Sunday, February 26, 2012

Chicago Opera House

Presenting..."CinderHood"



We were honored to have a home-town native who is now a member of the Chicago Opera House visit us for a fabulous presentation of their original children's production of "CinderHood"... the wacky, interactive story of Cinderella that is "briefly interrupted" by Little Red Riding Hood.

The munchkins loved it!

And they loved being able to have their photo taken after the performance with the cast.


Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.

Grandparents' Day

Entertaining Someone Special


We so enjoy having a day set aside when all our special VIPs can come visit our school, see what kindergarten is all about and have a chance to enjoy a snack together.  It's always a very special morning full of fun and love!

This year was no exception.

We showed Grandma our daily writing board...










And read with her in the Reading Center...


We showed Grandpa our writing journals, being sure to read him every page!


And read the pocket chart poem with the whole clan!


We showed off all our Montessori trays...


We also posed for pictures, just for fun...










And we even spent some time with Mommy, if Grandma & Grandpa couldn't come...











Thanks so much for visiting everyone!

Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.

Happy Birthday Munchkin!

Happy Un-Birthday to You!

Summertime birthdays are fun to celebrate anytime!!



Our Lady of Lourdes

I Am the Immaculate Conception


During February, we take a day to celebrate Our Lady and learn all about the little girl, Bernadette, who was so beautifully blessed with visions of Mary at Lourdes.  I was excited this year to be able to show the munchkins some Holy
Water from Lourdes, as my niece made a pilgrimage there recently.

We read the story of Bernadette and created some fun projects to help us remember this feast day...

This one is a little stick grotto with blue jewels for the spring and a lovely holy card of Mary and Bernadette.





And this one was a paper grotto with an image of Mary that the munchkins colored themselves, using the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes from our Atrium as a model (right down to the yellow roses on her feet!).


We decided to write in our journals about Mary and Bernadette this year and the entries were wonderful.  The illustrations were just a beautiful!


I love the detail!


Some of the munchkins continued to think about Bernadette and Mary during their free time at centers too...

This is the first time I've seen a Marian grotto created from pattern blocks at the math center!  Very creative and so inspired!


Do you see Mary?

Our snack for this special day was lots of fun too (especially those that actually stayed standing!)


Like these...


Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!

Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.






Sunday, February 19, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!

Celebrating St. Valentine

Many of the munchkins are surprised to hear the word "saint" in front of "Valentine's Day", as many times we forget that this holiday is in honor of a wonderful bishop and martyr of our church.  So, to make this more memorable, we spent a week dedicated to the saint, as well as some traditional, fun Valentine's Day activities.

We had a couple of lovely coloring pages of St. Valentine, along with stories of his life.  This included the story explaining the reason why we send cards that are signed with his name.











We made a beautiful tile mosaic project that included an image of St. Valentine and a simple writing about him on the back.












The munchkins also created a pretty little box with a St. Valentine prayer and an image on him inside.  This was packed with "kisses" (chocolate ones, of course) for someone special at home.











Then munchkins also had fun with a cute little project for our front windows.  They ordered the words of "Jesus Loves Me" while ordering hearts of ascending sizes.  Cute!











We enjoyed an afternoon fair sharing (dividing) candy hearts and then graphing how many of each color we ended up with...











The munchkins also played fun center games in their free time.










Everyone had a blast creating a fun heart-person as a mailbox for all the Valentine cards they would receive at our classroom party.











And even more fun opening all the cards that were inside once the "mail" was delivered!











One last treat?
An edible St. Valentine card!

Yum!










St. Valentine, Pray for Us!

Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.

Snow Everywhere!

Let It Snow!


Now that we're well into February, it's past time to get my last January post in! 

We always have so many ways to celebrate and enjoy the winter weather during our January unit focusing on snow.  Here's a bit of what we did this year...

We read Jan Brett's The Mitten and created our own mitten / characters to retell the story. 











Then we created our own version of the story, adding animals to the mitten in our story, until...Oh, no!


"A (an) egle (eagle) is in my mitten."


"A dog is in my mitten."


"A plump pig is in my mitten."


"Oh no!"


We continued with literacy activities by creating a mini-book about colored mittens, which helped us focus on the color words we've been working so hard on lately.


 








Our math skills for this unit focused on measuring and symmetry, so...

We measured mittens using many different non-standards units and then with a ruler.  We discussed why it was so important to have a ruler and use a standard unit of measure rather than anything we wanted!




















As for symmetry, we created Jan Brett borders.  Jan Brett's illustrations are so wonderful and the munchkins absolutely love finding the symmetry in each on.  They loved making their own just as much. 










After creating the border, we added a "beginning, middle and end" mitten to the center to retell the story in our own words.  The munchkins did a fantastic job composing their own sentences, using sight words, kinder-spelling and proper punctuation.


And, of course, we had a fun recipe! 
We made mittens using bread and butter and whatever decorations we could find to make them interesting. 

Some of our munchkins even ended up with a perfect pair!



Our mitten unit was a great way to work through winter!

Until next time...
Giggles,
Mrs. D.