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Welcome back families! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday break as much as I, but I must say I missed all the kiddos terribly. So, I'm very happy to be back with all the little guys :) Our theme for the month of January is weather. This week we focused on Snowy/Cold weather which was perfect with the cold front that blew through. We started out the week with weather sensory jars filled with snow flakes and talked about cold weather. We created our own snowflakes by squeezing glue into snowflake patterns and then "shake shake shaking" a glitter color of their choice onto their own snowflake. They turned out so cute! We kept the crafts cranking this week and Charlie helped make the greatest coffee filter snowflakes I ever did see! The kids then got to use eye droppers and squeeze blue food coloring onto their snowflakes. This was an excellent craft utilizing their fine motor skills. We then took balloons, dipped them in white paint and stamped them onto construction paper to make our very own snowmen. Lots of fun to kick off our first week back at Green Sprout! Since our weekly Friday dance party was kept inside this week due to the weather, Toni gave a lesson on helium! She always has something up her sleeve to help us learn something new and also have fun while doing it. So after the lesson, each child got a balloon! And who doesn't love a balloon?? Stay warm during this cold weather weekend and we'll see you all on Monday! Best, Jackie
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What a fun filled week we had here at GS! The Christmas crafts and songs were endless this week. And boy did you parents spoil us or what? Everyday we had someone bringing us delicious treats, snacks, coffee, and breakfast food. Can't put into words how much we all appreciated that! Definitely felt the love even more this week. On Monday we created mini stockings. Each child got to choose which material they wanted to decorate theirs. Most chose the cool puffy animal stickers. June especially was fond of the kitties. On Tuesday we made Christmas tree magnets out of multi colored popsicle sticks. Originally they were supposed to be all green but I guess I used those up in the previous week for Hanukkah crafts. So each child painted the popsicle sticks green and got to decorate their tree with "ornaments" using stickers. On Wednesday we created "sugar cookies" using air dry clay. The kids got to roll the pretend dough and then use a cookie cutter to make their very own sugar cookie. Lots of fun! On Thursday we made our special parent gift, the snow globe/mediation jar. Each child got to sprinkle some glitter, pom poms, an snowflakes into their jar. We also made hand print Christmas trees which everyone always enjoys because the paint feels so funny and slimy on their hands. On Friday we celebrated not only our last day before winter break, but also our beloved Arielle leaving Green Sprout. We had our classic Friday dance party and we also made real sugar cookies that we got to decorate and eat after nap time. Rye really got down on these sugar cookies. I think the kids liked the icing the best as is evident in some of the pictures below. I know I mentioned it in the beginning of the blog, but I cannot thank you parents enough for all that you do. You make us feel so very special. Thank you. Have a safe, fun, and relaxing holiday and we will see you in the new year! Much love, Jackie S. 
Good Afternoon Everybody! What a fun week we've had exploring Kwanzaa. On Monday Charlie helped the kiddos create Kwanzaa greeting cards using the festive Kwanzaa colors of red and green. We used wine corks and stamp pads to decorate the cards. On Tuesday we made Nina a Happy Birthday poster. We painted our hands and printed them on her card. A lot of fun! We also made a Kwanzaa countdown chain with red, black and green construction paper. We then glued the paper into circles and connected the circles to make a chain. On Wednesday we colored our Kwanzaa goblets in the morning with different art materials. We then got ready to celebrate Nina's 2nd birthday! We had a VERY special yummy afternoon snack of vegan carrot cake and vanilla cupcakes. Nina's mom also brought in a traditional Brazilian dessert for us to try. Delicious! She had a musician come in and sing songs with us in our backyard along with Arielle doing face paint for the kiddos. Today we have decorated more Kwanzaa pictures and played with the balloons from the party yesterday. We also got to go and play outside and look at the amazing fall colors of the fall foliage. This afternoon we will be having our Chinese class, which is a Green Sprout favorite. Tomorrow we will have our weekly dance party! We will also be harvesting from our garden. A lot to look forward to tomorrow! Have an excellent weekend! Jackie S. Good Morning Families! This week we learned all about Hanukkah (including Charlie and myself)! Our book of the week was "How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?" Forgive me