Wow, what a week!  The weather was perfect for snowmen, snow forts, and sledding.  The children had a fabulous time making enormous snowballs, then chopping them down with the shovels.  They also began construction on a couple of igloos – it was a lot of work!

On Tuesday the star of the week brought in a mother bunny and her five babies.  He shared the story of bringing them into the house to revive them with a hair dryer when they got too cold.  Everyone was so excited to hold them and pat them, and did a good job wearing them out for their late morning nap!  During circle our star read his book about himself and we learned that he helps his grammy in the garden, he has two cats named Romeo and Juliet, and he wants to work with his dad when he grows up.  He showed us all of his tools in his tool bag and shared his favorite story, Brother Bear.

For music we took out the parachute and played a treasure find game.  Each student had a turn to dive under the parachute and find a treasure that started with the sound /f/, /r/, or /p/, and place it in the treasure box.  We also learned the songs “Skidamarink,” and “You Are My Sunshine” in honor of Valentine’s Day.

At the art table the students worked on decorating their valentine mailbox bags and making valentines for their friends and family members.  Students also had a chance to peel the paper off of broken crayons, then use them to make their very own heart shaped crayon by filling a mold with the colors they chose  and melting it in the oven.

Tuesday afternoon students asked to make a snake in honor of Chinese New Year.  They rolled out a large piece of paper and promptly got busy creating.  It is quite a snake!

 

On Wednesday morning everyone got busy mixing up sugar cookies.  Each student had a turn adding ingredients to the bowl and mixing, mixing, mixing, mixing, mixing (it took A LOT of mixing)!  On Thursday morning, everyone got to decorate a few of the heart shaped cookies to take home or eat at school.  There were some beautiful creations!

Valentine’s day was so exciting!  The children loved delivering their valentines to their friend’s Valentine’s bags and could not wait to see all the great valentine’s that they received.  All of the yummy snacks disappeared quickly.  Thank you to everyone who brought something in to share!

During Spanish we continued to learn about the rain forest and the animals that live there.  The children enjoyed making up a story about the Bosque Pluvial (rainforest) animals and arbols (trees) with flannel board pictures.  We learned that banano, higo (fig), and mango trees grow in the Bosque Pluvial. On Valentine’s Day, the animals played hide and seek behind colored corizones (hearts), and the children had to guess where they were hiding.

Friday students enjoyed dancing to world music and finding the countries on the map where the music was made.  Gerrie joined us to read My Friend is Sad, one of the Mo Willems’ Gerrald and Piggie stories – some of our current favorites!  For science we put out a fire with carbon dioxide created by the reaction between sodium bicarbonate and vinegar.  We learned that fire needs oxygen, just like we do.  As it was such a wonderfully warm winter day, we also spent a lot of time outside enjoying the weather!

Next week we will begin to learn about the Iditarod.