Back Together Again!

The children were all thrilled to be back at school and were eager to share stories about what they did over their break.  They were also excited to see one another and all be able to play together again.  On the first day back we had a lengthy morning meeting where we talked about what everyone did.  Each child got to come to the front of the meeting and share where and what they did over the two week vacation.  Since many of the children went out of town or had relatives in town we took the opportunity to label our map.  We took out both the United States map and the World map and labeled the different places people went or came from.  We then talked about how one would travel to each of the places judging by its distance.  When labeling New Hampshire and closer areas the children said a car, with farther places they said a plane.  We got a few postcards and mementos and will continue to keep labeling as we receive more.

Now that we got to change the season on our calendar board to winter, everyone is patiently awaiting the first big snow fall.  The children always talk about what they enjoy doing in the snow so we decided to turn that into an art/math project.  The children were asked to think about what they like to do in the snow and use cotton balls and oil pastels to illustrate it.  Before starting the project the children first had to count out 20 cotton balls to use on their picture.  Some of them decided to use all 20 of them while others counted out all 20 but did not need that many.  It was really neat to watch the children count out their 20 cotton balls by using the number line on the wall.  Some children brought a handful of cotton balls over to the number line and set them down by each hand.  Others would get stumped in the teens and went to look to see what number came next and how many more cotton balls they needed.  Check those snow scenes out above the children's cubbies. 

Along with the have-to jobs the children were also excited to get back to work on their favorite choice jobs and just be with one another again.  They spent a lot of the time playing family in the dramatic play area, building castles in the block area, and doing puzzles at the round table or playing their new favorite game, crazy eights.  We also played shape/color bingo at the bean table.  The children took turns being the person to call out the cards.

I am sure most of you already know that we welcomed a new friend to our class this week.  Asher started on Tuesday and we are all very excited to have him.  The children have done a nice job of showing him around our class and helping him with the daily routines.  It seems like he has been here since September!

Many of you probably have heard us joke around that our class is just like the cast of Glee.  Some of the  children will break out into song and dance at random times of the day and the rest of the class will join them.  It generally happens during snack time but could happen at anytime.  Below I attached a little video of some of the children practicing the violin to the Suzuki violin CD.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!