but I cannot remember who brought it. However, this book was by far our favorite one we have read in a while save "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom". We read "How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight" during our morning and afternoon snacks. So thank you to the friend that brought it in to share with us! On Monday we got to get artsy and colored print out Menorahs. On Tuesday we decorated dreidels with whichever art material of their choice. Most of the friends chose stickers and crayons. We had an awesome yoga class as per usual and our pose of the week was Queen. Which essentially is mountain pose. We also practiced our breathing and concentration with the singing bowl. On Wednesday we made hand print Menorahs and then on Thursday we got to light the "candles" with gold glitter glue. They turned out really cute if you are aware that they're supposed to be menorahs and not blue hands with glitter nail polish ;) ;) Friday was so much fun! We got to eat traditional Hanukkah bread called Challah bread. Which I mistakenly was calling it Hollow bread all day yesterday, woops! The kids loved it because number one, it's bread, and number two because it was coated with a sweet yummy glaze. Next week will be all about Kwanzaa! Charlie and I are really excited to learn about it along side the kiddos. Happy Friday Families! This week we had a lot of creative freedom while learning about purple and yellow. We read tons of books, but the highlight for me as well as the kids was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. A classic, thank you Rye! Juliette and Stella brought in some excellent books as well. We started off our week making grapes by dipping corks in purple paint and stamping them on paper. Half the fun was mixing the blue and red paint together. These kiddos love to paint! On Tuesday we created art using Saran Wrap. I squirted various colors of paint onto paper, placed Saran Wrap over it, and taped the edges. The tots got to squish and pat, pat, pat the paint to create some really awesome images. The funniest part was that they were surprised when they looked at their hands and there wasn't any paint on them! Some great sensory, mess free art! I encourage you to all try this project at home, they loved it. On Wednesday Charlie had the kids put purple potatoes on skewers. Hank seemed to really love this project! Most of them tried to snack on the taters which was funny. On Thursday we used the potatoes again, but this time as art! Charlie got a box, put a piece of paper in the bottom, added 2 different colors of paint and a potato, and let the kids shake, shake, shake the box. They loved it! Today we still had our dance party despite the drizzly weather. Nothing can stop our Friday fun! The Austin Fire Department is making a visit this afternoon and I can't wait to see how it goes. I'm sure the kids will be so excited!! Next week we are only open on Monday. Therefore, we will still be doing fun activities and crafts related to colors but will treat it also like a fun Friday. Our theme for December is Community and for the first week we will be focusing on Family. Have a safe and fun Thanksgiving! I look forward to hearing all about it :) Have a beautiful weekend. Love, Jackie Happy Friday Families! This week was all about the colors red and blue. We had a lot of fun with arts, crafts, and sensory activities. On Monday we did some art using our breath through straws. Each child was given a straw and some red and blue paint and blew through the straw to create splatters. Some needed help with the blowing because that is a difficult skill, but the older kiddos did a great job. Those who blow a lot of bubbles at home caught on real quick :) On Tuesday we created a new meditation jar. Each child got a turn to sprinkle some red glitter in the jar and then we got to watch while I put the food coloring in. And everyone got to shake, shake, shake the jar which they loved. We had yoga with Ms. Vanessa, and our pose of the week is the otter pose. On Wednesday we used the red dot markers as stamps to fill in and color our apples. We also had a lot of time to do all sorts of indoor activities such as playdoh cooking, coloring, and lots and lots of stickers! On Thursday we we used a celery heart to create red rose stamps. They turned out really great! The kids loved using nature as art. We had Chinese and learned about transportation. Today has been great so far! We got to spend an hour playing outside this morning which we haven't had the chance to do this week with the cooler weather. As part of our Reggio web, Community, we created and decorated a large white envelope and are writing letters to show our appreciation to mail carriers. The toddlers and pre-tots got to decorate the envelope and the Primary class will be writing/decorating cards to put inside. Next week we are focusing on Yellow and Purple (my favorite). We've LOVED reading all the books our friends have been bringing in, thank you! And I want to say we appreciate and are so grateful for everything