Giving Thanks

                         Today we celebrated  Thanksgiving with our 4 year old preschool class.  

We worked hard last week and prepared a little thank you gift for our parents.  

The table was set...

and the food was lovingly prepared.

The children made the menu themselves!

At the top of the list was spaghetti, hot wings, corn, beans, cookies, punch, fruit and lots more. 

Truthfully, the only things requested that we didn't provide were the strawberry soup and peach oatmeal. 

For a craft, we worked together to make our own turkeys.

If you think that no 2 snowflakes are the same, you should see our turkeys!

Each child listed what they were thankful for and we helped them write it on the turkeys feathers.

Our list ranged from collards to "the safety of the sharks".  You really do have to love their sweet spirits.

I am thankful for all of these sweet babies!

Our party host and hostesses did a wonderful job.

Time to go!

As we found our place to sit, we got to color on the tablecloth!

This makes waiting SO much easier.

We shared a blessing together,

and enjoyed all of the delicious food.

We ended the party with a do-it-yourself turkey rice crispy treat.  

Yum!

The most exciting part of the day was when Ms. Kia joined us for lunch!

She is the librarian that works with us each month.  Last week the children invited her by mouth to attend.  Yesterday we made it official with a hand-written invitation.  

It went like this...

Ms. Kia, you are beautiful.  We love you.

Will you come to our feast?

We are having spaghetti and hot wings.

We hope to see you soon!

We were so excited that she could attend.  Thank you Ms. Kia for being so special to our boys and girls!

Thanks!

Last week we got to celebrate Thanksgiving early with our precious, too-cute-for-words, 2 year old preschool class.  If giving thanks with these little ones won't put you in the holiday spirit, nothing will!

We started our day exploring with feathers and play-doh.

We also worked with our family manipulatives.

Finally, we used the computer to learn a finger-play, 5 Little Turkeys.

Then it was time to eat. 

The theme for our party was "Thank You".  

What a wonderfully simple way to teach young children about this special tradition of gathering with friends and family to say, "Thank You".

Each child's place-mat featured a picture of themselves with the word thank you written in one of many languages.  F's says thank you in Chinese.  

We got to wear traditional Native American jewelry that was shared with us by a family member.

After our delicious snack, we took off on a turkey hunt.  

Look who caught the turkey!

As they left, each child got to take home a flower to plant. 

Hope your Thanksgiving is as happy as ours was!

Time to Set the Table

With all this talk of turkey, our tummies have been rumbling!  

Today I placed a "set the table" basket in the dramatic play area. 

The basket included a die, a set of plates, cups, napkins, a tablecloth, place mats, forks, spoons, and knives.

The task was to roll the die and set the Thanksgiving table for the specified number of places.  

On the surface, it is a simple math task.  When you really sit and watch the children you see how much thought really goes into the activity.  Between these 2 pictures you can see that the boys and girls figured out that the place mats have to go first! 

Although the die clearly states that the number of guests is 5, now, the first time we tried it, didn't seem like the time to interfere... After all, they were still working with one-to-one correspondence.  Each chair had a place mat and each place mat a plate and each plate a cup and so on.

I loved the opportunity to teach the boys and girls about how to set the utensils at each plate.

What a fun and meaningful way to practice left and right!

Before long it was time to serve the food!

Clean up brought us a whole new batch of opportunities.

The cooperation shown here was amazing, as well as the communication exchanges between the children.

They had obviously seen things folded enough to know the basics.

"You get the corners and put them together".

With just a little organizational help from us,

The task was complete.  

The little basket that we placed out held far more the objects inside it.  It was a literacy based, math lesson (seriation, ordinal numbers, one-to-one correspondence) that incorporated science/health (food pyramid), and social studies(holidays and tradition), gross motor skills (folding), social skills( planning, coordinating, sharing, conversation) and  much more!

Fire Safety Week

When I left for maternity leave, everyone promised to not have too much fun without me...

Well, now that I am back from a short, but sweet leave, I am getting to see pictures of all the fun I missed.

Here are some pictures from our 3s adventures during Fire Safety Week.

Look at those future firefighters!

Thank you to Firefighter Buckner for visiting with us from the Rose Hill Fire Department.

R sure is proud of his daddy!

The boys and girls learned about the tools that firefighters use to do their job, as well as fire safety tips.

One of the most important parts of the visit is teaching the children that firefighters are our friends.

No matter what they are wearing, they are always here to help. 

Firefighters LOVE to ride in the back of the truck!

They got to spray water, just like real firefighters.

What a fun morning with some of our favorite community helpers!

The 3s were also treated to a visit from Smokey Bear and his friends in the Forest Service.

Thank you to the Riley family for helping coordinate this special event.

No visit from Smokey is complete without a delicious campfire snack!

Glad they have water in case the fire gets too hot!