Happy Valentine’s Day! And Family Day! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend with their loved ones.
 
We had a bunch of Valentines fun this week. We also had a Blooming Butterflies graduate join us on Friday. The kids love when ‘big kids’ visit us! Our Valentine’s Day was full of Heart cookie eating (the cookies had been made and decorated during the week), making a Valentine’s collage, sharing Valentine surprises and talking about who we love and how we show our love.
 
Earlier in the week we made marbled saving cream hearts, cut out heart love bugs, and threaded and hung our decorated hearts from last week to make garland. The kids also went on a couple of heart scavenger hunts. They are getting really good at letting everyone have a chance to find things before they take them all and offer up their help when someone needs it. After these heart hunts, they did multiple activities including; heart size sorting, heart letter matching, heart patterns and number and number representation heart matching.
 
Our letters this week were E and H. It worked out perfectly that H ended up being on our letters as ‘heart’ was our first word to make it onto the learning board.

We started out our week learning about the tradition that is Groundhog Day. We talked about what gophers are, how they hibernate, and what it symbolically means if the gopher does/does not see its shadow. Balzac Billy predicts early spring!
 
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and so we have decided to start decorating. The kids have been working hard at stenciling and cutting out hearts to decorate for our garland. The kids have been working in their journals too; writing LOVE, drawing/tracing hearts and colouring.
 
We started up our second round of letter learning this week. We started with L and F as they are similar in written structure. The kids seem to be better able to translate what they see on the board to their letter building pieces now. 
 
Show and Tell began this week. We had three very excited little ones ready to share their Show and Tell! We can’t wait to see what the others bring next week!
 
We went on multiple trips to the dinosaur park. One time, on our way back from the dinosaur park we stopped by one of the little libraries that we frequent. The owner of that little library wrapped up the books like little surprises and offered little heart chocolates as well. The kids were so excited! Of course, I put their chocolates in my pocket and pretended to be the chocolate thief all the way back. We ran most of the way, with me cackling like an evil villain and them giggling as they chased me. Oh, the memories we make!
 
The also did some tree climbing and ate giant snow cookies this week!

This week was all about number learning and drawing people. The kids built numbers with our letter/number construction kit and traced numbers with stickers in their journals. To help us learn how to draw people we used Mat Man from the Handwriting Without Tear program. We practiced singing Mat Man’s song and building him together; It was a great test in teamwork and sharing, in addition to remembering the parts of the body. We continued to use Mat Man to help us through our people drawing and building activities this week. 
 
The kids made drawn self-portraits in their journals, directed drawings of Mat Man, painted themselves on mirrors, made self-portraits with beans and yarn, and Drew a friend of theirs using the Mat Man song to help remember to add the details (they also decorated a frame for their friend drawing).
 
We took advantage of the good weather and had a blast outdoors; bum sliding, boot skating, rolling down hills, running through tunnels and reading maps at NoseHill Park.
 
We celebrated another birthday this week as well. We have so many January birthdays!
 
*We are looking forward to Show and Tell next week! *

Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the Year of the Rat! 
 
We learned what Lunar New Year is, the legend of Nian, the race the animals had to make it to the Jade emperor to see who would have years named after them, and the Lion Dance. The kids know the Legend of Nian well! They know who Nian is and how he scared all the people and animals on the day of the new moon, until a wise old man told them the three things Nian is afraid of (the colour red, fire and loud noises) and that is why the Lunar New Year is celebrated with the fireworks and the colour red. We all enjoyed figuring out the animal that corresponds to the year we were all born in. The kids definitely pretended to be these animals all week.
 
We did a lot of cutting this week for our year of the Rat crafts. Everyone is doing so well holding their scissors properly, moving the paper/scissors to follow a curve and remaining positive even when it gets tough. We also cut and decorated red paper lanterns.
 
We were so happy to be able to be able to spend time outside this week! We spent hours on the bum sliding hill. The kids had a great time. Even though the hill was iced over towards the end of the week, they were determined to bum slide even if they had to crawl up the hill. I may have joined in on the bum sliding too!
 
