Royal Fun!

We enjoyed being royal this week. Monday we made our knight helmets and read about a girl knight.

On Tuesday, we used markers to color our castle windsock and glued streamers onto it. Wednesday we made fancy, bejeweled crowns and goblets.

Morning Royal Subjects

Afternoon Royal Subjects

We wrapped up the week on Friday with our Royal Tea Party that we dressed up for using our knight helmets, jeweled crowns and other royal attire. We had delicious jelly tea sandwiches and juice “tea”. See all our cute costumes and photos of our tea party on the Photo Gallery Page.

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IMPORTANT!!! WE NEED YOUR CURRENT CONTACT INFORMATION!

We have had several instances lately in which we need to reach a child’s parent and/or emergency contact, only to find out that the phone number(s) we had no longer work. We MUST be able to reach you in case of an emergency and to confirm  absences as required by law.
We have included a new contact form in your child’s folder this week. Please complete it even if nothing has changed and return it to us by Monday, January 21st. Thanks for your help!

A Dinosaur of a Week

We began our week with watercolor painting a dinosaur picture. We also heard the story of The Knight and the Dragon who got better at their skills with practice. 

  

Tuesday we created a dinosaur with the letter D and these dinos are now decorating our classroom.

We got to use the bingo daubers on our dinosaur egg project on Wednesday...woo hoo...we LOVE using them!!!

Thursday we were all archaeologists and brushed dinosaurs out of ice. It was so cool! Literally!!!

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Remember that the Macaroni Soup Family Event is this Saturday in the Community Elementary Gym from 9:15-11:15am.

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 We have rescheduled our sing .
We are learning new songs and it will now be called a Winter Sing!
Thursday, January 31st @ 5:30pm
St. Joseph’s Church, Lower Level

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Don't forget that we don't have school on Monday but we do come to school on FRIDAY!
Friday is also our Royal Tea Party Dress-Up Day!!!

Welcome Back!

Wow! It's great to be back and getting into the groove of things. While breaks are nice, we appreciate the regular routines too.

We eased into the week on Wednesday as we opened the gifts for our classroom and had our book exchange. Thanks to everyone who so kindly provided gifts & books!! Check out the fun in the slideshows below.

AM Gift Opening

PM Gift Opening

Thursday was another laid back day. Our only project was to create another page for our "Person Book". Other than that, we have been enjoying doing our jobs and playing with all the new stuff in our classroom. We will share some photos of the room next week but you can ask your child about the exciting new additions.

Please be sure to send all outside clothing and shoes for wearing inside everyday :)

Have a great weekend!!!

Snow Day?

Please watch your local television station, listen to local radio or go online tomorrow morning to find out if Edgerton School District will have school or not.

If the weather allows, tomorrow's activities will go on as planned. However, if school is canceled tomorrow, our Holiday Sing will be canceled as well. We will try to reschedule a "Winter Sing" in January. If there is a cancellation, we will have our book exchange and PJ party on January 2nd. 

We hope to see you tomorrow, but just in case, we wish you and your family a safe and happy holiday break!

Holiday Traditions

Over the past few weeks we have been learning about a number of different celebrations that occur around the world during the month of December.

The one that is most familiar to our class is Christmas. We have read books and made projects related to this and talked about how some people celebrate Christmas with gifts and Santa, while others celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birth, and some families recognize both of these Christmas traditions. Our room has some Christmas touches to it too!

We have a felt tree to decorate.

We can bake cut-out cookies.

And stockings to hang by the chimney with care!

We have also learned about the Jewish holiday called Hanukkah that is celebrated by a series of rituals that are performed every day throughout the 8-day holiday. Las Posadas is a Mexican celebration during which neighbors reenact the nativity pilgrimage to a designated house that represents the “inn”. We also learned about Kwanzaa, an African American Holiday that celebrates a fruitful harvest.

Thank you all for sending in show & tell items about your family's traditions. We have really enjoyed learning about the different ways families celebrate together!

We had a great time at the tree farm! Be sure to see you check out the photos on our photo gallery page. Thank you to all the chaperones who joined us for the day and thanks to those who volunteered to come as well...so sorry that we couldn't take you all with us!

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Don't forget to bring in a book for the book exchange if you haven't already and be sure your child is in his/her PJs on Thursday for our Polar Express PJ party!

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Also, the Holiday Sing is on Thursday night at 5:30pm at St. Joseph's Church (the circle church). We will be in the lower level where the stage is located. Please do not arrive more than 5 min early...the kids get too crazy :)

Our Musical Week

Monday we listened to John Denver’s Sunshine on My Shoulders while we looked at the book by Christopher Canyon that has illustrations to coordinate with the song.

We also drew our December page for our Person Book. The increase in the amount of details on the self-portraits from September until now is amazing!

Tuesday we heard the song, What A Wonderful World and viewed the accompanying book that was illustrated by Ashley Bryan.

We then watercolor painted a picture of our choice while listening to Mozart.

We made paper plate shakers on Wednesday. It was a great fine-motor activity since we had to lace the plates together.

Thursday we practiced patterning with bells as we made instruments for our holiday sing. We are getting soooo excited to get up on that stage and perform for you!

Don't forget about the music we will be making for you at our Holiday Sing on Thursday, December 20th at 5:30pm.  

This performance will be at St. Joseph's Church in the lower level/stage area. This church is NOT the same one we went to for the potluck. It is commonly referred to as the "circle church". Please let us know if you have any questions. We will be sending home an RSVP form next week so that we know how many chairs to have set up for our amazing audience.

Abracadabra!

First of all, thank you to everyone who contributed to and/or attended the potluck! It was a huge success. See more photos on our photo gallery page!

Due to your generosity, we have frozen the extra buns, ham, and cheese for some nourishing snacks on a few days in December! Thank you!!!

Now on to this week... We learned about an African Folk Tale called Abiyoyo. It is about magic, music, and understanding. Mrs. Fox even performed some fun magic tricks each day!! Monday we made a magic hat with a rabbit. Did your child pull a rabbit from a hat for you? On Tuesday we made our very own magic wands. Wednesday and Thursday we heard the story of the color changing rabbit and we made our own version of the book. We experimented with color mixing to make new colors. It was very messy but fun. Please have your child “read” the book to you.

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 Holiday Book Exchange

We will be doing a class book exchange for the holidays this year. Each student can bring in a book wrapped in their favorite wrapping (with a tag indicating who the gift is from) to exchange with another student. Please see the red note in this week’s folder for more details.

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Giving Tree

Next week, we will be setting up a “giving tree” in our entryway. If you were thinking of giving us teacher gifts this year, we would prefer you get a gift for our class to use instead. Simply take a tag from the tree that lists an item from our wishlist, purchase the item for our class, wrap it up and place it under the tree with a tag noting who the gift is from. We will open the gifts together near Christmas. We will also post wishlist items on the website for those that can’t stop in to grab a tag but would still like to participate.

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 Look at this super-cute snack we had this week!!! Thanks Charlie!