Gingerbread Season
It is that time of year when Gingerbread boys and Gingerbread smells fill MWS. Mid-week a few of the many gingerbread boy items started to appear in the classroom and many more will appear next week. There are many, many versions of the Gingerbread Boy story and we will continue to read a number of them. On Monday and Tuesday the children worked together to make one large piece of art. On Monday everyone painted a large piece of brown paper. It was fun to watch them all painting at the same time. On Tuesday, they used glue to attach shapes of many colors and shiny metallic paper pieces. When completed, it hung on our bulletin board. Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Reiss thought it was the perfect backdrop for a gingerbread house. After I had left on Thursday, she turned our class project into a beautiful gingerbread house. Friday morning I came into the classroom as usual, hung up my bag and started getting ready. Mrs Reiss was waiting for my reaction. She had to tell me to look around before I actually looked at the wall. And what a surprise I had! It’s amazing how people are able to look at the same things and see them so differently. She was able to see the beginnings of a gingerbread house and I saw a painted picture with shapes. I wonder how long it will take the children on Monday to notice it.
Some of the choices in the classroom this week were:
This week the Big Room had an obstacle course set out by Mrs. Reiss. The children enjoyed practicing their balancing skills as they walked over the steps, walked or hopped through the circles, etc. All of the children spent times going around it multiple times, and some children spent the entire time in the Big Room going around it. All that practice gave them a lot of confidence to master the skills.
We had eaten half of the Gingerbread Boy before I remembered to take a photograph. While the Gingerbread Boy was baking in the oven, the teachers kept walking in and out of the classroom leaving the door open. It was quite a morning with the children monitoring the doors and rushing to shut them so our Gingerbread Boy wouldn’t run away. However, when I removed the cover from the tray when it was time for snack, he was gone! Mrs. Dotivala had to run as fast as she could to catch him. We are so lucky that she caught the Gingerbread Boy in the parking lot (at least that’s the story that you may have heard). We ate his legs right away so he couldn’t run away again.
In our Tuesday Music Class with Mrs. Wada we continue to learn dances of the Nutcracker. This week we danced to the music of the Russian Dance (Candy Cane dancers) using tambourines, the Spanish or Chocolate dance, Mother Ginger dance, and the March. In our Movement Class, we had two new songs using bells, along with a selection of our regular rotation of songs.
