Winter is nearly upon us and we have been studying “Winter Wonderlands” this week and we will continue into next week as well! We have had such a great time participating in science experiments such as predicting which ice cube will melt the quickest (the one that was placed outside in the cold rain, the one that was left in our warm classroom or the one that we place warm air on by using a blow dryer.) We have also touched some familiar classroom items that may remind us of snow: salt, flour, sugar, corn starch, and baking soda. Which one is the roughest texture, which is the smoothest? Which one reminds us the most of snow?

Reading the book “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?” has been a great experience! We have had several extension activities from this such as creating our own classroom edition of the book. Each child had the opportunity to draw a picture of an animal and tell Miss Sue and Miss Christy all about it. We then were able to add words to the pages and describe the noises that each of these animals was making. The children are having a great time revisiting our classroom book during choice time and quiet reading time each day! We also created polar bear faces using our very own puffy paint mixture of shaving cream and glue. What a wonderful texture to work with! The children were able to practice their cutting skills by cutting out noses, mouths, eyes, and ears for their polar bears.

We have just completed our patterning assessments, name writing assessments and are finishing our cutting assessments. Looking ahead to December we will be practicing our comparing skills and measuring in math. Now that the children are comfortable with journaling we will be devoting more time toward guiding them to draw pictures from events in their own lives. We have been doing a great job drawing our pictures and also sounding out initial sounds. Some of our friends are sounding out entire words! We are very proud of all of our students for all their hard work!

December is filled with families sharing a special Holiday tradition, and we want YOU to share yours with our class. Be sure to check out our sign up sheet outside our door!! Friday, December 16th is an all school pajama day for our annual Polar Express day at school! The children will all take a ride on our polar express, listen to the book, have “hot” chocolate milk and listen for the magical ringing of bells!