I cannot believe it is already winter break and 2019 will be here when the students come back to school! The students have come so far in the 3 months they have been in school! They have learned the routine of our classroom and the school in general. They have improved their social skills and have made lots of friends in our classroom. They also have learned how to handle conflicts and are starting to discuss any problems with their classmates and to stick up for themselves and their friends. They also have greatly improved their fine motor skills and are writing their names very well!
The last few months we have worked hard on different patterning activities, number recognition, counting skills, learning letters and their sounds, shape knowledge, and their speech and language skills. If you check out the photo album you’ll see all of the fun and educational activities that they have been doing each week. The photo album has over 700 pictures for you to enjoy so far!
We also have been focusing on student’s interests in order to guide our activities. The students were very interested in the puppets in our classroom so we brought in paper bags and various art materials and allowed the children to create their very own puppet to take home and use. Also, after reading The Gingerbread Man, we realized that they were in love with the book and couldn’t get enough of it! We took that interest and read 5 different variations of The Gingerbread Man, drew about them in their journals, and then did several small group activities centered around a gingerbread man. The first was decorating/coloring their own cut out gingerbread man in any way they wished and then they practiced their fine-motor skills by lacing yarn through holes around the outside of the gingerbread man. Lacing is a great way for children to use their eye-hand coordination and utilize those small muscles in their hands. The next activity was actually making gingerbread cookies. The children help measure out ingredients, then helped to mix up the cookie dough, and then helped to use the cookie cutter to create the cookies. After I baked the cookies and they cooled down, the children were able to decorate their cookie with frosting and colored sugar if they wished. They then took one bite of their cookie. After taking one bite the children determined if they first took a bite of a leg, an arm, or the head. They then helped chart the results by placing their name tag on the chart under what they took a bite of first. Charting and then reading the results of the chart is a great math activity and allowed them to do some data analysis. Afterwards the children were able to enjoy the rest of their cookie and couldn’t wait to tell their parents all about the activities they had done.
At home if you know of any interests that your children have, try to center activities around those interests and you will find they will be much more engaged and will learn a lot more from those activities. Over the break, please use the winter break journal we sent home with your child yesterday. They can draw and write each day they are on break! They also can use the paper link chain to count down the days until we are back to school – 17 days!!
Enjoy the time with your family and friends and I hope you all have a happy New Year!! See you on January 7th!
