February 12
In Literacy, we will have another week of letter fun, including a heart/letter matching game and letter bingo. We will also have our classroom Post Office open to write Valentine’s Day cards to our friends, families and the people in our neighborhood.
In Math, we will continue our work on patterns, looking for patterns in our everyday lives. We will differentiate between growing patterns (like stadium seating or counting) and repeating patterns (like stripes on a shirt or the days of the week). We will continue using different materials for our exploration of patterns: wooden blocks, Magnatiles, Hexiesnaps, and our classroom!
In Science, in small groups, we will continue to read books about penguins. The children will be offered the opportunity to draw and tell a story about their favorite polar animals.
In Drama, we will celebrate Lunar New Year and the year of the dog. The children will practice lion dancer movements to scare away bad luck and bring good fortune in the new year. Our lion dancers will parade through the school playing rhythm instruments and demonstrating their pride and power! Gung Hey Fat Choy!
In Art, we will explore painting with unconventional painting tools—proving that you can paint with just about anything!
In Music, we learn some of Bushel and a Peck in honor of Valentine's day! This is a song I grew up singing with my parents and grandparents before bedtime, and I hope the children will enjoy singing this song with some of you at home! We will also continue working on Miss Mary Mack with partners. I highly recommend that you play the hand game with your children. You'll be surprised how much they know already.
The Twos enjoyed playing in the meeting room with the parachute and playing in our classroom grocery store. Some of the books we read this week were Baby Polar by Yannick Murphy and No Two Alike by Keith Baker.
In ASL, we will learn some signs related to our classroom theme of community workers like postal worker, police officer, and firefighter.
February 5
In Literacy, we will continue adding to our classroom short story book, where we are the authors and illustrators. We will also play new letter games, including a heart uppercase and lowercase matching game and finding our hidden letters with water colors.
In Math, we will continue our work with repeating and growing patterns. Last week, the students created their own repeating shape patterns on strips of paper. This week, we will create repeating patterns with building materials like wooden blocks and magnatiles. Last week, we read and acted out The Napping House as we learned about growing patterns. This week, we will look at growing patterns in the context of counting and skip counting.
In Science, we will continue focusing on animals and what it means to be kind to them. We have been talking a lot about Arctic and Antarctic animals. We used the water table with plastic polar animals and ice and discussed animals that live in very cold weather. Now we will focus on penguins and do some small group readings of the book Penguins by Kate Riggs. Each child will get their own copy and we will turn the pages and read together. We will continue to talk about which animals live in the South Pole and which live in the North Pole. We will also play some categorizing and matching games.
In Drama, we will reenact the story of The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson. The children will be in role as the snail who sends the message to rescue the beached whale in distress. We will be incorporating snail locomotor movement into the storytelling.
In Art, we will be wrapping up our weeks of planning and creating for the Valentine holiday. This week we will create a lovely card to accompany the gift we made for our families. We will create the card using a new printing process.
In Music, we are beginning our partner work with our Miss Mary Mack hand game, relating this game to the concept of patterns which is also being talked about in math. We are also working on learning the words to Yellow Submarine and beginning to learn the words and English translation of Hinei Ma Tov.
The Twos enjoyed playing in the grocery store, playing group games in the back and using the water table. We read Arctic Animals by Tad Carpenter, Wait by Antoinette Portis and Wake up Little Owl by Gareth Llewhellin.
In ASL, we will learn the signs for Polar Bear, Artic Fox, and Penguin.