Dear Families,

My apologies for the hiatus!  

Happy December!  This month we are on our Gingerbread/Holidays Unit!  We are reading books about different holiday celebrations and the traditions they carry.  Primarily, Christmas, Chanukah, and Diwali.  Diwali actually takes place in November, but we thought it would be nice to teach the holidays together so that every student has something special that they celebrate as part of our unit. Here are our unit books for the month.



The Gingerbread Man-  In the gingerbread man, we have our gingerbread character that we hold and feel while we read our story.  We also have the big fox, we we've been talking a lot about the BIG fox and the SMALL gingerbread man.  We practice "running" with the gingerbread man and we use our buttons to read along and say "I'm the gingerbread man!"

Eight Candles to Light- This book is about Chanukah. We're touching the candles and counting up to eight as we take them "on" and "off" the Menorah, we get to see and feel a dreidel, we listen to a special Chanukah song, and we're also working on directions, "Take it" and "Give me" when we exchange presents with our friends.  We're also talking about how there are presents in both Chanukah and Christmas celebrations.

Little Blue's Christmas- This is our Christmas book.  We have our blue truck that we take turns "squeezing" to make our beeping sound.  Little Blue has five trees, so we have miniature trees that we use to help with our story.  We are touching the trees and counting up to five, and we are working on vocab words "on" and "off" to add and remove trees.  

There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Bell-  The Old Lady books are always a classroom favorite!  There are lots of objects to explore to expand our vocabulary, and we get to use our buttons as well!  The Little Old Lady swallows a bell, bows, gifts, a reindeer, a sleigh, a candy cane (not edible), and a sack.  We have objects for all of those things that we can hear, feel, and touch. We are working on "holding" the objects and putting them "in" our Old Lady's "mouth".  Our button words come at the end of each page I don't know why she swallowed the bell, "I wish she'd tell".  

Lighting a Lamp-  This is our Diwali book.  We are going to explore the lights and fireworks, and look at and feel colorful designs with sand.  


Here are our library books for this unit:




And this year...our Elves came back for a visit!  Last year, Scout, Buddy, and Jolly came to visit their friends Vraj, Ryan, and Josh. This year they brought two more elves; Holly and Kringle!  We're going to practice using our eyes to look for our elves' red clothes and answer yes and no questions to find our elves.  



This past week we've been finishing up our activities from our clothing unit.  We talked about shirts, pants, boots, buttons, pockets, and shoes.  This month we will be doing lots of arts and crafts centered around our holiday celebrations.  We will decorate dreidels, make colored sand pictures, decorate stockings, paint gingerbread men and houses, and lots more.  We can't wait for our parents to see all of our great work at our holiday show!  Our holiday show will be on December 23rd.  We are not sure of the time as of now, we have some nap schedules to work out first, then a notice will be sent home to parents with the details.  We hope to see you there!

Our science experiment for the week is making Peppermint Play Doh!  Eva brought in something for Show and Tell last week that she didn't get to talk to us about, so we'll get to see what she brought this week!  And for sensory time we will be able to explore our new play doh.  


WE HOPE EVERYONE IS GETTING INTO THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT, JUST LIKE WE ARE!!

-The Barnyard Buddies