you guys do. See you all this afternoon, Jackie S. Greetings Families! For the month of November we are focusing on Colors. We started the first week off with Black and White. As we introduced a new Montessori puzzle, the Primary house, we decided to use that as our theme. So on Monday as we gave the tots their first lesson on the house, we decided to create and decorate our own little black and white houses. We pasted black and white tissue paper to our little houses in the afternoon. On Tuesday we used our black and white "fun" box (a crate with items from around the school with different purposes that are black and white) and did some fine motor skill work with little fuzz balls and containers that they practiced putting the balls in. On our rained in Wednesday we did a little bit of everything! Charlie and I really enjoyed this opportunity to get to be creative and do many activities in small groups with the kiddos. We split them up into groups of 4 and worked on our Montessori work while one group had free play. We then switched multiple times and did some art and Playdoh projects. They really seemed interested in making them into little balls (with a little assistance). Also, Hank loved making his into waffles with our rolling pin. On Thursday we introduced some books brought in from our friend Rye. We read My Very First Book of Colors (thank you Rye!). We also did a black and white painting project with large foam brushes. I noticed a lot of the kids like to paint their hands (still very sensory based!), so perhaps we will get into some finger painting this week :) This next week we will be focusing on the colors red and blue. So please as always feel free to bring in any items that you think may enhance our learning. We ALWAYS appreciate it! Much love, Jackie Happy Halloween friends, We had such a exciting week with our little ghouls and goblins. We did an extension on our Fall theme and Halloween. Monday we were excited to open up our class pumpkin and investigate its insides. Jackie and I thought the tulips would be more excited to play with the pumpkin insides, but they declared that it was messy and gross. Tuesday we were lucky enough to get a gourd and were way more interested in the inner workings of that. Wednesday we took our seeds from the gourd and pumpkin and planted them in our garden. Thursday Jackie organized a really awesome crafty craft gluing our leftover pumpkin seeds to a awesome outline of a paper pumpkin. Also that afternoon we got to practice our fork skills because Colette brought us a beautiful spaghetti squash. Finally we got to share our awesome costumes today on the playground. Hank dressed as a greaser! Colette was little Red Riding-hood. Rye came as a UPS man. Nina as a beautiful flamica dancer. Stella came as super hero designed by her loving brother Eliot. Ozzie as a scary skeleton, and finally Austin as the most cuddling dinosaur ever! I hope that all my Pre Tots and parents enjoy a very fun and fantastic Halloween! Love Jackie and Charlie. Hey Friends, We had such an amazing week. As many of you know our theme was Fall, and the parents did not disappoint with book contributions. Rye brought an excellent book about a curious fox. So we read that one at least twice. Our little Tulips really enjoy sharing books from home with all our friends, so keep up the good work. This seemed like such a great week for crafts so i hope alot of parents enjoy the masterpieces crafted by the Tulips. I know Rye and Hank came out with some pretty unique leaf paintings. Jackie made apple stamps and the Tulips enjoyed mixing fall colors and stamped away. Though they had to fight the urge to eat the apples but for the sake of art they managed. Yoga was particularly interesting with our guest star yogi supreme who somehow can encourage reading while showing off her awesome yoga moves. I am always amazed at how much all our little Tulips stay engaged for yoga. I would also encourage all the parents to celebrate your little tulips joy for Yoga and ask them to show you a couple of moves. Nina happens to be a great practicer of yoga as she is always trying her best while still wearing a great smile. Spanish this week is all about transportation. Whenever we see a plane flying by I hear Austin say, "avion" which means plane. So quiz your tulip at home cause you never know what words they will use. Yesterday we enjoyed a visit from our Chinese teacher, she as always is fantastic with the kids and keeps our attention (yes, teachers too) very well. I am very proud of our Tulips for picking up what they can from Ms. Sugi. Im hoping to find some links to the songs that Ms. Sugi sings so that maybe you proud Tulips parents can reinforce chinese at home. Prepare yourselves for the up coming week because we are going sensory on our theme and I don't want to ruin the surprise. Thanks again for such a great week. Keep up the great work parents. Love Jackie and Charlie!! |
AuthorJackie and Dom, Green Sprout Pre-Tot Guides Archives
January 2015
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