Warm temperatures and rain brought some crazy conditions this week. From ice covered roads to giant puddles of mud, we had quite an adventure. The children enjoyed indoor recess on Tuesday, then played in the mud created by the heavy rains for the rest of the week. They had a fantastic time scooping it, pouring it, painting with it, jumping in it, and sitting in it. We took buckets of water to rinse off the worst of it, and the rain helped as well. They sure had a blast being mud monsters!
For Monday art we read about the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. We took turns being the sun and the earth orbiting around it. We then used pastels to draw winter night time scenes on black paper. Throughout the week children continued to create and add to our art gallery. On Tuesday we read the story The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson, and then had fun making our own strands of paper dolls.
We were happy to welcome Cindy Wade, a recent college graduate and older sister to a current Sunnybrook student, who has generously volunteered to be the third teacher for the month while we are in the hiring process. The children have enjoyed working and chatting with her. Thank you, Cindy!
We learned some new songs for our winter performance, and recalled those introduced last week. We practiced them over and over, acting some of them out and discussing why we would be singing the selected songs. The children are excited for the winter performance, when all the families are invited to join us for the children’s presentation and a potluck dinner on Friday, December 16th at 5PM.
We introduced the quote that we have displayed in our classroom, “Every mistake is an opportunity to learn” and discussed what that means. One of the students shared that a mistake is something that you didn’t mean to do. Many children shared examples of mistakes they have made and what they learned from them and how they can do things differently another time. This is such an important and valuable concept that we hope to help all the children internalize. Despite some students being quite adamant that they do not ever make mistakes, we hope that when they eventually do, they will be able to reflect on them and determine what lessons they can learn from those mistakes.
During Spanish this week Zeanny introduced the parts of the body with the song, “Cabeza, hombros, rodillas y dos pies” (Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes) and read the story De la cabeza a los pies (From Head to Toe) by Eric Carle. The children then took turns adding body parts to create a crazy looking monstruo (monster). Zeanny gave each of the children a piece of paper to draw una monstruo, and many children came up with some crazy monsters of their own.
For Friday science we read the stories Balancing Act by Ellen Stoll Walsh and Just a Little Bit by Ann Tompert, then we learned how to use a scale. The children selected items to fill their buckets, then added or removed items to balance their scales. It is a tricky concept, and many of them understood that if one end was lower it was heavier, so items either needed to be taken out of that bucket or added to the other bucket to make them even.
