We had a blast these last two weeks!
First, we learned all about Advent: the season in our church where we prepare our hearts for the coming of Baby Jesus. We have been discussing each week which candle(s) are lit and what they represent. (Faith, Hope, Joy, Love.) We've been praying daily for help with patience and that as we wait with excitement, we still stay focused on being kind and gentle with friends and our family. We colored beautiful advent wreaths outside our room- check them out on Wednesday when you come to the music program. We have an advent calendar countdown in our room as well that we do each morning. We enjoyed a lot of angel art and apple counting and snowman matching and patterning in our math centers. We made Aggie Alligator puppets and built A's with popsicle sticks. Most exciting of all, we got to attend mass with the bishop for St. Andrew's feast Day!! Since we did such an amazing job at mass, I treated them to ice cream!! We've also enjoyed the addition of nativity play sets in our centers and some new play dough toys. We were able to take photos for the upcoming auction (in Feb) and the kids looked so adorable in their western wear! :) We also had a surprise visit from the grinch! He was a nice grinch! :)
This week we talked about Mary, Mother of Jesus and our spiritual mother. We read in religion about how the angel Gabriel came to visit her and told her she was chosen to have Jesus. We honor Mary (not worship her) and the preschoolers really seem to understand the deep respect we have for her cooperating with God's plan by saying Yes to having Jesus, even though she didn't understand all it would entail. Man, you have some awesome kiddos!! We've also been reading books about mice, Marley the dog and mittens. After reading "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, we had fun matching mittens and re-telling the story to put all the animals in order-stuffing them in our mitten. Ask your child about this when you see it come home in their folder. Of course, we've been practicing our Music songs like mad for the program! We had a fun science center on magnets and discussed the different poles of magnets. We also did some beautiful stocking and Christmas tree glitter art to get us in the Christmas spirit! We did a search and find for letter M, and the dot sheets of letter M to get us in the habit of correctly making the strokes of M.
We will continue on letter M and do a lot of assessments and fun Christmas games/art this upcoming week! We will be making our macaroni M's this week as well as finishing up handwriting. With the program on Wednesday and then our Christmas party on Friday, it's going to go by quick! We will not have show and tell this week due to all the time we will need for practicing for the program. I plan to get some "melting" science in as well.
Thank you for all your help with getting your child to school with a water bottle and heavy coat every day!!
*See reminders at the bottom
Have a great weekend!
-Mrs. Whitehair
Important dates:
*December 15- 7:00 pm Christmas program (dress in Christmas best) arrive at 6:45
Please bring a finger food or cookies to share
Please plan to head to the preschool room afterwards to pick up your child's art folder
*December 17- Christmas party and
Dismiss at 1:00 pm