Two days of rain kept us in for some ribbon dancing and indoor activities. It made our already icy yard even more slick and tricky to traverse. We collected chunks of ice, rode bikes over the slippery surface, chopped down the snowballs, sailed in our boat sleds in search of treasure, and hauled loads of ice and snow in the dump trucks.
Monday students read some stories about winter at night then used oil pastels to create winter night time scenes on black paper.
The art table was coated in feathers all week as the children created their goose headbands for the winter performance. They glued real feathers and paper feathers on the goose wings, then stood still while their heads were measured for the bands.
The children have continued to work hard rehearsing for the performance. Each day the large group times have been dedicated to practices, and small groups have been taking time from each morning work time to memorize their lines and movements.
During sign language with Rose we learned the signs for stand, sit, jump, stop, and wait.
We read about the arrival of winter and the shortest day of the year. We talked about holidays that are celebrated all over the world around the winter solstice, and how lights are featured during these celebrations when the nights are long and days are short.
We read the story How the Grinch Stole Christmas and talked about kindness and giving. We discussed what the Grinch discovered about Christmas – that it is about spending time with the people you care about, and that it comes even without presents (though there isn’t really a Grinch who will sneak in and take them). We recalled the stone soup stories and how it felt good to the villagers when they shared and spent time together. We showed the children the blue box on the cubbies where food items can be donated to others who may be in need and let them know that they could bring in an item or two if they would like.
Friday students continued measuring, but moved from measuring weight with a scale, to measuring length with units. We read a silly story called How Long is a Foot? about a king who wanted to have a bed made for the Queen’s birthday, so he measured how long it should be with his feet, but the apprentice who made the bed had much smaller feet, so the bed was too small! We used unifix cubes to measure various items in the room. After finding and measuring objects, the children decided to measure the room by creating a giant unifix rattlesnake.
