Land of the Living

We are back -- have been back for a week -- and I must apologize for not posting sooner. I owe you vacation photos and stories of our adventures, of which there were many, but I just haven't found the time to download all our photos and squeeze in a real blog post.

So I'll cheat and post last week's Huck newsletter. Lily had a mixed week post-vacation. While we were gone (1) her boyfriend, Hank, transitioned to the next classroom, (2) one of her best "girlfriends" left to attend another preschool, the School for Friends, and (3) one of her favorite teachers left to finish out her pregnancy before becoming a mom full-time. So, after the initial excitement of being reunited with her school friends wore off, the absences became glaring and Lily had somewhat of a meltdown. My fingers are crossed that this week proves easier for her; Noah and I gave her a pep talk this morning to end all pep talks!

As for last week, it was "all about me..."


Dear Strawberry Parents,

This week's learning opportunities centered around a topic that all two's love talking about, All About Me! You said it, a whole week learning about what makes each and every Strawberry unique and special. Not only does this theme allow the Strawberries to talk about themselves, it also shows how we are similar or different with respect to the people in our family, the color of our hair, eyes and skin, or the things that we like and dislike. We kicked off our week with an inspiring round of Hokey Pokey and did a great job recognizing our body parts. Afterwards, we all sat down and realized that we have two of many things on our bodies. We identified arms, legs, ears, eyes, hands, knees, elbows and feet to name the obvious ones. We didn't just stop at counting to two, we used some very high level mathematics and added them all together....really great work Strawberries!

Some of the words introduced this week were unique, different, same, common, siblings, and alike. Not only did we gather a boatload of vocabulary words, we increased our knowledge and imaginations from the books of the week such as, Mom and Me, Color of Home, My Hand, My Feet, Little Pea, All Abut You: Eyes, Nose, Fingers and Toes, I am Me and What a Family! Great reading Strawberries! We discussed with the strawberries about who's in our families, how families are different and alike and how the end result is that our families love us for who we are and that each person is special in their own way. Also around the circle, each Strawberry enjoyed looking into a handheld mirror and told everyone what color hair and eyes they have. Next, the Strawberries helped to graph a hair and eye chart using an appropriate crayon color next to their names. As always, the Strawberries practiced identifying their first and last names in circle and around the lunch table. We sure are getting great at recognizing letters.

We talked a lot about our families and asked each Strawberry how many people were in their's. We made family trees and glued as many apples on our trees as the number of people in their family. We also enjoyed crinkling up tissue paper and gluing it onto our trees. The book Little Pea gave us insight into how, in this case, peas, are different from one another even though they look the same. We played a memory game using peas that looked different, hiding one, and remember which pea was gone.

This week we welcomed Ms. Yvonne back for another great fun year of Dance Discovery! The Strawberries were very excited to have their dancing shoes back on their feet.

Next week's theme is dinosaurs! We're sure to have a roaring good time.

All the best,

The Strawberry Teachers