Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Trees, pumpkins and snow-oh my!

Welcome back to the TOP families!  Wow!  Last week was a long uncalled for break.  We are all glad to be back at school!  First-we have to say that we are so sad that our Big Leaf Maple tree fell during the storm.  It was very impressive to look at today.  We will miss using it as a catch all:  "Let's meet at the big tree."  "When you finish lunch, you can play at the big tree." "Did you see the ice on the big tree?"  The tree was 80 years old and will be missed.

Today we began by using stamps and then some of the kids made snowflakes.  We had fun using all of the stamps and stamp pads.  Then we learned a new poem.  You can go over it with your child if you would like.  We will continue to work on learning this poem.


Chubby Snowman
There was a chubby snowman
And he had a carrot nose  
(put fist to nose like carrot)
Along came a bunny  
(2 fingers up for ears)
And what do you suppose  
(hands on hips)
The hungry little bunny  
(rub tummy)
Was looking for his lunch  
(hand to forehead, looking)
He grabbed that snowman's carrot nose
NIBBLE!  NIBBLE!  CRUNCH!!  
(Pretend to eat carrot)
On our hikes today-we talked about what kind of damage or changes we might find in the park after the storm.  There were many suggestions of frozen streams, trees down, branches down and other ideas. 

On the blue group's hike, we found a place where you couldn't even see the trail anymore because there were so many branches down!  The blue group went up to check on our pumpkin and had fun throwing snowballs at trees.  Our pumpkin was very mushy.  We all wanted to play so much that it was hard to keep everyone moving!  It was also a lot of work to walk across the whole field in the deep snow!

The yellow group was so busy today!  First we found out that the Talking Tree has a chunk out of it!  That makes 2 of our favorite trees with issues!  Next the kids spent time playing Pooh Snow (throwing icy snow on one side of the bridge and waiting for it to come out the other side.) Sometimes it popped out and sometimes it didn't.  There were many discussions about why it might not have made it to the other side.

Next we made sure that the elephant tree was ok...it was!  And then we checked out another place in the stream.  There we found interesting rocks, a "fishing pole", an old brick and lots of water.

Last we found a see-saw and another climbing area. Thursday we plan on showing the blue group the see saw and the kids want to see how the teachers see saw on it!

Thank you for being flexible during the snow.  I hope you all made it through well enough.  And also thank you for sending your kids well prepared today for the cold and wet.  Almost all of the children had waterproof gloves or mittens on.  A very important clothing item this winter!

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