My Boston bean has sprouted...now watch her grow!: Last bits of Fall

Week of November 17, 2014

We Are Thankful for Our Families!

Last week, we talked about our families! Ms. Katie and I brought in pictures of our families, and the children shared about theirs. Come check out our new class book in the library, including pictures of your families (drawn by the students) and their descriptions!

This week, we will learn about the Thanksgiving holiday! We will review the concept of thankfulness, saying thank you to God for all the things He gives us and does for us. We will talk about holidays – that they are a time to celebrate with family! We will also talk about different ways that families like to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States - with turkeys, parades, sharing a meal, prayer, or even football!

Some of the vocabulary we will introduce and review this week includes autumn, fall, season, harvest, family, Thanksgiving, thankful, turkey, feather, gobble, and beak!

In addition to the teacher's newsletter, once a month Emma's music teacher does a newsletter too. Emma goes to music class every Wednesday and I have a feeling it is a highlight of her school day. Here are the past two newsletters from her music teacher:

Music, Month of October

The Music classes have gotten off to a very smooth start in our new classroom space. With our wide open area, we are able to move to the beat freely and enjoy our music time with a variety of different props.

Your child has played the A and D resonator bells, danced with scarves, and enjoyed our jingles.

We have been singing "Go Round the Mountain" and "Roly Poly."

In addition to new songs, we also have been singing the old favorites such as "Twinkle Twinkle," "Old MacDonald" and the "ABC Song."

We continue to enjoy keeping the beat with our small rhythm instruments and listening to the ukelele.

Music, Month of November

Our music classes continue to be more and more fun. I have introduced many of our props such as our colored scarves, our jingle bells and recently our rhythm sticks.

The students have learned "The Workshop Chant" and we have sung "Clap, Clap, Clap Your Hands" both using our rhythm sticks.

We will learn "I have ten little fingers" which is a finger play and we have danced to BINGO with our colorful circle band.

We will also learn "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" which I accompany on ukelele.

Here are the pictures her teacher recently posted. Patrick and I have tried to guess which description of the pumpkin is from Emma and it is kind of a head scratcher for us. Our top guesses are "smells yucky", "feels yucky", or "big, big, big!"

No surprise seeing Emma at the puzzle table. We recently pulled out our puzzles at home and she flies through them now at an amazingly fast pace.

I went to my second Chapel and this time came prepared with my camera. It was really fun to watch Emma sing and dance along with Ms. Stephanie.

Emma is upfront in the white hair bow… as close as she can get to the stage.

Emma and William dragged their parents to a Laurie Berkner concert a couple weekends ago. We had to keep the two party animals in line!

Paying tribute at the Veterans Day Parade.

Ms. Stepanie showed me a picture of Emma using a magnifying glass in the classroom so I was a little more prepared when Emma acted like a professional scientist at the Museum of Science this past weekend.