Green Room

This week in the green room

🌕🐴Lunar New Year & Black history Month

This week in the Green Room, we were so excited to learn about and celebrate Lunar New Year and Black History Month! The children enjoyed creating beautiful lanterns and learning about Lunar New Year traditions centered around family, celebration, and new beginnings. We also honored Black History Month by exploring themes of kindness, leadership, invention and creativity through stories, discussions, and fun movement activities like freeze dance!

Even though this week brought chilly weather and heavy rain, we made the most of our time together. From lantern crafts and creative classroom learning to obstacle courses during outside play, we were so happy to enjoy another wonderful week at TCS and each other’s company.

Warmly,
Karla & Nancy 💚

🏮 Lunar new year lanterns 🌕🌸

We were so excited to dive into Lunar New Year this week! The children’s faces never cease to amaze us. They always make such meaningful connections to the stories we read together. This week we read Lanterns and Firecrackers by Jonny Zucker and Jan Barger Cohen. This lovely story shares how a family prepares for the Lunar New Year festival, highlighting beautiful and rich cultural traditions. The children learned about sweeping their homes to welcome good luck, enjoying a festive dinner with family, and celebrating with fireworks and glowing lanterns.

This book paired perfectly with the art activity we had prepared. The children created their own Lunar New Year lanterns using bright golden paint and glitter. They looked absolutely marvelous hanging up on our boards! Beyond being fun and festive, this activity also supported important developmental skills. The children practiced spatial awareness as they learned not to overlap their paint stencils, carefully planning where each design would go.

It was a joyful and meaningful week of learning, creativity, and celebration! 🏮✨

Long noodles for longevity 🍜

On Tuesday, our wonderful Teacher Nancy graced us with two beautiful stories: Chloe’s Lunar New Year by Lily LaMotte and Broken by X. Fang. These heartfelt books taught the children about the importance of family traditions while also gently introducing complex emotions such as guilt, forgiveness, and conflict resolution; encouraging them to see situations from both their own perspective and the perspectives of others.

To make the day even more special, Teacher Nancy delighted the children with a home-cooked meal of longevity noodles, which traditionally symbolize a long and prosperous life. To culminate this meaningful culinary experience, the children also enjoyed fortune cookies and sweet oranges, which represent prosperity and good luck.

It was such a warm and memorable treat for everyone.

Garrett Morgan 🚦

This week was extra exciting as we began our unit on Black History Month! We strive to highlight innovative and creative leaders within the Black community who have made a lasting impact on our world.

This week, we focused on Garrett Morgan, the brilliant inventor who paved the way for the modern-day three-way traffic signal. The children were fascinated to learn how his invention continues to keep people safe every single day.

The children created their own collages inspired by the three-way traffic light, carefully placing the red “stop,” yellow “slow down,” and green “go” lights. We then brought the learning to life with an interactive movement activity on the rug. Teacher Karla acted as the traffic officer/stoplight while the children became cars, waving colorful scarves. As each “light” was held up, the children had to pay close attention, moving their scarves quickly for green, slowly for yellow, and freezing for red. Their focus was incredible to watch!

Our learning was beautifully supported by the book Saving the Day: Garrett Morgan’s Life-Changing Invention of the Traffic Signal by Karyn Parsons. This inspiring story helped the children understand Garrett Morgan’s life, legacy, and how his important invention is still used today.

It was a meaningful week filled with movement, creativity, and appreciation for a true innovator.

