Valentines and Friendship

"What is friendship?" The friendly frogs pondered over this important question this week as the children shared some ideas about what being a good friend meant to them. Then Mrs. Mundell introduced a variety of kitchen utensils and measuring tools. Of course some of these were already very familiar to them since preparing for our big Thanksgiving feast in November and making batches of play-dough.

Next the boys and girls decided on their own recipe for friendship which included ingredients such as "6 melon scoopfuls of love," "3 whiskfuls of holding hands with me in line," or  "100 tablespoons of saying kind words!" These recipes were also transformed in to beautiful heart collages as they pretended to add each ingredient by gluing different sizes and colors of hearts and doilies to a large heart that they cut out themselves.

The children have also been busy this week drawing their self-portraits using crayon as their medium. After the class decided on the steps of how Mrs. Mundell would draw her self-portrait, the boys and girls couldn't wait to draw their own.

In Music class with Mrs. McIvor, the children are learning about the violin. After learning the important parts of this string instrument each child will have an opportunity to play it themselves.

We attended an all school pep rally this week and really got in the spirit!

Alpha students have grown very close to their 4th grade patrols that have the important job of bringing them to their classrooms each morning. On Thursday they were so tickled to see them on stage in the incredible performance of "We Haz Jazz!"

Building, building, building........ structures of magnet shape blocks

and designing a city with unit blocks to include a grocery, hospital, grocery and even a zoo!

 We had an exciting experience with our frog of the day, as he demonstrated how to use his rainbow stick!

In Exploring on Friday decorating our Valentine bags with heart prints of beautiful pastels of pink, turquoise and lavender was really a treat!

After choosing from a variety of heart cut-outs and doilies, the children used paint rollers to make heart prints on  a large banner. It was quite tricky, as they used their fingers to keep their heart in place while rolling over it with paint and then how fun to see all of the details in their prints!

The children practiced numeral recognition and counting with one to one correspondence, as they pulled a number from the basket and climbed the rungs of the ladder to match their number. After making their way to the top of the ladder, they rescued an animal from the doll house and hopped all of the way back down!

Some practiced making one to one correspondence and fine motor control as they transfered small triangle pattern blocks into larger triangular shape molds.

After helping Ms. Fenech and Ms. Wiltshire make pink and white pancakes the children used cookie cutters to make hearts.

Then they exchanged hearts with a friend to make a friendship pancake.

Finally they spread a little butter on top and added some syrup, before enjoying their yummy snack!

Important Dates to Remember:

2/5 Field trip to Coast Guard
2/7 Parent Conference Day
2/8 No Exploring
2/14 Valentine's Day Party
2/15 Professional Day/ No School
2/18 President's Day Holiday