We had a great welcome back to school and are jumping into our unit on community helpers: starting with construction workers. How appropriate while we watch our school under construction! We get to learn about the different machinery we see through our viewing window and what kinds of procedures are important when building a school. This gives the children more vocabulary to use and discuss about as they engage in a topic that directly relates to them at their own school, promoting more language development. This week, we brought out some dress-up clothes for the children to role play and build in the block center.

Our families are invited to come and share their jobs as community helpers and extend our lesson to explore the many different occupations.

We had a fun-filled week full of some of our favorite traditions at Central Union!

We visited Santa for classroom pictures and a Christmas story..

We got to feel what it was like to play in 'snow' with our friends and family..

And we made gingerbread houses!

** Special thanks to all of our families who participate in our activities and who help to make them such a big success! 

These activities provide opportunities for growth in all developmental domains, but it is also a fun time for us to celebrate the holiday season!

On Friday, we had an awesome pajama party! It’s a great time to strengthen our social development, interacting with our peers from our room as well as other children in our age level from Rooms 5 and 7.

It gives us a chance to discuss our favorite characters on our pjs, share delicous breakfast foods and cocoa at the table, and enjoy a traditional cartoon story about Frosty the Snowman. We also ate lunch in Parish Hall together, picnic style, which gives the children a change in their routine to challenge their ability to adjust to different settings.

Mrs. Hook also got cozy with us and engaged in our language development by reading us a Christmas book.

Thank you to our mommies who signed up to help us cook the pancakes. The children enhanced their cognitive skills by using science to figure out how much water they needed to mix with the Bisquick powder, to make a nice, fluffy pancake.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! The children enjoyed sharing with you our Thanksgiving day song, the Lord’s Prayer and our sun prayer. They also enjoyed sharing what they were thankful for. Thank you families for coming to our potluck and bringing so much delicous foods! We all had a great time bonding and having fun with you! We were all thankful for the good food and the time we got to share with all our families.

• The Ant and the Grasshopper: A very hardworking ant, Emilie, prepares for winter. She meets a grasshopper. Harper, who is a musician. He likes to play all day and chooses not to help work.

We learned that there is a time to have fun and play, but there’s also a time to work.

• Urashima Taro: An old turtle, Bob, shows his gratitude to Taro by taking him to a magical place under the sea, the Dragon King’s castle. After time passed, he decided he needed to return to his village. The Princess gave him a box and told him never to open it. He returned to find that three hundred years had gone by, he decided to open the box and the years swirled out turning him into an old man.

We learned that it is important to follow directions, and there may be consequences.

• Maui and the Sun: Maui asked his tutu advice about slowing down the sun. He lassoed the sun, began to tickle her with the feather and promised to stop tickling her and would give her pie if she slowed down her trip across the sky each day. She agreed and gave people more daylight.

We learned that kindness can go a long way.

Last week we completed our bulletin of activities for the Life Cycle of the Butterfly!

We decorated our Thanksgiving box with our Room 6 Helping Hands.  Some of the children took it upon themselves to be the “teachers” to help their peers, giving them clear instructions on what to do, and taking turns to initiate the activity as leaders.

As we continue to praise our God during music class, we prepare for our Thanksgiving chapel.
Don’t be surprised if you also hear us practicing Christmas songs as we roll into the holiday season.

We have been discussing and observing our caterpillars for the past week.  We have learned about the life cycle of the butterfly starting as a tiny egg, eating its way to the metamorphosis stage, creating a chrysalis, becoming a beautiful butterfly and laying more eggs to start the process all over again.

The children were able to practice their language skills and speaking in front of their peers to reenact our version of the story of the caterpillar…

Mahalo to our Room 6 family who brought in our caterpillars!

As we get closer to Halloween, we continued to explore and have loads of fun with pumpkins. We did a push-pin art activity to tie in with our book 5 Little Pumpkins. When we pushed enough holes through our paper along a pumpkin tracing, we were able to pop it out of an orange construction paper. Then we glued this pumpkin above popsicle sticks glued together to make a gate, just like the book we read!

- My Little Pumpkin Sitting on a Gate -

Thank you to all the mommies and daddies that could join us to turn the pumpkins they donated into jack-o-lanterns. Some of us were able to draw the design onto the pumpkin; some of us were able to cut out the design, and lots of us were able to scoop out and clean the seeds to be used for future activities and projects.

- From Pumpkins to Jack-O-Lanterns -

Throughout the week we continued to water our pumpkin seeds that we planted last week. By the middle of the week, we noticed how much they had already grown and sprouted! We documented our observations and even used a ruler to measure how tall our tallest pumpkin plant was. We were so glad to take them home!

- Pumpkin Plant Observations -

We also noticed 2 new trucks in the Field of Dreams. We watched from the top of the treehouse as the large fork lift truck brought some supplies into the field!

- And it begins… -

We were able to continue our exploration of seeds and where plants come from by exploring one of the pumpkins recently brought into our classroom. We did all the following activities involving the same pumpkin! We did 1) a still-life pumpkin painting and 2) hammer-and-nails into a pumpkin. Then we cut the pumpkin up into pieces for 3) a pumpkin sensory activity where we sorted, cleaned and dried the seeds to 4) plant pumpkin seeds into soil.

- So much to do with 1 single pumpkin! -

Also this week we tied in our talks of healthy foods with a trip to our local super market. Thank you to all our mommies and daddies that could join us for our walk to our neighborhood Foodland. We noticed all the different sections of the store to find all our healthy foods: fruits and vegetables, seafood, meats, dairy, and the bakery. Thank you to Foodland for sharing apples, oranges and sprinkle cookies with us. We also bought ingredients to make our own vegetable soup. So after snack, we had centers and made soup to add to our lunch from the kitchen.

- Going to Foodland and making and eating Rm. 6 vegetable soup! -

We also had water play with our friends from Room 7! We had a sprinkler to run through, lots of water tubs, lots of water tables filled with different toys to wash, and different containers to practice pouring.

- Water Play Fun !!! -