SHOW AND TELL
Bring a thing to keep you warm
Topic: Polar Regions
How people and animals adapt to the cold.
The value we’ll be studying is courage, which is to be able to think clearly to get yourself out of a dangersous situation.
For ecology, we’ll learn how people use the things in their environment for living.
Outside, we’ll have an Eskimo Olympics.
The songs we’ll be singing are Frosty the Snowman, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, Red River Valley, Home on the Range, and John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt.
For creative dramatics, we’ll act out Why Mr. Fox Has a Red Coat.
Our art activities will be polarscape, paper bag mukluks, whale tooth necklaces, and aurora borealis pictures.
For motor development, we’ll work on stamina with running, jumping jacks, and sit ups. For vestibular function, we’ll spin and hop, in and out of the window, and blindfold bowling.
FUN
Fun, to a young child, is more than just an occasional interlude – it is his whole life. It is the child’s way of trying different approaches to situations in his life. For the tiny child, it’s a way of learning skills, and it organizes cognitive thinking. For the older child who is engaged in imaginative or exploratory play, it’s a way of developing abstract thinking and facing risks. For children involved in cooperative play, it’s a way of developing negotiation and socialization skills.
At all levels, it’s a way of thinking in different patterns, of training our brains to develop new synaptic connections. Albert Einstein did it when he played the violin or imagined that he was riding on a light beam. Winston Churchill did it when he painted landscapes or built brick walls. You can tap into this same energy by allowing your child’s delight be a second chance for you to enrich your own life. In the Japanese culture, the experience of muga is that ability of being able to focus fully on one thing at a time. In our culture, we refer to a peak experience and the emphasis on being rather than on becoming or doing. Children are natural geniuses at living life in a present-moment, peak-experience mode.
Allow a lot of time for fun and for celebrating the present moment. Be spontaneous. Forget about being so grownup and re-learn to watch what your little child watches, to find joy in simple things. Instead of trying to calm down his excited response, try to feel as he is feeling and to see as he is seeing. When you go for a walk, allow your child to wander and watch the fascinating things happening on his level. Do spur-of-the-moment things with your child. Lie on your back and watch the clouds together. Roll down a hill. Make paper boats and sail them in the gutter after a rain. Pop popcorn without the lid on. (Place the popper on a clean sheet in the middle of the floor first.) Play games that have an element of surprise in them such as hide and seek or musical chairs where everyone ends up on the same single chair. Use rhyming words and name games to encourage creativity.
Remember that a child who is never noisy or dirty is probably missing out on a lot of fun, and that goes for mom and dad, too!
On the Calendar
Pajama/Teddy Bear Day – The holidays get so hectic that a sudden let-down afterward can be a bummer. Therefore, let us have fun with pajama day on Friday, Jan. 08. We’ll all come to school in our pj’s bring a stuffed animal and have a cozy day in the mid-winter. Please remember that we’ll still be outside, so your child will need proper shoes and a coat.
Newsletter – If you would like to get our weekly newsletter sent to you via email you can send can your request to MMGS737@AOL.COM Martin Luther King Holiday – The school will be closed Monday, Jan. 18, in honor of a man who took a stand against the status quo.
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