SHOW AND TELL
Bring a thing that keeps you warm.
Topic: Polar Regions
How people live in the extreme coldThe value is courage, which means that you can deal with things that are dangerous, difficult, or painful.
For cooking we’ll make Eskimo ice cream and explore jerky.
Outside we’ll have Eskimo Olympic games.
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.
Our art activities are inukshuk, aurora borealis, mittens, and mukluks.
Creative dramatics is How Mr. Fox Got His Red Coat.
For body development, we’ll work on stamina with jumping jacks, running, and skating. For motor development we’ll do vestibular function exercises with tossing the die, spinning basketball, and in and out the window.
NOTHING TO DO
Unscheduled, unstructured time – a rare commodity in today’s hectic society – is a gift to our children. This article is from Working Mother magazine. “Think back to your childhood. Chances are you can remember times when you had nothing more important to do than sit on the lawn and watch a grasshopper munch his way through a blade of grass or lying on your back watching clouds rolling past. Once upon a time, childhood seemed like an endless stretch of time, made just for daydreaming and exploring. That’s no longer true for most kids. As our lives have become busier, so have theirs. After a few decades of watching kids’ lives become increasingly structured and organized, child-development experts have come to believe that most could benefit from more time with nothing to do. What’s good about downtime?
- It gives them time to get creative. A child staring into space is accomplishing a lot. The brain’s incredible process of organizing and analyzing information needs time. Kids use what looks like downtime to sort through what they’ve learned. This cannot happen in front of a TV.
- It keeps them from burning out. Today’s kids are exhausted from being over structured. They need solitude and time to drift and find their own answers – not to be told what they should do next. Most kids don’t know when enough’s enough, so it’s up to parents to strike a balance. How can you tell? Kids get irritable and cranky. When everything is a struggle, you know it’s time for a change of pace.
- It helps them find themselves. Let kids be free to explore without the pressure of measuring up to somebody else’s expectations. If you send you kids outside to take a walk, you’re encouraging them to see what they’re interested in seeing, not something that an adult has told them to look for.
- It means we’re meeting their needs, not ours. There’s nothing wrong with helping a child develop a natural talent, but parenting has become a competitive sport. We need to clarify our own values, rather than allow ourselves and our families to be swept up in society’s high-pressure race to the finish line. It’s not easy. Saying “no” takes courage. We have to be able to say that living a balanced life is better than playing hockey.
- It shows we value them the way they are. Overdoing the extracurricular stuff can give our kids the message “There’s something wrong with you. Otherwise you wouldn’t need so much enrichment.” Constantly pushing practice and telling them they can do better adds to the notion that we’re set on improving them. When we just enjoy each other’s company, it shows kids we appreciate them, not for their successes, but for themselves.” That’s a most wonderful gift.
For Your Information
Martin Luther King Holiday – We’ll be closed on Monday, Jan. 21, in honor of a person who stood up for equality and justice for all people.
Purse Thieves – Our parking lot sees plenty of non-school related traffic sometimes it’s used as a U-turn, many times people pull over to talk on their phones, or so it seems, please remember that thieves know you’re distracted when you’re dropping off your little one. There was another incident at another pre-school when a mother locked the car door, but left her purse in full view. A broken window and a missing purse later, she knows it only takes seconds to really ruin your day.
CLASSROOM NEWS
In the toddler class Michael spends some of his time working with the color sorting work. After snack and lunch Michael enjoys helping by sweeping and moping the floor. Due to the rain the students stayed inside and had a long time with the afternoon work. These material although not considered Montessori they have value in the classroom. The afternoon work is made up of deck of cards, board games, puzzles, building blocks and more. While at work the students in the primary class were able to focus for a long period of uninterrupted time and some of their creations were so amazing that they wanted to show their parents. You can see the pictures on our Facebook page with the pajama’s day pictures. After getting most of the answer correct in a word game Evan proclaims “I’m getting real good at this”, ‘I am learning.” The joy is the display of confidence.
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