The kids continued to practice recognizing, spelling, sequencing the letters, and writing their names. This month has been the start of our days of the week practice; the kids enjoy singing our Days of the Week song every day to figure out what the day is. Each day we practice counting on the calendar and recognizing the number that is that day, and what numbers make up the double-digit days. The kids have also been working in their journals. They do so well holding their pencils!
 
We can’t forget that we celebrated an exciting 5th birthday too!

This week was all about keeping our teeth clean and healthy. Many of us knew that we brush our teeth twice a day and that if we don’t our teeth will be yucky. We learned what cavities are and how to prevent them. The kids tried flossing themselves. The faces they made were just too funny!
 
The kids worked on their fine motor skills, counting and number recognition when they used tiny “clippers” (as they call them) to pick up mini marshmallows and put the correct number of them into numbers muffin tins. Everyone is really doing a great job at identifying numbers! There has been a lot of improvement over that past few months.
 
We all practiced their cutting skills by cutting out “sugar bugs” and then they decorated them with glitter glue, sequins and googly eyes. They also threaded yarn through paper teeth, painted with toothbrushes, and made teeth picture patterns.
 
The kids played a “roll and cover” number identification games where the numbers were written on the teeth and they had to colour the numbered teeth that corresponding their dice roll.
 
Our week was spent inside. That never happens! We spent our extra time indoors listening to Raffi, prepping and cooking food while learning safe ways to do so, and dancing to some fun action songs.
 
During our Morning Meeting this week we started singing out Days of the Week song so we can start to figure out what each day is called. The kids also continue to work hard on writing their names.
 
We continued to learn about 2D shapes this week. In their journals, the kids counted how many sides certain shapes had and although the younger ones were not expected to practice writing the number they wanted to anyway. They want to be just like the big kids!
 
Some other things we did this week were baking muffins, Lego building and having some creative fun with play dough.

We started our new year with a couple of birthday celebrations! We still have two more to go this month! There was plenty of baking to do. We've been working on how to measure as close to exact amounts as possible, by using the back of our hands to brush off the excess. Some of the kids used their knowledge of patterns to make a colour pattern with their cupcake sprinkles! Very neat!
 
Aside from the excitement of two birthdays, this week’s focus was on 2D shapes and New Year celebrations. 
-The kids practiced matching shapes of everyday things, building shapes that were drawn on the learning board, sorting round shapes vs not round shapes, and colouring shapes certain colours as per the instructions. They did a great job choosing the correct colours, colouring in the lines the best they could, and helping each other to identify which shape was the shape I called. It also happened to be the kitties birthdays this week so we made paper kitty crafts using different shapes to build a cat face.
-We made many artworks and crafts with fireworks in them; glitter fireworks, used a fork and paint to make fireworks, and cut cupcake liners to make fireworks.
 
The kids have been working very hard at recognizing the letters in their names, knowing what they are called, and building and/or writing them. Each day during Morning Meeting they either spell or write a portion of their names. This week they wrote the first letter of their names every day on the board, used stickers to trace the outline of the first letter of their names, and work together to spell their whole name. We have been trying to remember to always start at the top!

                  ***Spoiler! Parents Christmas gifts below! ***
 
The past couple weeks everyone has been busy, busy, busy! The kids have been making gifts for their parents and ornaments/decorations to take home! They made a reindeer a footprint craft and a sewn and decorated felt stocking ornament. It's amazing what young ones can do when given the chance. They all did so great!
 
Here are our activities from the past two weeks:
 
-Played a Christmas memory match game
-Made Christmas picture patterns
-Sorted wooden Christmas pieces
-Together they counted each group of wooden Christmas pieces and identified the corresponding number.
-Figured out which shapes the wooden Christmas pieces matching most.
-Painted wooden ornaments
-Built Christmas tree names. Some practiced writing the letters on their own and some traced.
-Went on a scavenger hunt for red and green objects.
-Learned how to knead while making our salt dough ornaments.
-Decorated foam candy canes.
-Made a Christmas tree ornament out of popsicle sticks, buttons and pom poms.
-We made Gingerbread cookies!
-Made cookie cutter paintings.
-Made icy winter paintings using Epsom salts on the top.
 
