Before heading out for our walk, we worked on puzzles together. Although everyone gets a puzzle of their own at their table,
the children love to do them together and help one another. 

We had our morning circle time and chose the special helper for the day.





Here we are saying goodbye to Miss Reagan after a fun music class. We are practicing the songs we will sing at graduation!

Building blocks today!

Here is the special helper for today, doing her jobs.

Here we are completing our Rainbow Fish project. We had to add the shiny scale to his body. It was fun to be able to choose the color we wanted.

It is wonderful to be back! I hope everyone had a blessed Easter. We were lucky to have good weather for playground time this morning. We had so much fun running and playing together.

We painted too! When the fish are dry, we will add a sparkly scale just like the rainbow fish had.

Early morning activities while we unpack and greet one another. There is always a lot to talk about on a Monday morning!

The special helpers this week busy at work! 

We celebrated a fourth birthday this week!

A friend to help straighten her crown....

Playtime fun together.

We read the book "Snowballs," and then made our own snowman from junk in a sack, just like in the book.
 

Here is our special helper today hard at work!

Our class used the scooters this week while working on letter recognition, and it was so much fun.

It is finally time to paint the Christmas trees...hooray!

The game continued for quite a while with the children all taking turns being patients and  "ambulance doctors".

The conversation was so much fun to listen to!

Here are our special helpers this week, doing their circle time jobs! Picking the song of the day (song circle) and ringing the clean-up bell  are some of their favorite things to do.

This week we worked on the letter D and made a cute little dog.

Here are some of our special helpers this week busy at work. 

This week we read the book,  "Fall Ball," and talked about all of the changes we see in autumn. We practiced raking and bagging some leaves up, and began painting our own leaves to decorate our painting board with.  
    "The month is November, the leaves falling down. The colors are crimson, and golden, and brown," is the song we sing at circle time.

Playtime fun

The mornings are for building and making things together at the tables. A house for a spider, and a colorful birthday cake!

We have decorated the classroom with things that the children have made and it looks beautiful! They love looking at their work and talking about it. Sitting at the art table is a nice time to get to talk to the children one on one. 

We had so much fun going to the St. Aidan pumpkin patch this week. The children were excited to pick out the perfect pumpkin. It was a windy, windy day!

We learned a funny new song today. Our silly version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider. We practiced it a few times so that they could do it with family at home. Here are the words:
  The itsy bitsy spider crawled up        on (name) head.
   It crawled all around and used it     for a bed.
   It crawled down (his/her) back,
   and jumped onto the floor.
   Then the itsy bitsy spider
   crawled underneath the door.

Today we read a book and talked about Chinese New Year and painted dragon masks.

We spent a great deal of time this week talking about apples. We read stories about them, cut them, took out the seeds and sorted them by color and size. The best part was painting them on the easel and using them to make apple prints!

Painting with water colors. 

Here we are working on shape recognition. The children loved searching for shapes around the classroom.

Here we are doing a mitten match up game after singing a fun mitten color song . 

There are many daily routines in Nursery, and the children really like predictability. They feel comfortable when they know what is coming next and some reluctant students become more engaged when they know what to expect. Here is a staple of our morning - the special helper collecting the name tags and counting on the calendar.

We highlight a new letter every week, but none of the concepts we introduce are in isolation. They are woven into everything we do and the goal is to have the children be the ones to eventually get excited about recognizing and pointing them out to us. Our learning in Nursery is done primarily through play. Today we went on a letter hunt!

A busy week full of holiday projects and a lot of practice following directions. We made an angel, a Christmas tree, a  manger scene, Rudolph and a candy cane too!

We sang some fun songs with our shaky eggs.

 There was time for play-doh too!

Today we celebrated Charlotte and Ellie's birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Traina came in to read the book "Birthday Monsters," by Sandra Boynton. A perfect book since we are working on the letter M.  We painted monster paper bag puppets also. They will come home on Wednesday after we use them to act out some funny monster stories!

