It was another wacky weather week with lots of fun snowy games, shoveling, tag, sled rides, snow fights, plow trucks, and crazy castles.
Monday students were introduced to the colorful houses in the La Boca barrio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.  For art, they each selected a wooden block, drew windows and doors, then painted their block houses bright colors, just as they are painted in La Boca.

As Monday was a play date day, the students enjoyed their monthly trip to the library with Tammy.  They were excited to use play dough while there, along with their other usual library visit activities.
In preparation for Valentine’s Day, the children each decorated a brown paper bag for their friends to deposit Valentine’s cards into.  They glued paper hearts and pom-poms and stuck heart stickers all over them.  Some children also made Valentine cards for their friends and family members.
We began our visit to the continent of South America this week.  We read several books about South America and the Amazon River, and were excited to learn about which animals dwell there.  Last Friday afternoon some of the students helped to change the circle time spots from Asian countries in squares to South American animals in hexagons.  We have started to become familiar with coatimundis, anteaters, llamas, alpacas, caimans, piranhas, capybaras, anacondas, boa constrictors, and a multitude of other South American animals.
The students took a vote, and rather than a post office, market, or fire station, they chose to set up a rainforest in dramatic play.  Susan educated us about various flora of the rainforest, and she worked with the students to begin building liana vines and trees with smooth bark and large leaves.  They turned the animal crates from the airplane into boats for navigating the amazon river, and will continue to work throughout the month to create our very own Amazon rainforest.
As rainforests are named after the constant rains they experience, we learned the terms precipitation, evaporation, and condensation, and a song to help us remember what each one means.  We also learned about the three states of matter, using ice, water, and water vapor to observe the three states.

During Thursday Spanish Zeanny continued to practice the terms for la familia.  She read the story Mi Abuela Va Al Mercado, about a grandmother who travels the world and buys items from the various places she visits.  We sang a song about la familia using our fingers as the different family members.  Each of the children chose a house number for their casa that they have been working on, and stuck it on.
For Friday science, we examined some bird figures and discussed what we noticed about them, such as they have wings, they are covered in feathers, they have two feet, they have tails, they have beaks, and most (but not all) of them fly.  We listed our observations on our Animal Classification chart, then read About Birds and added that they lay eggs, and many of them build nests.  We then looked at some peacock feathers, goose feathers, and some nests, then used some feather quills to do some writing.