Dear Parents,
This week, we continued working on our family orange tree. The
children helped make the branches by working in pairs to twist long
pieces of brown paper. We talked about how many are in a pair, and
other things that come in pairs.
Everyone helped cut green paper into leaves. We also cut up the green
paper we painted last week after reading Little Blue and Little
Yellow. We glued the leaves to the branches before adding them to our
tree. The tree is growing nicely, beside the sign-in board.
We looked for pictures of an orange tree in our many tree books. We
found apple trees galore, a peach tree, and a pear tree, but no orange
trees. We ate clementines and looked at the picture of the clementine
tree on the bag. We noticed that its leaves are green. We sang Oh My
Darlin' Clementine and everyone used their fine motor skills to peel
the clementines. We saved our peels to dry out and use at a later
date.
On Friday we compared an orange and a clementine. The children noticed
their size difference, using our sense of sight. When we passed around
the peels and used our sense of touch, they noticed a difference in
the way they felt too. We used our sense of taste and ate the oranges
for snacks. Someone said they smell like oranges!
We mixed two colors of paint for our fruit, for the orange family
tree. We also looked at our group picture in front of our tree in the
yard; fall tree vs summer tree. The class noticed the different
colored leaves. That’s a lot of tree talk.
Next week we will make butter, sweet potatoes, and corn muffins for
the family feast. The feast happens on Wednesday at 11:15 am. It will
begin with each child and their family putting their fruit onto our
tree.
As always, it is truly a pleasure to get to share with y'all the
progress of your offspring at our conferences.
Thanks for all the family photos! We need seven more. We are planning
on gluing them Monday. (Smiley face)
Have a great weekend,
Therese
Tree Sculptures
Dear Everybody,
This week the children worked on holiday gift sculptures using our
Christmas tree stumps. They stacked, glued, painted, and added
sparkles.
We talked about getting and giving gifts during this season and who we
might want to give our gifts to. One person said since their brother
was probably already getting lots of gifts, and their parents weren’t,
they were going to give it to their parents.
Our trip to La Bagel Delight was short and sweet. The bagel baker told
us that the water they boil the bagels in is 650 degrees and the oven
is 450 degrees. He told us there was one person who rolls all the
bagels by hand! After we saw our bagels go in the oven we decided to
go play in the yard.
We read In Our Home, and an all time favorite, No David! We asked the
children what David was doing in the pictures that was causing his
mama to say “No!” We asked why don’t we play ball in the house? We
noticed how some of David’s house rules were the same as our school
rules.
Next week we will use our dried orange, mandarin, tangerine, and
clementine peels to create a potpourri to give as gifts.
We will also make gingerbread men cookies. Families are invited for
cookies and milk on Friday, December 21st at 11:30am.
Have a festive weekend,
Therese