We started our day with puzzles! 

A new job has been added for the special helper! We are crossing off the days until spring arrives and our bears come out of hibernation.

The weather was so wonderful today that we decided to go out to play in the afternoon. When we told the children, they let out a big cheer. Rest time was much more restful after they had the chance to run and play.

Some bowling fun in the afternoon. This is one of their favorite activities.

We loved the book fair. Thank you to Mrs. Serrano, our school librarian and to all the moms that helped us shop.

It was a beautiful day for the Walk-A-Thon! Thank you to all who joined us. The ice pops were delicious!

This week we learned all about the letter V, but first we had to finish our letter U craft. U is for Unicorn. The children all loved the pink glitter! Making the gluey triangle horn, scooping the glitter out and sprinkling it on, pouring the extra off - they loved it all!

Playground fun!

There is nothing better than getting to see your big brother at school and getting a hug.

We were very busy today making our Advent wreathes and painting Christmas trees to hang up in the classroom.

There was a lot of cooperative play happening in the classroom this week. From fixing broken things to making a meal together - this type of play encourages conversation, listening skills, taking turns, and best of all stretching the imagination!

It was wonderful to watch the children's faces, and hear them sing during our lower school tree lighting. One of the children walked past the unlit tree last week and said, "Google, turn the tree lights on," and now it has happened! They really do make us laugh every day.

Happy Monday! Today we continued with the letter E and read the book "Elmer," by David McKee. This book is a wonderful story that illustrates how we are all uniquely created by God. The children were as eager to talk about the differences in their hair and eyes as they were to talk about who liked to dance, color. paint and run. Here is our special helper holding the flag!

Creative building - one of our favorite ways to start the day together. A great way to get everyone chatting and working together.

There were two playtime art projects today. The children watercolored a beautiful patchwork Elmer. and then made an Elephant. They loved painting the toe nails - there was a lot of giggling!

This week we worked on classroom routines. It is amazing how quickly they learn them.

We talked about all of the things we can do now that we couldn't do when we were babies. The children love to talk about themselves and all that they can do. We talked about celebrating birthdays, and painted the crowns that they will wear on their special day. They will be displayed with their photos below them, and in order. Once we have one birthday, the children love to name who is next.

We began our day today with manipulatives.

Here is the special helper busy collecting the name tags and counting on the calendar at circle time.

We had so much fun doing the turkey feather dance. Whoever had the same color feather had to go in the center of our circle and dance to the music! They had to flap their wings and waddle like a turkey

The first thing we do is unpack. The children have gotten very independent and love to help each other.

We spent the week talking about the letter J, positional words and hibernation. We have read several books about hibernation, and we have put our bears into their "lair" (which is on my desk). Snooze our friendly classroom mascot comes out of his log every day to sing with us. He makes everyone laugh!

We began the day with block building. 

We had a very enthusiastic special helper today who was very excited for it to be her turn.

Some free play after snack!

The mornings are for playing and building together! It is one of our favorite parts of the day.

It was a group effort to put the ocean puzzle together, and everyone that helped was very proud at the job they had done.

We did a little fishing in the afternoon while we waited for our friends to finish resting.

The best part of this busy week was that we were able to go to our little playground again! The snow has melted and the weather was beautiful!

A traffic director and a bouquet of pretty flowers!

We read the book, "Go to Sleep Groundhog!" by Judy Cox and then made cute groundhog paperbag puppets.

We introduced the new month and all of the special days. Today we talked about Groundhog's Day. No shadow and, an early spring proclaimed Punxsutawney Phil! Here is our special helper.

Here is our special helper for the day collecting the nametags, and holding the flag. He was very excited to help!

We were very busy during play time today. The children had fun with Mrs. Amarain setting up a big picnic and they also spent time trying to "fix" our refrigerator. It was a good day. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday!