log at the first of each month, they receive a special "Book Worm" button and a chance to win free books.  In order to receive the monthly RAH button, there is a minimum of 400 minutes for the month. 

3.  We would like to encourage everyone to contribute to the Food Bank drive.  Any canned or non- perishable items are greatly appreciated.  The collection barrels are located around the campus.

4.  The following items have been posted on our "Wish List" for the month of December.  If you have any of these things that you could share, we would greatly appreciate it.

                 1.  Holiday or winter sparkly stickers  

                 2.  Small 2-3 inch paint brushes

                 3.  Shaving cream --any kind!