It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We began to pull out our Christmas decorations today...
The children were over the roof excited to help decorate the room.

We started by opening these new nativity scene, which was a great opportunity for Mr.Tooshkenig to tell the children the Christmas story.

I think someone forgot to tell these girls that we were decorating the room... not ourselves!

Here's a little reminder from Mr.Tooshkenig on how NOT to store your Christmas decorations unless you enjoy lots and lots of untangling! :)

 

The children were so proud to decorate and are now asking when we can go get a Christmas tree, we will have to wait a little though as I don't believe the stores have the real ones yet. Some children thought we could cut one of the trees in Adventure Playground down but we'll have to discourage that!

 

Mrs.Thiele

Fort building

Today some of the children had an awesome idea.
They wanted to build a fort. At first the fort was not working because every time they pulled on one side the other side would fall.
"it's not big enough" someone finally said

We then laid out all of our blankets on top of each other trying to measure which one was the biggest.
"I think the green ones bigger cause look" pointing to the corners sticking out from under another blanket.
After all our measuring we realized none of the blankets would be big enough for their idea. Luckily an old curtain that we store away was more than big enough.

We used clothes pins to hold up the blankets.

More blankets were added as carpets, and door ways. Pillows were added for comfort and of course the baby dolls made their way into the fort as well.

Ta-Da! We did it!

 

This fort building project allowed us to share our ideas, work on cooperation, practice our awareness of sizes and measuring all while playing!

 

Mrs.Thiele

Happy Remembrance Day

Today one of our families thoughtfully supplied us with a Remembrance Day Craft.
We are thankful for all the sacrifices that have been made so that we are able to live in a safe, and peaceful country.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
- John McCrae

Mrs.Thiele

Miss.Sonja's jamming

After being asked by the children in XP about a million times, I was finally able to book Miss.Sonja for an afternoon. The children had huge smiles on their faces as they sang and danced along. We learnt about fast beats versus slow beats and loud singing versus quiet singing in this session. When Miss.Sonja asked the children which they preferred they loudly answered "LOUD AND FAST!"

We are looking forward to her next visit in December!

 

Mrs.Thiele

Puzzled

This group of 5 children spent 20 minutes working on this tough puzzle. It took concentration, perseverance, and a lot of team work to get this huge puzzle finished but in the end the feeling of pride and accomplishment was worth every minute.

 

Mrs.Thiele

Swat

Mr.Reyes (one of our school-age staff) started a program last year called the "Swat" program. This program has school-age children come and visit the pre-school children's rooms to play with younger children and help out the teachers. This program benefits the older children who learn responsibility and organizational skills, the younger children who learn good play habits from their older, cool role-models, and the teachers who get a little break and are able to spread out their attention.

 

Thank you Mr.Reyes for your awesome program.

We here in XP are loving it.

 

Mrs.Thiele

Happy Halloween

Yesterday was Halloween. If your child allowed me to, I took their picture by our little toadstools. Check out our awesome costumes.

Then we had a wild dance party with glow sticks.

It was such a fun dance party that Flex came to join!

Thanks to everyone who brought snack items to our potluck. After snack we played "hide the pumpkin" and "pumpkin ring toss" with Ms.Lyss

What a great and fun day!

Mrs.Thiele