Happy New Year in the 3's!

Good afternoon Three’s Class Families, I almost forgot to send the weekly update due to our snow day!

Happy New Year, and Happy Snow Day! I can’t believe how fast time is flying. We are so excited to be back at school and have a lot of fun and learning in store for the winter months ahead. We are so happy to welcome two new friends to our class: James and Tommy. We look forward to having some new friends at school. Unfortunately because our week was cut short, we don’t have any photos to share.

This week at MORNING MEETING we read We All Go Travelling By, by Sheena Roberts. The children enjoyed listening to the audio CD that went along with the book. Music and Movement activities included The Penguin Dance, Wiggle Your Fingers, and the ever-popular Freeze Dance. We have a lot of great dancers in our class!

Here’s what’s NEW in CENTERS!

Discovery Center: The children did some observation and sorting at this center. They had to look through a big bin of colored bears and sort them into the matching color bowls.

Art: We worked on a whole-group project this week. The kiddos used foam daubers to stamp snowflakes onto a giant piece of paper. The paper has two snowmen on it and the belly of each snowman has all the names of the children in our class. They did a great job on this project. I was going to send a photo of the finished product, but that will have to wait until next week due to our snow day.

Math: The students worked on their fine motor and visual motor skills while putting puzzles together.

Literacy Cart: The children used letter magnets and placed them on the matching letter mitten. This center is just a beginning-literacy, exploration opportunity for the kiddos.

Writing Table: This week we are coloring and stamping snowflakes and snowmen. We will hang them up on our Family Tree in the classroom. When we returned to school after the winter break, we noticed that our tree still had FALL leaves on it! We took them down and the tree looked a little bare, so we will be working on jazzing it up a bit. If you haven’t sent in a family photo to be added to our Family Tree, please feel free to send one in if you’d like.

Pretend Center: This center has been transformed into a Vet Clinic. The children pretended to be veterinarians and cared for many different animals including dogs, cats, a goldfish, birds, and a hamster. They put bandages on hurt paws and wings. They used syringes to give the animals medicine. They also used the tools to give the animals complete check-ups. This center was a big hit this week!

Sensory Table: Plastic noodles, volcano, dinosaur figures

Block area: This center has been stocked with wooden blocks, construction vehicles, giant foam pattern blocks, unicorns, wooden people and puzzles. The children really show their imaginations in this center. They enjoy building towers, houses, garages and roads with the blocks and then using the people to make their ideas “come alive.” We have a lot of very creative thinkers in our class.

We would like to thank you for your patience as we transition to the new drop-off procedure. The children did a fantastic job and we are very proud of them. Just a note: it would be very helpful for us if you could put your child’s mittens inside their hat, and put the hat into their backpack before you bring them to the door. This makes hand sanitizing a quick and easy process. Even though it is cold out, they will only be outside for a very brief moment while they walk into the building. Thank you very much for your help! Please reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns. Have a wonderful weekend!

Your teachers,

Brenda Daday & Christina Renoni