Dear Parents,
We began our week picking up where we left off. We read three versions of The Gingerbread Man and acted it out. Everyone got to choose which character they wanted to be. We had one little old lady, one mower, five gingerbread men, and three foxes. We ran, ran, as fast as we could, around and around the big room.
In two of the books, the gingerbread man got eaten in four bites. We made a paper gingerbread man and cut him into quarters to show how four quarters make one whole.
On Tuesday we mixed dry and wet ingredients to make our gingerbread dough. We talked about where each ingredient came from. Some came from animals, others came from plants, and one came from the ocean. We noticed that two of our ingredients were things we had used in our potpourri: cinnamon and cloves.
Speaking of potpourri, we sent our bag of gifts home on Monday. On Tuesday everyone helped decorate cookies. One person kept yelling, "YAY!" We ate one cookie each and sent home one cookie for each family member. None of our gingerbread men got away, but there was much talk of chasing them around the big room. Some children said we could shut the doors so they wouldn’t get out. We wondered if they would play in the jungle gym.
Our first Power Tots class with Natalie was exciting. The children took turns balancing on a beam, crawling through a tunnel, and tumbling across a mat. It looked active and challenging.
We started our wood sculptures this week. Everyone had a base to build on and used wood glue to assemble their creations. We used some tree stumps from our tree sale. The glue was super hard to squeeze, a good test of hand muscle strength and determination. We will add to them next week.
On Friday we read Iggy Peck, Architect and What It Feels Like to Be a Building. In our building groups, everyone designed different buildings with different purposes: a tower, a hotel with supports, a plane raft boat and ice cream stand, a really cool building to make solar panels, and a building that also had special wires that attracted heat from other buildings. The creativity extended to playing in the snow. Some people thought of things to build, mostly snowmen and tree faces. We loved our first snow day!
Have a warm weekend,
Therese and Alli