Happy Holidays!

Thank you so much to all my amazing families for putting on yet another amazing class party.  The children had so much fun and are full of festive cheer!  Thank you also for the incredibly generous gift.  You showered me with "a few of my favorite things" and I am overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation.  I truly am the luckiest teacher to have each of you and your children in my life this year.  Wishing you a very happy and restful holiday season and festive start to 2014!

Perfectly Polar

To celebrate the magic of the winter season and our upcoming holiday we watched the polar express and had "chilly" chocolate and cookies (most kindergarten kids don't love true "hot" chocolate so we have our own spin on the tradition).  We had a great day of fun and tomorrow will do our compare/contrast chart of the movie and the book and a sequencing story about our magical movie.

Shoes, shoes, shoes

Thank you to all of you who have already sent in shoes for our shoeman water project.  The children are so excited to be a part of this outreach and are excited to see how many shoes we can collect as a class.  We began tracking our shoes with the tally system and have just started to record our pairs of shoes on a tens-frame (just like what we use to count our days of school).  So far we have had 14 pairs since our start and we are excited to see how many more we can get between now and the end of our shoeman project time in January.

Keep sending in those shoes and thank you!

Upcoming events

Just a reminder that tomorrow is PJ day for our Polar Express Party. 

Also, we have two large projects coming up after the winter break.

100th DAY!

Our 100th day of school will be toward the end of January.  The official date won't be set till later depending on snow days!  For this special date you will need to make a 100th day hat with your child and send it back to school from Jan. 6th-17th.  I am telling you know as you might have time to work on it during the break.  Please look for a note coming home this week in folders with details about the hat :)

Children around the World

During this social studies unit we learn about many things from children all over the world.  This includes celebrations, traditions, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, location and more!  We always invite parents to come in and share their traditions and celebrations.  Some families have a strong heritage or culture they might want to share about.  In the past, we have had parents share about Irish dancing, Chinese New Year, Chinese clothing and food, Indian clothing, Muslim traditions and celebrations and more!  Some of you might be thinking well our traditions and celebrations are the same as most families.  Well that is still okay!  I have also had families share about St. Nick's Day, Christmas ornament traditions and other similar things.  The kids love any parent who is willing to share and they love when their own parent comes!

We will be having parents come from Jan. 6th- Jan.31st during our social studies time from 2:00-2:35.  Please let me know if you would like to come!  Also, if these times do not work for your schedule let me know and we can try and come up with an alternate time.  If you plan to share, will you also give me a little heads up on what you might be sharing about.

THANKS FOR HELPING US LEARN!

Mystery Mom

Today Evie's mom surprised us with two perfect winter stories to get us excited for our upcoming winter break.  She read "The Snowy Day" and "Stranger in the Woods".  Thank you to Evie's mom and brother for sharing the magic of the winter season with us!