Turkeys
November feels like a short month. There has been a day off each week since we started. The first Monday we had a surprise visitor in our classroom. It was Mrs. Reiss! Our orange and green classes joined together and Mrs. Reiss came in to read us the story, “Lots of Lights”. It is about Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. The children then made a picture of diyas which are little oil lamps. .
The children love our surprise circle time visitors. These visitors really made the children laugh with their antics. Mr. Potato would just roll and fall down and our Dingle Dangle scarecrow could not sit still.
Last week when we went to the playground we found piles and piles of leaves. The children were thrilled. They jumped in to the leaves, tossed them in the air, ran through them, kicked them…..they was so much joy and laughter in doing these simple things. Even though the weather is getting chilly we love to spend time outside. We are so lucky to have such a fantastic playground.
This week our class learned how to use scissors. Using scissors is a developmental milestone for preschoolers and it takes lots and lots of practice. The first thing we did was to exercise our hands. Open and shut them a few times. The next step was to keep palms facing up, then our thumbs up again, and then open and close our hands a few more times. It is hard on the their little hands but it does help to strengthen the fine motor muscles. The next step was the scissors. We spoke about using the scissors safely which includes holding them correctly and always keep the thumbs up of both hands. The first skill is snipping or fringing. We snipped a number of paper feathers for our turkey. The next step will be to cut a straight line and eventually we will move on to different shapes.
Yesterday we baked apple crisp for our snack. A few of the children got the chance to cut apple slices into smaller pieces. Safety is always our priority and the children used plastic knives under teacher supervision. Cooking is often the highlight in our classroom especially birthday cupcakes! We have already celebrated two birthdays this month.
The children also did Yoga this week during music class with Miss Wada. We soared like eagles, stretched likes giraffes, swayed like elephants, were playful like monkeys and finally balanced like strong trees. Music by Edvard Grieg “Peer Gynt - Morning Mood”. The link is below: