Week of 2/4

Dear Honey Bear Room Families,

It’s been a busy and exciting week here at Montclare. We had fun with Lunar New Year and continued learning about different cultures.  Please read the update below to find out how our week went.
 
Theme This Week:

• Lunar New Year.  It’s the year of the pig!
• Italy and South Korea.
• The letter of the week was D.

 
Books We Read:

• Lanterns and Firecrackers, by Jonny Zucker
• Chinese New Year, by Terri Sievert

 
Places We Went:

• Studio Art with Julia and Janae. 
• Gym 2 for Assembly with Noel.

 
Classroom Activities:

• Had fine motor fun tracing Lunar New Year symbols from left to right and top to bottom.  We also laced red envelopes.  Red is a lucky color on Lunar New Year!
• We learned a Dragon Dance song for the new year.  It goes like this:

Dragon, dragon dance around.
Dragon, dragon touch the ground.
Dragon, dragon, shake your head.
Dragon, dragon point to red.
Dragon, dragon stomp your feet.
Dragon, dragon run down the street!
 

• We made terrific lanterns and beautiful dragons.
• Played a coin and lucky red envelope count and match game. 

 
Highlights:

• Luca and Maxwell’s mom came in to teach us about Italy.  We learned all the great things Italy is famous for and then what ingredients go into making pizza.  The Honey Bears had a blast making their own individual pizzas!  Some of us like cheese and sauce and some of us enjoy just cheese or other toppings like pepperoni.  We even got our very own chef aprons!  Thanks Luca and Maxwell! 
• Wyatt’s mom came to take us to South Korea.  We explored the South Korean flag and learned that Seoul is the capital.  The children danced to the shark song in Korean.  They loved doing all the movements!  The Honey Bears also had the chance to make their own Korean fans and then Wyatt gave everyone a flag to take home and the class enjoyed a special Korean snack of puffed rice crackers.  Thanks Wyatt!
• We celebrated our diverse backgrounds with our Cultures Festival.  The children had fun making chef hats and enjoying pasta for Italy.  Then we showcased what all of our visiting parents did over the last few weeks.  The pictures and items were awesome to look at!  The Honey Bears also had a great time playing “Pin the Pepperoni on the Pizza.”  Thank you parent volunteers for making this unit so special!

 
Looking Forward To:

• Next week, we will learn about Valentine’s Day and the letter of the week will be P.  Don’t forget to send in your child’s valentines and have them wear their pjs on the 14th. 
• Monday-Wednesday, February 18th-20th  – No school for President’s Day.

• Monday, March 18th to Friday, March 31st- No school for Spring Break.  School resumes Monday, April 1st.

 
Have an awesome weekend!

The Honey Bear Room Teachers