Bright Beginnings is now on Facebook!!! Check us out!!

Reading Corner with Ms. Fisher

The word focus for the Language Development Lesson, on Tuesday, December 7th, was “tree.”  The word was emphasized with the reading of Mrs. Fisher’s favorite Christmas book, Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, by Robert Barry.   Word awareness and holiday festivities continued with song and movement in singing Oh, Christmas Tree.

Monkey

This week in the Monkey room we have a very busy schedule! Every day this week we practiced a different shape. We identified it, studied it, and found that shape all around the classroom. The shape of the month is a square so we colored a square red (color of the month). We learned “He’ll Be Coming Down the Chimney” and practiced “The Winter Song” that we learned last week. Along with the red squares that we colored for art, we also be made chocolate pudding and painted with it, made stockings, and practiced drawing squares! In honor of the holidays and our Children’s Humanities theme, we spent a lot of time pretending to cook and bake for our friends and family! Ask your child about our fun parachute play time! Don’t forget to sign up to bring a tasty treat for our holiday parties (Dec. 21 & 22)

Giraffe

Please do not forget the children will go outside if it’s above 32 degrees and no wind chill. I would suggest hats, gloves and a warm winter coat. The children enjoyed learning about Ramadan this week. We went over how Ramadan is celebrated and what foods the children eat during this holiday. Our art projects were related to Ramadan, for example, we make a good deed calendar. We also continued to work on colors, numbers, and shapes, the letter of the week, and nursery rhymes. Please ask your child about the “Love Your Friends” poem, you will find it on our class board.

Tiger

The Tigers finished the eight days of Hannakkah. The tigers learned where and who made the first Christmas card and the story of hanging stockings on the fire place. In our journals we are writing our names, numbers and drawing pictures. Letter for the week is Nn and the number is eight. Project Green we have been discussing Evergreen trees and how they are different and why. We counted six Evergreen trees around the school. We have been measuring using a yard stick, what is tall or short, the table or chairs? A great way of learning our numbers. “Who has a beard that is long and white” is our favorite song this week. Ask your child to sing this for you.  We would like to say Happy Birthday to Sam – big #4! Remember to read the hall board for new information. We are looking for your child’s or your favorite recipe for our cook book! Thank you!

Lion

This week the Lions have really been in the Winter Spirit! Due to the frost weather outdoors we have been very active inside; dancing to music, singing holiday songs and exercising! This week for Art we have been very busy making festive hats, painting candy cane strips and working on some top secret winter gifts! For Project Green, we talked about winter, where animals go when it snows and what the word hibernate means. The Lion class also enjoyed making reindeer food! Our number of the week is 6 we have been practicing counting 1-6 in English and Spanish! For Children’s Humanities we have been talking about baking our friend Charlie brought in his favorite cupcake book to share some recipes with us!

Elephant

The Elephants are really getting into the holiday spirit. We made presents, snowy trees and snowflakes for art this week. We also talked about Chanka so that the Elephants could understand that not everyone celebrates Christmas. In talking about Chanka we made menorahs and talked about dreidels. For Language Arts this week we have been talking about the letter N and words that start with it. For Math we are working on counting and have been using the unifix cubes to help count. We have been singing holiday songs during circle time. This week our favorite song has been Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. The elephants are getting excited about the holidays!

Zebra

The Zebra class has been preparing for a wonderful holiday. We have begun practicing our skit “A Zebra Nutcracker” which we will perform during the Cookie Exchange on December 20th at 11:00am. Casting list is as follows:

• Clara – Rylee
• Sara – Elise
• Abigail – Mommy
• Zachary – Daddy
• Thomas – Nutcracker
• Gabe – Mouse King
• Nick – Army toy soldier #1
• Xavier – Army toy soldier #2
• Lauren – Christmas Fairy
• Brook – Teddy Bear #1
• Meredith – Teddy Bear #2
• Jake – Teddy Bear #3
• Morgan – Ballerina doll #1
• Crystal – Ballerina doll #2
• Kendall – Ballerina doll #3
• Jaxon – Jack in the box

We are having such a great time reading The Nutcracker and practicing for the play. This week has also been filled with wonderful holiday crafts: making Christmas ornaments, snowmen faces and city snow scenes. Also don’t forget to sign-up to bring an item to our holiday party! Can’t wait to see you on the 20th!!

Chameleon

This week in the Chameleon class we are reading The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett, and we are comparing to the story we read last week, The Gingerbread Boy. We are also continuing to learn about Hanukkah this week. We played the dreidel game, searched for hidden gelt, and talked about different holiday customs around the world. For Language Arts we came up with a recipe for holiday cookies, counted syllables in holiday words, wrote in our journals about our favorite gingerbread story character, and wrote our own Gingerbread Baby class story. We also made gingerbread, evergreen tree treats, and gingerbread play-doh. For Project Green, we have been talking about evergreens. We have made needle art, counted pine cones, and learned about ordinal numbers with an activity called “Six Little Evergreen.”