Happenings

We had a very sweet Tuesday morning. Banon decided to have a "party" and invite all her friends over for dinner. She set the table and prepared a delicious cake. Charlie drove around to pick up all the guests in his car he made out of stumps and blocks and also go by the store to pick up punch for the occasion. All the children lined up by the door and knocked, were greeted by Banon, and shown the way to the table where the meal was waiting for them. This play scenario was acted out for over 30 minutes!
Today we were very engrossed in playing Scrabble Junior. The children enjoyed finding colored letters and matching them to the letters on the board to form a variety of words.
When we sing the alphabet song, we sing the letter sounds as opposed to the names of the letters. In this way, the children are becoming familiar with the skills they will actually need to sound out the letters in the reading process. Just knowing the names of letters does not help with later reading ability. You could reinforce this at home as well by sometimes singing the letter sounds instead of the letter names.
One of our learning centers this week is Library Play. The children will take turns being a Librarian, checking out books to each other, and playing with the story props.
While playing library, the children will learn:
1) To develop their interest in a variety of books, magazines, and other printed materials
2) That stories can be in many forms including books, magazines, storytelling, flannel board stories, and puppet shows.
3) To enjoy reading books and retelling stories

Elias told us all about the exciting play he attended last night, called "Strega Nona". Thanks for sharing the book today! We all enjoyed this story about Strega Nona's magic pot that made pasta. But what happened when her assistant tried to use it to show off to the town while Strega Nona was away? This was a fun tale to imagine and act out what it must be like to have your whole house and town fill up with endless amounts of pasta!!

I highly encourage you to take your children to as many live performing arts events as possible. They are captivated and so enriched by the experience that brings to life so many of the stories they hear. Surrounding them with beautiful music and the best in theater is an important foundation for their lifelong love of learning and appreciation for one of the best ways to spend their time!

Snow, Hibernation, Rest, and A Starry Night

We have had a wonderful week despite the freezing temperatures!
Please dress your little one warmly and in plenty of layers. Wool undergarments and onesies are best to keep all areas of skin covered. The children all need good waterproof mittens, gloves, snow pants, and boots. We are also transitioning the classroom into a "no shoe" zone, so your help with this is greatly appreciated as well. Everyone needs sturdy slippers with good soles such as lined crocs or slipper socks that can be worn in the classroom. These should be immediately put on upon entering the room.
Our music time with Miss Casey was a lively experience again. She worked on teaching us the folk song titled "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" and tapping out the rhythm with our hands on the table. She included props for each of the items like a fly hanging from a string, a spider, bird, cat, cow, horse, etc. Then all the children were allowed to pick instruments from her box to try out and this was probably everyone's favorite part. Each child was also given a small jingle bell to take home!
The books we have shared together this week:

Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep by Jane Yolen
Brave Bitsy and the Bear by Angela McAllister
A Perfect Snowman by Preston McDaniels
Fireside Stories by Caitlin Matthews
First Snow by Emily McCully

New Parent Handbook

The new and revised parent handbook has been completed!
Please send me an email to threeredleaves@yahoo.com so that I have your current email address and I will attach a copy for you. If you would like a paper version, just let me know and I will print those out as well.
Thanks for your patience and have a wonderful weekend!

An especially fun day!!

I just had to write about our morning that was EXTRA fun and a little bit noisy...
Miss Casey came and shared her big snare drum with us. She showed all the parts of the drum and let each child have a turn with different drum sticks to experiment with the sounds they made. Ask your little one what they have in their ears.....they learned about eardrums too! Everyone had a fabulous time drumming and then we made our own drums out of recycled materials. Oatmeal boxes, milk jugs, coffee cans, and lots of other containers became drums. Then we opened them up and poured in all kinds of things like rice, beans, and pasta to see what kinds of sounds they made when we turned them into shakers. We practiced clapping and counting to different beats and we all took turns making up a beat for our friends to try to copy. Miss Casey was very impressed with the form and coordination of our group! It is apparent these little ones are no strangers to music, beats, and drumming! We are really looking forward to our time with Miss Casey now every Thursday morning. There will be an alternating theme of a music focus for two weeks and then an art and handwork focus for two weeks.
We also made some tasty treats for the backyard birds with peanut butter, pinecones, and cranberries. Thanks to Charlie and Finn's mom for sending the cranberries in for us!

