Christmas 2012

I had a lot of fun watching your children create Christmas presents for you.  This is being posted after Christmas, so that I don't spoil what your children made for you through my various pictures below.

Here is a picture of a little girl holding ice that was in one of the sand toys that collected rain from the first part of the week and then froze.  The children were very excited when they found the ice on Wednesday!  The weather was the perfect kind of weather to experience while talking about Christmas.  Here, where we live, the weather is usually warm during the day.  This week, we had rain and freezing temperatures.

For the hand-print candy ornament, I don't have any photos.  I called one child up at a time to dip their hands in paint and press it on the white foam pieces.  I hot glued all of the pieces together over two nights.

When the children painted the boxes, first they picked their favorite colors, then they experimented and added layer upon layer of paint.  To them, it wasn't about making it look pleasing for an adult.  For them, it was the process of adding paint and watching what happens to it when it mixes with the other colors.  It was fascinating - watching them make choices. For some children, they would get stuck doing one side, so I pointed out the other "blank canvases" they could paint.  I love how the different layers of paint can be seen in some.  It reminds me of professional painters - when you look closely at their work, you can see the layers and the texture of the paint.

Here are photos of your children working on the treasure boxes:

In between all of the crafting, the children played:

Peek-a-boo made him and my daughter crack up!!  I love seeing this playfulness!

He loves it when I take a picture of his structures.

"Take a pictures of me!"

Working together!

Every child in this class wanted to draw at the chalk boards:

Since we don't have snow, we had a snow ball fight (cotton balls) inside! It's the one and only thing they can throw inside, because no matter how hard you throw it, it won't hurt anyone or anything.

On Wednesday, the two classes played with the light bright, because it has pretty lights just like Christmas lights.

When we finally did go outside, it was cold. Thank you parents for dressing your child warmly, so they could experience outside play in the cold!

On Thursday and Friday, we had Christmas parties.  Thanks to all of the families that donated food!  We also talked about the presents to their parents and the book that I gave them for Christmas: The Night Before Christmas.  It's such a famous poem and bits and pieces of it are repeated in many other stories and songs.

We had three birthdays this week!

Here is birthday #1

Here is birthday #2:

Here is birthday #3