Mrs.O'Bryan's

 Our home page features updates about our weekly adventures in the JK class!

Well Christmas is in full swing in the JK classroom! We have been listening to Christmas music in the morning, putting up decorations and switching out centers to bring in more fun Christmas activities. I think our elf wrapping station is a big hit! I have amazon boxes, bows, tape, scissors... everything they need to be wrapping experts. I took pictures of them wearing their 'elf' hats and glasses. Those will go up on the bulletin board next week! They are having a great time and working on those fine motor skills (and even a bit of math!) Speaking of our Christmas wrapping station, if you have old Christmas wrapping paper that you don't know what to do with (as long as it is preschool appropriate) I will take it! We are going through the wrapping paper for sure!

This week, in addition to rolling out our Christmas books, decor, music, we also spent a lot of time celebrating Mrs. Gatewood. We made a large banner that we hung up in the classroom on Friday. We each made cards that we gave her as well. I managed to turn this into a bit of a learning exercise as well. We each had to write our name on the card, draw a picture of ourselves as well as copy the sentence "We will miss you!" in the card. About half the class was able to copy this with little to no help! We also gave her a beautiful painting planned by Mrs. Kersting (Andrews mom), painted by Mrs. Stettler and finger printed by each kiddo in the class. The fingerprints were labeled on the back so Mrs. Gatewood would always know whose who and remember her last class of kiddo's. In addition to celebrating Mrs. Gatewood on Friday, we also had a great compliment party. The kids loved wearing their pj's, going shoeless (which really worked in the morning with St. Nick visiting), bringing in their stuffies, eating cookies and watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas at rest time. It was truly a full day of joy, laughter and love in the JK classroom; one of my favorite days spent at Ascension so far! :) Thank you to all of you who helped make Mrs. Gatewood's last day memorable for her and really for all of us as we shared in her joy. 

We did manage to actually squeeze in a little learning this week (which was no easy task with all our planning and prep to be done and missing Tuesday for our first snow day of the year!). We looked at the letters X and Y in our Handwriting without Tears book (tracing, identifying and going over the sounds). We also rolled very small dice, (some of us one, others two) counted all the dots on the dice and then wrote the total on our white boards. This was great one to one counting practice, number recognition and fine motor work. We also watched The Nutcracker during rest time on Thursday. This was NOT a hit with the class like the Grinch and if it has developed in them a hatred for ballet and or the theater... you can blame me for that one. Lastly, our Mystery Reader, Mrs. Schuble (Charlotte's mom) read two books to us that both lit up! Those were, of course, very big hits.

Permission slips for our Derby Dinner Field trip were emailed out this week. Many have returned those via email or hard copy. If you have not, make sure to send them in or email them to me by the 12th (I believe). If you return the hard copy in your child's folder, let them know it is in there and encourage them to bring it to me in the morning as they are putting their folders in their cubbies. That will be very helpful as I don't always have time to go through their folders in the morning. Also, this Monday Is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so we will have Mass on Monday and not Wednesday this week. If you are attending and would like your child to sit with you, please wait till our class is seated in our row then you can come over and get them from me. I want to make sure I know who is sitting with us and who is sitting with parents; nothing gives me a heart attack quite like looking around and seeing someone missing and not knowing why! 

We will continue with our Christmas theme over the next two weeks. We will have our field trip on Wednesday the 17th, Christmas party on the 18th and Christmas program on the 19th! It's going to be a very busy next two weeks, but there will be lots of fun and joy sprinkled with a little but of learning here and there :)