Hello December in Enrichment!

Welcome back families! We hope you all enjoyed your long weekend. We were so happy to see our friends again on Tuesday and we had a great time at school this week. During the month of December, we will be learning a little about different holidays that celebrate LIGHT. It gets dark very early during the winter season, and we will be talking about a few different holidays that brighten people's homes and spirits.

This week, we learned about Diwali. Some Americans celebrate this festival of lights to welcome their New Year. We read a story called Diwali Day by Preeti Singh. In the book we learned that people decorate their homes with special lamps called DIYA and beautiful floor decorations called RANGOLI. People share food, dancing and games during the celebration. Also on Diwali, people light up the night with sparklers and fireworks! The students really enjoyed this book!

Here's what's NEW in CENTERS:

Discovery Table: Engineering- students used gumdrops and toothpicks to build different structures. A few creations at this center were bridges, houses, spiky hedgehogs and a basketball "hoop".

Pretend Center: This center has been transformed into a Holiday Home. There are posters of Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa celebrations. There is a kitchen stocked with pots and pans, dishes, cookies, and wooden fruit/veggies for slicing. There is also a menorah with candles, a tree to decorate and felt pieces to make beautiful Rangoli decorations.

Math Table: The children practiced numeral identification, counting and matching numeral to quantity. There were many different snowman pieces with numerals, dots, dice pictures and pictures of hands holding up different numbers with their fingers. They needed to find all of the matching pieces to build the snowmen.

Art: This week, we made tissue paper Diwali lanterns and colored Rangoli ornaments for our tree.

Easel: Students used colored chalk to color Rangoli designs. The chalk was a little messy but they came out beautiful!

Sensory Table: The children used tongs and tweezers to pick up little pom poms, jingle bells, and glitter balls and drop them into tubes.

Writing Table: Blank books, stickers, blank cards and envelopes, crayons, gel pens and markers.

Literacy Cart: Students practiced letter matching with little ABC "lights" and an alphabet tree mat.

Block Area: This was a very busy center this week. A dollhouse with furniture, animal families, wooden people, magnatiles, jingle bells, puzzles and wooden blocks are all available in the block area this month. We had lots of great pretend play going on with the dollhouse! It is so fun to see the children using their imaginations and their teamwork to come up with play scenarios. Great job girls and boys!

WOW- that was a lot of information. Thanks for taking the time to read it through. Attached you will find a little "poster" with each child's photo and name to make it easier to get to know your kiddo's friends.

Lastly, if you ever have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us! We hope you have a great rest of the week and we look forward to seeing your little ones on Monday, December 6th!

Warmly,

Brenda Daday

& Christina Renoni