December

 It's so much fun to be a preschooler during the month of December! We really packed in a lot of learning and fun before Christmas break. 

Here, the 3 year olds are painting angels with their names on the them. These are hanging above the stairs that lead to our classroom.  

We did several of these this month:

It's a small group activity where students roll a die, and whatever letter they get is the letter they stamp on their paper.  Simple, yet very effective for practicing letter identification. 

The 4s did an author study on Jan Brett early in the month.  Her books are easily recognizable by their unique illustrations. We compared a couple of her books by looking at the stories and the pictures. 

 We also worked on story retelling activities like this one.

Here, the kids made a "gingerbread house" and attached the characters in order of their appearance in the book to a ribbon inside the house. 

 It's a little blurry, but you can see the little pictures on the ribbon falling out of the house. The kids were able to use this to help them retell the story in sequence.  

Story retelling is a very important skill for young children who  because it helps them with story comprehension, making inferences, and understanding story structure. 

This is the other book by Jan Brett that we read. 

I didn't get to take many pictures of the activities we did with this book, but here is the class trying to fit into our "mitten" just like the animals in the story.  

They decided that this story would not actually be able to take place because a bear would not be able to fit into a mitten that was knitted for a child. (All the animals on the cover of the book want to get warm, so one by one, they squish into the little white mitten that a boy accidentally dropped on the ground.)

The 4s spent all month working on their Christmas alphabet books. 

(Sorry the picture is turned the wrong way.)

 Each day this month, they glued letters onto the correct pages. 

 Hopefully you were able to read this at home sometime over break. 

 One of our "Cooking with Books" books was this one:

We used an air popper to make a "popcorn volcano", as the kids called it. 

 The 3s had fun finger painting these giant Christmas light bulbs. We sprinkled glitter over the paint to make them extra sparkly!

Here, they are searching for Christmas items with tongs in the sensory bin. 

 Sorting snowflakes by color and gluing them into the boxes...

Here, the kids use a toothpick to poke holes along the black line of the picture on the paper. This is a fun fine motor activity that helps them get ready to hold a pencil. 

 They love that when they are done poking the holes, they can hold the paper up to the light and see the image like a constellation. 

We are continuing to learn a poem each month, and this is the poem for December:

The little snowflakes under the words help with tracking when the students read the poem to the class. 

The 4s are loving these Chit-Chat messages! It is a very interactive process, and they definitely enjoy that. 

And some pictures from the Polar Express party...

Here are the 4s waiting to board!

 Mr. Seaholm was our trusty conductor.

We will not be slowing down in January at all! 

Here are some things to look forward to:

*Advent/Christmas program make up

*Happy Birthday Jesus party

*Learning about Epiphany (the coming of the Wise Men)

*Learning about winter, snow, and freezing

*Karma Wilson author study

*Lutheran Schools Week

*St. Matthew Lutheran School and Preschool Open House January 30