Big Huge Thank You to Miss Brittany, Miss Wendy, and Big Emilea for all of your help pulling everything together today! I know I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you! Thank you to everyone that was able to join us for lunch. I am so very thankful for our PLA Families! All of the children were such great helpers today!
REMINDER: PLA will be closed until Monday, December 1st. Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving!
We were busy getting ready for our Thanksgiving Feast today! We made 2 pumpkin pies, brownies, shook some homemade butter (and tried the buttermilk), and made cranberry sauce! Do cranberries sink or float? We discovered today that they float, we cut one open to discover it has holes on the inside, and tiny seeds. We hope all of our families can join us for our Thanksgiving Lunch tomorrow at 11:30.
REMINDER: PLA will be closed Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Friday, we had a very small class. We made Turkeys and used our scissors to cut paper to look like feathers. We used feathers as paintbrushes to paint a picture. We also celebrated a Birthday, but because there were only 3 children, we will be celebrating again on Monday. We also celebrated our 1 year Anniversary! I can’t believe we have been officially open for a year! I am thankful to the Harm’s family for bringing the cute owl cake to help us celebrate!!
We read Thanks for Thanksgiving, on every page it says Thank you for something. I love the way this book is written and the pictures are beautiful. I would read a page like “Thank you for dress-up, red shoes and big hats.” and then I would say who is thankful for dress-up clothes? They would all raise their hands or say me. It was a fun book to read with them! Thanksgiving time is when we sing some of my favorite songs; “Rolled Away” and “Albuquerque Turkey!” http://bussongs.com/songs/albuquerque-the-turkey.php here is a link to Albuquerque, but our version says Pizza Pie at the end not scrambled eggs. See if your child can teach you “Rolled Away” We made no cook pumpkin play dough that happens to also be gluten free! Here is the link: http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2013/09/no-cook-gluten-free-edible-pumpkin-pie.html We also traced around our hands and made them into turkeys using markers, paint markers, feathers, blue, red, and yellow popcorn.
We talked about the first Thanksgiving concentrating mostly on the Native Americans today. The definition of Wampanoag according to the book Squanto’s Journey is “The overall name applied to a number of related native peoples in the area of present-day Massachusetts. Literal translation is “People of the First Light”. Squanto became friends with the pilgrims and taught them how to farm and survive in their new world. The book we read was The Very First Thanksgiving Day. We made Native American headbands and strung noodles to make a necklace. Our VIP shared her VIP board and some of her favorite toys. We also welcomed a new… well not so new to us, friend today! It was his first official without mommy day :o)
Learning our letter of the week in Sign Language… K
This week we will be learning about the first Thanksgiving and we will be talking about things we are thankful for. Today, we started working on our Thankful Tree. We read Give Thanks For Each Day. We went around the circle and said something we were thankful for, their answers will be on our Thankful Tree. We also couldn’t pass up a chance to play with some snow! Crazy weather! We are making fall leaves to put on our thankful tree and playing in a bowl full of snow! We turned the snow activity into a color mixing experiment by adding blue and yellow watercolor with our plastic droppers.
REMINDER: Thanksgiving Lunch 11:30-12:00 Tuesday, November 25. No School November 26, 27, and 28th.
We had fun hanging out in our PJ’s today! We made a few different caves, went on a bear hunt, made caves for our animals with play dough, read Hibernation Station, and made our favorite snack banana cookies! Our VIP’s Grandma joined us for lunch today, thank you so much for coming! Have a great weekend! Next week we will be talking about things we are thankful for.
REMINDER: Thanksgiving Lunch November 25th 11:30-12:00 for all preschoolers and their families. No School November 26th-28th.
We read Tap the Magic Tree, it has the children do different things on each page, I love interactive books! It explains how a tree changes with each season. We talked about how animals that don’t hibernate or migrate are gathering and storing food for the long cold winter. We did artwork with acorns; We painted with them by rolling them back and forth, and we made it snow by sticking white paint and acorns in a peanut butter container and shook it really hard back and forth. They loved both, but the surprise factor of the snow painting was their favorite!
REMINDER: Tomorrow is Hibernation Day Wear your pajamas and bring your favorite stuffed friend!
We started our morning with play dough as an option. Play dough is always a popular choice. We read Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See, and made snowy caves. I have had some children that are becoming frustrated with not being able to write their names as well as they would like; this is something we work on, but it is usually in the way of write your name on the back of your paper. Some can, some write a letter or two, some just scribble, but these are all acceptable for their age. I don’t push it we don’t write our name over and over and over, when they are ready it will look more and more like their name. I do “help” them, and encourage them to try every day, and by the time they go to Kindergarten they are writing their name. That being said I also let the children guide our curriculum (I use that term loosely) we don’t really follow a curriculum in a play based setting, but some of the children in this group really want to write their name! So, this week we have spent a lot of time writing our names. We explored static electricity in the motor room with balloons. Our VIP shared his superman toy, a camera, and his adventures with our bear Norman.
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We took a little break from Hibernation week to talk about our Veteran’s. We examined our flag, counted the stripes and stars. We talked about how we should treat our flag with respect and how important it is to tell our Military families thank you for keeping us safe. We painted with Red, White, and Blue, worked on writing our names, and Hibernation week appeared during gross motor time when they made a cave and pretended to be a bear hibernating and waking up in the spring. In the afternoon we created a new dice block building game, the children named it Roll, Count, Build. You had to roll the dice, count the number and use that many blocks to build something.
Play Learn Achieve Academy 