The winter chill has settled in, leaving a layer of ice to traverse. The shovels, trucks, and sleds have been moving and hauling chunks of hard snow and ice and loads of fluffy newly fallen snow all around.
The art project for the week is a gift for our families. The children have been strengthening their finger skills and coordination while creating ornaments to hang in their homes.
We celebrated a fourth birthday with chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. The birthday girl excitedly passed out the cookies, then answered the birthday questions about what season and month she was born. As we recited the seasons and counted the years, she orbited the candle sun with the globe in her hands before being serenaded with the birthday song.
Along with the cold, December brings an opportunity to gather as a Sunnybrook community while the children perform some songs and poems. They spend group times throughout the month practicing the words, where to stand, how to listen and sing together, when to recite lines, how to enter the stage, when to ring bells, and where and when to move about the stage. This all takes lots of focus and control, which the children have been working hard to maintain. Putting on a performance puts into practice lots of skills the Sunnybrook students work on, and we love to observe how they work together.
Rose taught us some new signs this week after we reviewed all 45 of the signs we have already learned. This week we learned help, school, outside, water, and more.
We took out the big drum and did an introduction to drumming a pattern. Everyone used their listening skills to follow along and master the pattern before we moved on to creating vibrations for bouncing felt balls. We started slowly as rain then went faster and faster until we made thunder, sending the balls flying up and all around.
Friday students continued their use of scales. Previously they worked on balancing the scale by adding and removing items from each end. This week the children each selected an animal or two and placed it in the end. They then gradually added weights until the scale was balanced, and recorded how many of each weight was used to balance the scale.
