We are jumping into Gingerbread people and reading all about the adventures! We also celebrated another birthday with Sebastian turning 5!
Literacy:
This week we continued our writing about Pete the Cat and our books we are working on to create a story with a beginning, middle and end, as well as illustrate. We are working on finding missing letters each day in our morning meeting as we read the morning message and help sound out the words. The children love understanding patterns of stories as we read our RAZ kids books, as it helps them decode the words they don't know and memorize the sight words that might not be easily decoded.
Our Gingerbread stories gave us many opportunities to sequence the events in the stories and the characters in the order in which they appear. It's a great exercise for reading comprehension!
The children have been using inventive spelling to answer, "What would you do to make the Grinch grin?". Most have said they would give him cookies! Sanaya said she would say, "I love you!". They are practicing their finger spacing after words and working on the scale of their lower and upper case letters as they write.
Fine Motor:
We created and decorated Gingerbread people. They are hanging out on our door if you want to take a look! We completed our self portraits for December using colored pencils. The children are adding many details we didn't see at the beginning of the year!
We created pictures of The Snowy Day after reading Ezra Jack Keats book. The children used puffy paint to decorated their snowy scenes and even made footprints in the snow, with their feet pointing out and in, just like in the story. We talked about our snowy day adventures and all of the different prints in the snow different people and animals make as patter across clean snow.
We are coloring many pictures of gingerbread houses and painting lots in the afternoon. We have also been making candy canes with clay and spiral lollipops.
Math & Science:
We have been rolling dice and coloring gingerbread people after we count the dice number. It's a fun game to play and reinforces the one to one correspondence, along with practice writing our numbers.
We have been playing a winter matching game to locate the correct habitat for animals who either migrate or hibernate.
Social Emotional:
We are all talking about and role playing scenarios when talking to friends, using Dr. Gladers three simple steps. "I don't like it when you do take my legos, and I wish you wouldn't do that...."....then wait for that person to tell you they either can or can't comply with your request. Then either say that that's okay with you or ask for help if needed. It's easier to explain in age appropriate words when you practice with peers. They are all really making great progress in learning different ways to negotiate and communicate with friends.
Have a great week!
Ms. Massey
