During small group time this month the children enjoyed threading small red, green and “crystal” beads onto pipe cleaners, which they then bent into candy cane or  circle shapes.   This activity requires persistence and patience on the children’s part, and for the teachers it provides a good opportunity to assess fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination.   Many children also experimented with color sequence and patterning. We hope you enjoy hanging the results on your Christmas tree! 

The children continue to practice social skills in the dramatic playroom.  The grocery store last month was a huge hit with all!  For the month of December the room has been turned into a real, live nativity scene, with the children dressing the parts of Mary, Joseph, the three Kings, many angels, and shepherds with stuffed sheep.  We have built a wooden stable, draped in brown sheets.  They are really enjoying learning about the day Jesus was born, and then acting it out.   

Along with our live nativity, we also have nativity puppets, a plastic nativity set, a flannel nativity scene for our flannel board, and two fabric nativity sets, spread throughout the school for the children to play with.  There are also two small Christmas trees and a bag of ornaments available to the children.  They love decorating the trees together, over and over again. 

This month as we talked about community workers, the children pretended they were carpenters.  Using a block of wood and wearing safety goggles, they were able to hammer nails into the wood.  This activity  strengthens fine motor muscles and also promotes social skills as the children are conversing about the activity.  Then they enjoyed gluing foam pieces and craft sticks to the wood.   

The children are currently busy and having fun making a special holiday gift for you that they will wrap up themselves using tissue paper and tape (not an easy task!).   When we return from vacation, the children will be using an eye dropper filled with white paint to make their own creations. 

We ended the month of November with the children learning about static electricity.  They got to experiment with the properties of static electricity using foam trays, styrofoam peanuts, plastic tubes and plastic spoons.  They rubbed the foam trays against their hair and then used the tray to pick up as many foam peanuts as they could, or tried sticking the plastic trays to the wall.  They even tried to get their hair to stand up!  The plastic spoons were used to scoop peanuts into the plastic tubes.  That was easier said than done, as the peanuts would stick to the spoon and the sides of the tube!  The children found them sticking to their fingers and clothing too.  They also enjoyed breaking the peanuts into small pieces, and watching them stick all over themselves!