We also worked our way through through the letters W- Z.
 
I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas!

We spent our week learning about some of the traditions of Hanukkah. We learned about how the oil lamp’s oil lasted for eight days, even though it was only had enough oil for one day, hence the importance of the number eight. There are eight days of Hanukkah, a candle is lit for each day on the Menorah, and small gifts are given each of the eight days. We learned Santa does not come for Jewish boys and girls because they do not celebrate Christmas and that’s okay; others may believe in different things than we do. The kids felt good about this because they figured that as long as the Jewish boys and girls still received gifts from their parents then that was good. It was very sweet listening to them talk about how they didn’t want Jewish boys and girls to be left out of the gift giving.
 
We learned that Jewish kids play the Dreidel game to win chocolates. The kids really enjoyed this! They learned how to play the Dreidel game using paper coins and then after they learned the game, they are playing with real chocolate coins. The kids also decorated paper Dreidels with little snowflakes, BINGO dabbers and glitter glue. This is great for working out those finger, hand and arm muscles!
 
The kids made tape resist Star of David paintings after learning that Hanukkah colours are blue and white/silver and used scrap paper rectangles to make menorahs. They also practiced their AB colour patterns using pretend Menorah candles.
 
Our letters this week were N and V.
 
Unfortunately, on the last day of our visits the Story Book Truck was unable to come. When talking about this disappointment we decided that the positive take from this is that we get to keep the library books for a little while longer!

This week was all about penguins. We learned where they live geographically, what they eat, and the characteristics of a variety of them. We learned that Daddy penguins take care of the eggs while the mommy penguin goes out hunting for food to bring back. Some of their faces, when they learned how penguins feed their babies, was hilarious! With this in mind, that kids made play dough penguin eggs that represented the number the paper penguin was holding.
 
Some of our Morning Meeting activities this week included; giving penguins toques that matched each penguins scarf, matching penguin shapes, matching uppercase letter penguins, and matching lowercase and uppercase letters. The younger kids had the letters that had uppercase and lowercase letters that resembled each other, while the big kids had the remaining ones.
 
The kids also did mirrored penguin paintings and practiced cutting skills when making a paper penguin.
 
Our letters this week were A and M. Some “at” words made it into our learning this week as well, because we heard a few of them in one of our songs. The kids did a great job building these letters using big lines and little lines. They are now starting to remember the terminology we use when describing how to build a letter. This will help greatly when we focus more on writing in the new year.
 
Even though we were lacking heat, our Storybook Truck visit went well again this week. Only one more Story Book Truck Thursday left! The kids sure do love getting new books each week, especially when they get to pick them out.
 
We also made guacamole and baked a cake for a very special 5th birthday! I over gauged the amount of cake batter that went into the pan so we were not able to eat the cake on the day of the birthday celebration, so we had candles in jumbo marshmallows and sang Happy Birthday that way. I had apologized to the kids and with a smile on their faces, a couple of them told me that that was okay. How sweet are they!

Arctic foxes, Polar bears and many other types of land and sea arctic animals are what we learned about this week. We learned where the Arctic is by looking at a map and compared our location that of animals in the Arctic. We learned about how these animals stay warm, the adaptations that help them move around and what they eat. The kids found how Arctic foxes hunt to be quite funny. All week they we pretending to jump high in the air and dig their faces into the ‘snow’ to catch their food.
 
The kids really enjoyed listening to the variety of sounds Arctic animals make. After listening to the sounds, we tried to identify which animal made which sound.
 
We made Puffy Paint Polar Bears. This activity involved a bit of science as well. We made a puffy paint mixture, finger-painted it onto paper plates, then microwaved it to make the puffy paint rise. They got to practice their number recognition with the buttons on the microwave too. The kids made a paper plate/cotton ball Arctic fox as well.
 
We also baked muffins, made a new batch of play dough, built a snowman and enjoyed our second day having the Story Book Truck visit us.
 
Our letters this week were R and K. The kids did a great building these letters…they are definitely tricky! We continue to work on spelling our names verbally, sequencing the letters in the proper order and matching the letters of their names.