Preschool Update

Just in case anyone was wondering - yes, we're still here!

Last week was a short week for everyone around here - Monday was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and on Tuesday, everyone had the day off for the Inauguration (we live in a large suburb of Washington, DC, so schools and many businesses were closed).

We met on Wednesday, but I didn't get any pictures. Miss K's Circle Time theme was The Mitten by Jan Brett. Amazon's description sums up the book well:

A Ukrainian boy named Nicki wants his grandmother Baba to knit snow-white mittens for him. She warns her grandson that a white mitten will be hard to find if he loses it in the snow, but of course he promptly does just that! What happens next is the surprising part, as a mole takes refuge in the lost mitten, then a rabbit, then a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, and a fox. If you think the mitten might be a wee bit stretched out at this point, just wait: "Then a big bear sniffed at the mitten. The animals were packed in tight, but the bear didn't care. He crawled in anyway." When a tiny mouse squeezes in, her whiskers tickle the bear's nose. He sneezes, and "Aaaaa-aaaaa-ca-chew!" all the animals fly out of their crocheted cave. As the mitten sails through the air, Nicki spots it, reclaims it, and takes it home to show his smiling Baba.

Miss K read the book to the kids and then used it as a way to introduce the concept of estimating. She showed the kids four different sized mittens, and then they each took turns estimating how many little balls would fit into each mitten (the largest held 16, the smallest held 3).

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K led the kids in this activity, in which they colored the different animals from The Mitten, cut them out, and then pasted them into a mitten.

We closed with the P verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God." Psalm 147:1

This week will be short as well, if we meet at all. Yesterday, my family was recovering from the stomach flu, and today the whole town has pretty much shut down as a result of our first official snowfall of the year (for real this time ;). Our area doesn't handle snow and ice all that well, so our outlook for tomorrow is tentative, at best. In the meantime, I've been working on some new stuff for the classroom, which I'll try to post about soon.

Thanks to all of you for your supportive comments and emails! If you've emailed me, be on the lookout for a reply soon, and if you've left a comment, thanks and keep 'em coming!! :)