Misty Copeland 🩰

Friday we focused on Misty Copeland, a trailblazing American ballet dancer who, in 2015, became the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer in the 75-year history of the American Ballet Theatre. We read Misty’s children’s book Firebird. A 2014 picture book about a young, aspiring ballerina who lacks confidence and feels she can't reach the heights of a famous dancer, who is modeled after Copeland herself. The story follows the girl as she learns from her mentor (Copeland) that success comes from hard work, resilience, and self-belief, encouraging the children. We showed the class a short piece where Misty Copeland dances Swan Lake with the LA Phil and then the class painted and made their own graceful ballerinas and ballet dancing boys (as boys are ballet dancers too) using silhouettes, coffee filters and watercolors. The children then got to try some stretches and poses following along with a Sesame Street: Stretch with Misty Copeland and Elmo to end this unit.

music 🎶

This week, Teacher Brian came to our classroom on Thursday to teach music since the heavy rain kept us from going to him. It was a wonderful opportunity to reinforce that sometimes plans change, and we must remain flexible when things are different than expected. The children handled the change so well!

Despite the rainy day, we had an amazing music class. We began with our familiar hello song and a fun movement activity to get our bodies warmed up. Next, we practiced echoing the song “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” followed by two lively movement activities; The Hokey Pokey and the marvelous classic “The Saints Go Marching In” by Louis Armstrong.

It was such a beautiful way to tie music into our Black History Month unit. The children fully embraced the spirit of Mardi Gras as we marched all around the room while Teacher Brian played the tune on his ukulele. Their joy and enthusiasm filled the classroom!

Thank you, Teacher Brian, for such a wonderful and memorable lesson! 🎶✨

centers

This week during centers, we enjoyed engaging STEM activities that helped reinforce spatial awareness, community building, and one-to-one correspondence. The children worked thoughtfully as they built, counted, sorted, and collaborated with one another, strengthening both their academic and social skills.

In our dramatic play center, the classroom transformed into ice cream shops and office spaces, where the children eagerly stepped into different roles. They practiced turn-taking, problem-solving, and cooperative play while serving customers, taking orders, and working together. It was wonderful to see their imaginations at work!

The children also explored a fresh, colorful sensory sorting bin and enjoyed brand-new playdough, lovingly made by hand in our TCS kitchen every few weeks. These hands-on materials sparked creativity, fine motor development, and meaningful conversation throughout the week.

It was another joyful and productive week of learning through play!

Outdoor play 🛝

While this week brought chilly temperatures and plenty of wet “worm weather,” the children still enjoyed lots of time outdoors! They confidently pedaled their tricycles, climbed the play structure with growing independence, and worked together to create collaborative drawings on the ground with colorful sidewalk chalk.

They also had a blast navigating an exciting obstacle course put together by our wonderful Blue Room teacher, Kate. Even with the cooler, rainy weather, the children embraced every opportunity to move their bodies, challenge themselves, and enjoy time together outside.

share day 🧸

This week also brought some exciting new treasures for Share Day! The children were so proud to bring in special toys from home and share them with their classmates. It was wonderful to watch them practice speaking in front of the group, answer questions, and listen respectfully to one another. Zachary even showed us how his camera worked and snapped a few photos. Share Day continues to be such a meaningful way the children build confidence, communication skills, and a strong sense of community in our classroom.

Unicorn - Siena
Baby doll - Zenni
Doll - Emily
Unicorn - Romy
Camera - Zachary
Blue Motor Bike - Jaxon
Red Motor Bike - Julien
Sky - Noa

Service Learning♻️

Thank you, families, for your continued support! We are thrilled to announce that we have finally reached our $50 goal. Thanks to everyone’s efforts, we are excited to give back to the Wildlife Learning & Conservation Center and make our upcoming field trip extra special.

Our field trip is scheduled for March 5th! Parents, please be sure to read the information sent home, complete the student permission slip, and send the field trip payment by Friday, February 27th. We can’t wait for this exciting adventure and to share this experience with you and the children!

📚Library guest Reader

Please sign up to read to our class! Our library day is every Tuesday from 10:15am - 10:45am.

The next dates available on our sign up genius are 3/3 and 3/17. We will be skipping the week of 3/10 due to the book fair.

Click on the image of the books to sign up.

We look forward to seeing you!

🎗️

Click on the Preschool Summer Camp flyer to sign up!

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