Gray winter skies brought snow and wind.  The children shoveled off ice patches for boot skating, created paths for sledding and driving, climbed up and slid down the hill on sleds and bottoms, filled buckets with snow to feed dinosaurs and build snow castles, and cleared off the tables and benches.Monday students read about animal tracks, then created paint pictures by dipping various items in paint, then rolling them around on their papers to make different types of colorful “tracks.”We trekked to the Post Office on Tuesday for our tour with Tim the Post Man.  He took us to the mail room where we saw the loading dock where mail is delivered to the Post Office from big trucks and loaded back onto mail trucks to be delivered to homes and business by the postal carriers.  We saw postal workers sorting and preparing mail for delivery and saw where the slots are for some of the students’ mail. We got to see the back of the post office (PO) boxes, the counter where stamps are purchased and packages are mailed, and the post master’s office. We even had our passport photo taken with the special passport camera. After our tour with Tim, we purchased stamps and adhered them to our letters to our families then sent them through the slot to be mailed home.  Most letters should have arrived by now.  Postman Tim gave each child a coloring book, and everyone was so excited to get their book and color in it.  First, everyone wrote thank you letters to him to show our gratitude for giving us a tour and the thoughtful gift.We celebrated a fourth birthday with blueberry and apple strudel bites, a favorite snack of the birthday boy.  The children enjoyed this new treat after helping the newest four year old count the years as he orbited the sun with the earth and singing Happy Birthday.  Happy 4th birthday!Our short Wednesday passed quickly.  We shared and decided on a new Dramatic Play theme.  We will be creating a theater for performing plays, dances, musical numbers, and puppet shows.  The children had many suggestions for needed materials and what we could create for the area.Thursday was Valentine’s Day, and the excitement was palpable.  The children took turns distributing their Valentine cards & goodies into the bags, then all waited anxiously to go home and scope out their special Valentines.  Children played beanbag toss on the alphabet letters, sight word search and color, word search, roll the dice and color the hearts, valentine making, and letter writing.  Two typewriters were brought out, and the children took turns typing up letters on the typewriters.  We played “Valentine Says (Simon Says)” and those attentive kids were hard to trick!Friday students read the book How to Be a Building and pretended to be columns, walls, and roofs of buildings, pushing down into the ground with their feet.  The children then experimented with their own engineering project.  They were tasked with building the tallest, sturdiest structure possible with toothpicks, using mini marshmallows, apple pieces, cranberries, and/or chickpeas.  Most children went directly to marshmallows, because MARSHMALLOWS!  But they quickly discovered that this was not a good choice for a sturdy and stable structure.  Most of the children recognized that using apples or cranberries worked best, as they are much more solid and able to support and hold the structures sturdy and straight.