Christmas Parties

     We had our Christmas parties before we left school for break.  Thank you party committees for the such a great time.  We ate yummy Christmas treats, played some really fun games, and opened presents.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Gingerbread Man

 
     We spent the month of December involved in many activities around the story The Gingerbread Man.  We read many different gingerbread stories, made gingerbread ornaments for the tree, did some gingerbread math activities, made our own class book, and the best part....made gingerbread cookies.  We were really surprised when we went to get our cookies out of the oven and they were GONE.  They had us chasing them all around the school (good thing they left us notes).  We finally found them back in our classroom.  Good thing we caught them because they were yummy!

Library Tree

     Each year, the preschoolers decorate a tree for the Newell Public Library's Christmas tree display.  This year's theme was "family traditions".  We chose singing Christmas carols as the theme for our tree.    Abby's aunt Reva cut out note ornaments for us and helped the children put glitter on them.  They turned out beautiful.  The preschoolers made paper chains with the music to Jingle Bells on them.  We went to the library to decorate our tree on Monday.  The children also enjoyed seeing the other trees decorated for Christmas.  Come to the library to see our tree if you get a chance.

Halloween

     We had fun at our Halloween parties.  Good food, great costumes and fun games!  The morning class showed their costumes to the elementary classes, and the afternoon class joined the costume parade in the gym.  Thank you party committees for making our day so much fun.

Magical Mud Pies

     We watched a video story about some children that made mud pies.  One of the children stirred some seeds into the mud pies and later their mud pies grew plants.  The preschoolers thought this would be fun to try.  I was planning that this would be an outdoor activity, but it was raining so we made mud pies indoors.  We stirred some of our pumpkin seeds and some grass seed in our mud pies to see if we would get "magical mud pies" like the children in the story.  They also decorated them with nature materials we gathered on our last nature walk.  The children drew pictures of their mud pie now, and we will draw them again after the plants start to grow.  I hope we get plants as many of our pies resembled mud soup more than mud pies. :)

Ag in the Classroom

     Margo Sievers, from Farm Bureau, visited our classroom to talk about Ag in the Classroom.  Since we have been learning about dirt, she talked to us about how important dirt is to farmers.  She read books about worms and growing pumpkins.  She also read a "puppet" book which the children LOVED!  We thank Margo for sharing her time and knowledge with us.

What Made the Holes?

     A few weeks ago, we took a nature walk and discovered some holes in the ground.  We have been very curious as to what made these holes.  The preschoolers had some very good ideas, but we still were not sure.  We invited Katie, the B.V. County Naturalist, to our class to help us out.  Before her visit, the children thought of questions to ask her about the holes.  Katie answered each question and the children drew pictures of her answers.  She brought worms and furs of animals that might have dug the holes.  The children got to hold the worms and touch the furs.  We concluded that ground squirrels probably made the mystery holes.

Pumpkins

     Last week, we did some activities around the color orange.  One of those activities was hammering golf tees into a pumpkin.  This was a very popular center during center time.  The children worked on their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.  You know kids are really concentrating when mouths are open and tongues are out.  :)

Homecoming

     Homecoming was a fun week at preschool.  We had dress up days, made Mustang pennants and had a special football reader, Coach Wilken.  On Friday, the afternoon class watched the parade and of course caught some candy.  Go Mustangs!

Fire Safety

We spent the entire week learning about fire safety. On October 11th, our local fire departments paid a visit to our classroom to talk to more about fire safety.  Thank you so much to the Newell and Fonda Fire Departments for giving us a ride in the fire truck and giving us our own fire hats!