Week twelve 2008

Congratulations to the Jossart family. Baby Anna Grace was born Friday, November 14th at 7:45 PM. She weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was 21 inches long. The picture of Kristen holding Anna is just minutes after she was born and the others are of 12-hour-old Anna at home with her family. We wish you much joy! . . Theme: Fall Days Focus: Leaves & trees, bears and squirrels getting ready for winter, turkeys Numbers: 15, 16, & 17 Classical composer: Bedřich Smetana (1824 -1884) was a Czech composer, one of the most significant that his country has ever hosted. He is best known for his symphonic poem Vltava (also known as The Moldau from the German), the second in a cycle of six which he entitled Má vlast ("My Country”). To hear a sample, please follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLPLO90fSk&feature=related . Table Activities: We created autumn, winter, spring, and summer trees with felt boards, felt trunks, felt leaves, blossoms, and snow. We also used strawberry pickers to pick up and sort colored pom-poms. The magnetic puzzles helped the children practice sorting colors, counting to 12, and matching letters. Pipe cleaners were fun to make into all sorts of creations including letters & numbers, rocket ships, animals, and trees. We let the children bring their favorite design home. . . Music: We enjoyed Smetana’s “Die Moldau” several times this week. We’ve also been learning several songs this week that will be performed at family night. You may have heard something about a squirrel shaking its tail, perhaps? The children are enjoying taking turns being the leader for the songs. . Art: Miss Cristina showed the children some more unique paintings using primary colors. The children used another primary color, red, to work on their canvas. They painted using leaves and sticks as tools to make interesting shapes and lines. . Handwriting and Reading: Reading: We added the /d/ sound to our sound train, with “Desiree” as our picture association and also reinforcing the “dee /d/ dee, a donut hits a wall” image. For reading practice we used turkey cut-outs to play a matching game—match the upper- and lowercase letters. We got into some very tricky ones, like Q, q and N, n. We really over-emphasize the mouth, tongue, lip placement of letters to help the children not only learn to say the letter sounds correctly, but differentiate between the subtle distinctions. Having them do this in front of a mirror at home is a great activity and fun for all, especially when getting to the /th/ and seeing the spit fly! Handwriting: Wet-dry-try, flannel board letters . Theme: Our tree craft was interesting. As you see from the master version, the children were to cut their trees, glue them, and then use small sponges to stamp the leaves. The children really used their own sense of creativity to design their autumn trees. As you can see, they are unique! . . This week we also used Play-doh to make acorns for the squirrels. In the green carpet room, we pretended to be “Little Feather”, a young Indian brave who hears lots of sounds in the forest, then happens upon a bear sleeping in a cave. We created the turkey headbands and had fun pretending to sleep, eat and run around the range. .

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Storybooks: Leaves; Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf; The Leaf Man; Bear Snores On; Run, Turkey, Run! .

Math: Numbers 15, 16, and 17 pages came home this week and the children practiced the equations 10 + 5 = 15, etc. We practiced counting by fives and began talking about even and odd numbers. . Free-Play Fun: The children enjoyed the reading loft, puzzles, and magnetic wand mazes.