Yay for snow!  We had so much fun sledding, building snowmen, making snowballs, constructing snow castles, plowing paths, shoveling, and making snow angels.
For art this week the children made special ornament Christmas gifts for their families with buttons.  It is fun to see them all lined up together to appreciate how different they all are.
While younger children from the community visited for a play date on Monday morning, the students enjoyed a visit to the library with Tammy.  They had fun with trains, duplos, puppets, and the large vehicles.
Dramatic play was very busy this week.  As the holidays approach, the children have been productively expending their excitement and energy playing doctor, veterinarian, transformers, and various other roles.
Our circle times have been fully dedicated to practicing all the songs that we will be singing at the Winter Performance.  We even went up to practice on the stage in the sanctuary where we will be performing.  That was very exciting, and a nice change of venue.
For our last Thursday Spanish class in this session Zeanny stayed all morning to do a special cooking activity with us.  In la caja magica we found la tazon (bowl), cuchara (spoon), bolsa (plastic bag), Maria galletas (cookies) , leche condensada (condensed milk), and mantequilla (butter).  Zeanny told us a story about the first time le cajetas were made and the dance that was performed around the pot.  We watched a video of the dance while taking turns washing hands, then all helped to smash the Maria galletas, mix in le leche condensada and mantequilla.  Then everyone had a turn scooping the mix into cookie balls and eating them up!
For Friday science we explored citrus fruit.  We discussed what we already know about citrus fruit (they are orange, yellow, or green, some have juice, and they grow on trees).  We wondered, what do we want to know (do they all have juice, do they all have flavor, how are they the same)?  We then examined, peeled, tasted and discussed the six citrus fruits and answered our questions.  We observed that they do all have juice and flavor.  They are the same in several ways – they hall have thick peels that we can remove with our fingers and are divided into sections of pulp surrounded by membranes so we can also divide them with our fingers, unlike apples and pears, which would require a knife.  We discovered that lemons and limes are very sour, grapefruit are sweet, sour, and bitter, and clementines, oranges, and mandarins are all sweet.  Each of the children then recorded their names next to their favorite of the six citrus fruits we taste tested.