Thursday

We had a great day today. We talked a lot about recycling and went to work cleaning up our yard and ended with a picnic to celebrate the warm weather! It was fun to lie on our backs and watch the clouds so swiftly moving across the sky and we wondered if we could jump up, grab onto a big cloud and take a ride with them! There was a lot of earnest work going on with shovels, scoopers, and buckets of all shapes and sizes. The children also enjoyed playing with the Tangoes tangram shapes as they constructed many pictures and we played the board game, Labrynth, where each person takes a turn building a maze to go through. This inspired the making of our own mazes outside to challenge each other!
We ate veggie burgers, pita chips, salad, and hummus and heard the story of The Moon Princess.....ask your little one if they remember the little girl who shared her jewels with the sky to help light up the darkness. We will hear it again next week and focus more on recycling in art, music, and activities.
A very Happy New Year to all of you!

A New Year, Recycling

Thank you all so much for your expressions of kindness and generosity over this past week. Your thoughtful and creative gifts have been so special and meaningful!
I hope your crystals are growing and that they will be a small and colorful reminder of how love grows in the hearts of these children when tended to with honor, care, and love!
This week we are talking about recycling.

Monday: Food scraps and leftovers. What can we do with these? It's good for our earth to try not to waste things. We will make recycled art!

Tuesday: Have you ever wondered where paper comes from? How can we make more trees? How can we reuse paper? Old paper can be turned into new paper. Today we will make our own paper!

Wednesday: This week we will celebrate New Year's Day. Do you know what year it will become?
We will make noisemakers!

Thursday: People can save their used paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal and recycle them into new things. We will sort recyclables today.

Friday: The new year is a great time to think about our daily routines and see if we would like to change anything. What things can we do each day to make our work easier? (lay our clothes out before bed, set the table before meals, clean up our mess right away,etc.)

This week we will be also making Potato Paper, recycled noisemakers, and finding lots of creative uses for old things!

Nature Walk Verse:

" You look around on your Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can."

Books we will share together:

Garbage and Recycling by Rosie Harlow and Sally Morgan
Why Should I Recycle? by Jen Green
Where Does the Garbage Go? by Paul Showers
Recycle Every Day! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
Recycle: A Handbook for Kids by Gail Gibbons
Eco Art by Laurie Carlson
The Wartville Wizard by Don Madden
Cecil's New Year's Eve Tail by Marie Fritz Perry
Re-Cycles by Michael Elsohn Ross
A Box Can Be Many Things by Dana Meachen Rau
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat
All the Year Round Story that will be told this week - adapted from Emilie Poulsson

Garbage

Pick up garbage, and throw it in the bin!
Push it down, and stomp it in!
Carry the cans to the street
for the garbage trucks to eat.
When the truck comes roaring by,
workers lift the cans up high.
Garbage falls into the back.
Crush it, mash it, smash it flat!
Set the cans down with a thump.
Now drive that garbage to the dump!

Down at the Dump
-sung to Down by the Station

Down at the dump early in the morning,
See the dump trucks standing in a row.
See them dump the garbage
In a great big pile.
Dump, dump, dump, dump,
Watch them go.

Pretty soon our dumps will all be full,
We had better figure out something to do.
We could all recycle
Some of our garbage,
Recycle, recycle,
Watch us go.

This week's reflection: Recycling
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
-Gaylord Nelson, former governor of Wisconsin, co-founder of Earth Day

"Making wise choices for our planet now, even though the result may not directly benefit you, is the ultimate way to send love back to the life force that sustains and provides for you. The future of our earth is in your hands. What can you do today to make it a beautiful place for future generations?"
-Little Acorn Learning

This week's schedule

Hello wonderful families!
I just wanted to remind you all that there will be no school this week from Wednesday through Friday. Enjoy the time with your precious loved ones and have a beautiful Christmas!!