And the winner is......

I have to give a little shout out to my awesome husband for being willing to use is amazing public speaking skills. For the second year in a row, Blake was MC of the Joplin AAF ADDY Award event. I am proud to say I walked away with a few, but even more proud of how amazing my students did! You can read a little more about the event, here...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Thank you for all of the Valentine's Greetings! The boys love all the holidays, because they get mail. Braden drew this "love" monster on my iPad and we used it in his design. He also wrote his name.
On Mason's, he wrote his name, but cannot take credit for the monster.

Super, Super Bowl Sunday!

 Once again, we had our "own" Super Bowl party for four. Blake made all the fun party food, and let the boys make their own pizzas.

The Monster at the end of this Book

Little Gorilla Yellow Class Newsletter
Kari Cronister, B.S. Supervising Teacher
January 23-26, 2012
We are off to a wonderful start! The weather has been incredible and we have been enjoying our time outside. This week we made new placemats. We used tape and finger paint. The children formed their name with pieces of tape and then painted over and around the tape. Once it dried we peeled off the tape and revealed their name. On Tuesday we read the book “The Monster at the end of this Book” by Jon Stone. While we read this book we voted on whether or not we should turn the page. At first everyone wanted to turn the page but as we got further into the book we began to see a few more no’s! The children loved the ending and discovering that it was only Grover at the end of the book. On Wednesday we began a web about winter. The children had wonderful ideas to contribute to our web. I will be forming the next few weeks of lessons on what the children have told me they want to learn about winter. On Wednesday we also introduced the nursery rhyme Jack be Nimble. Each child got a chance to jump over our pretend candlestick while we recited the nursery rhyme together. On Thursday we reviewed our winter web and jack be nimble before dismissing to small groups where everyone got to watch science in action. In small groups we made oobleck this is a mixture of 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. The children were able to see the mixture go from a liquid to a solid and back again. They really enjoyed playing in it and watching the change happen in their hands.

Mason's Masterpiece at Preschool

Little Gorilla Yellow Class Newsletter
Kari Cronister, B.S. Supervising Teacher
February 6-9, 2012

This week we continued our study of winter. We began discussing what animals and plants do in winter. We are learning new vocabulary words like dormant, migrate, and hibernate. We are also learning what animals migrate and which animals hibernate. On Wednesday we planted an amaryllis bulb! We are going to care for it together. We have made journals for the children to document its changes. We will also be measuring how tall our plant becomes and documenting this. On Monday we painted our own versions of winter. The children enjoyed thinking about snow and painting it. They also added trees, homes and animals to their pictures. On Tuesday we graphed which of our friends preferred mittens and which preferred gloves. We also read the book The Mitten and this led to our discussion about what animals do in the winter. This week our weather has been a bit cooler and we have had to come inside. During this time we have gotten out our new paper dolls, bamboo blocks, and several games like twister and candy land.

Rebound

 And he scores....again!

Mason showing off his moves! I can't tell you what the score was, or how many points Braden scored, but he did an excellent job of rebounding, and he made at least 5 baskets....for his own team!

A Little Bit of Mason

Ok, after about 5 tries, I "think" I have finally uploaded the correct video! Sorry!

Mason's personality certainly shines. In this video you can see his performance at school honoring notable people from Kansas, he is Robert Ballard who found the Titanic. He's trying really hard to enhance his basketball skills, like Braden. Finally, he is in a boys gymnastics class that he loves!