Dear Yellow Room Families,
 
It has been a fun week in the Yellow Room! Here is an update on what the Yellow Room children learned this week in school. But first:
 
Reminder:

• Thursday, December 20th- Holiday Breakfast  (8:45-9:15) following the Sing a long with Noel in the gym. 

 
Theme:

• Gingerbread

 
Classroom Activities:

• The Yellow Room ended their theme about The Nutcracker Ballet with a culminating trip to the American Ballet Theater. The children learned about the special clothes the dancers wear and performed their ballet routine with Rita. We were also treated to a special performance by ballet dancers.
• The Yellow Room began a new theme: Gingerbread. We are reading various versions of The Gingerbread Man story.
• For Writing, children completed a gingerbread man poem, imagining different things their gingerbread person would run away from. 
• We began a new math unit that focuses on measurement. Using everyday classroom materials and experimenting with real objects help us understand measurement concepts. We began by comparing blocks and noticing the different length and height. We learned that we can use measurement tools, such as a ruler and measuring tape to learn how many inches long and tall they were. 
• We followed up our discussion by asking the students to measure each other. In pairs, they worked to find out how many gingerbread cookies tall they were. 
• The letter of the week was ‘G’. We followed up with a journal entry, Letterland story and a Jolly Jingle.
• For cooking, the children whipped up some gingerbread dough that we will use to make our trains. 
• For science, children investigated the spices we used to make our gingerbread dough in cooking. They examined the 4 spices: ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, in both their solid form and powder form. Using the powdered spices, the Yellow Room children created a fragrant book of spices. 

 
Books we read:

• The Gingerbread Man, by Saviour Pirotta
• The Gingerbread Man, pictures by Karen Schmidt
• The Gingerbread Girl, by Lisa Campbell Ernst
• The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers, by Lisa Campbell Ernst
• The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School, by Laura Murray
• The Gingerbread Man Loose on the Fire Truck, by Laura Murray
• The Gingerbread Boy, by Richard Egielski

Songs we sang:

• Jolly ‘G’ jingle

Highlight of the Week:

• Our trip to ABT!!! Thank you to all the grown ups that accompanied us on our trip. We hope you thought it was as memorable and enjoyable as we did. We haven't been able to stop dancing all week. 

 
Enjoy the photos and have a beautiful weekend!
 
Sincerely,
 
The Yellow Room Teachers

Dear Yellow Room Families,
 
It has been a magical week in the Yellow Room! Here is an update on what the Yellow Room children learned this week in school. But first:
 
Reminders:
 

• Tuesday, December 11th- American Ballet Theatre Trip (each child must have one adult in attendance)
• Thursday, December 20th- Holiday Breakfast  (8:45-9:15) following the Sing a long with Noel in the gym. 

Theme:

• We continued our study of the Nutcracker Ballet and began Winter Holidays.

 
Classroom Activities:

• As the holidays are approaching, we have begun talking about the various holidays people celebrate. For writing, the children responded to the prompt: “My holiday wish is…” for our holiday classroom book.
• In math, the children colored in a paper Sugar Plum Fairy and gently placed stickers all around her. When finished, they counted up all the stars and wrote the number down.
• The letter of the week was ‘O’. We followed up with a journal entry, Letterland story and a Jolly Jingle.
• The Yellow Room was visited by an ABT ballet instructor! Rita taught the children a ballet routine and special ballet words (e.g., first position, plie, saute, releve). We can't wait to show all the lucky grown ups chaperoning on Wednesday what we have learned.
• In cooking, we made delicious edible dreidels. After reading Hoppy Hanukkah!, by Linda Glaser the children made a dreidel from a marshmallow, pretzel stick and Hershey kiss.
• The children worked hard on a special holiday gift to hand out to grown ups during our Holiday Breakfast on the 20th! 

 
 
Highlight of the Week:

• Hour of Code! The Yellow Room children have been engaged in various coding activities throughout the week using the SMARTboard and at tables using Legos and figures. The children are presented with the challenge to use arrows to tell a character how to get from one point to another.
• The Yellow Room kids also worked in pairs to program a coding sequence for a Lego robots and Codeapillar to get to their "lunch." 

 

Books we read:

• The Nutcracker: Based on George Balanchine's Ballet of the Nutcracker, Illustrated by Valeria Docampo 
• My Two Holidays: A Hanukkah and Christmas Story, by Danielle Novack
• How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?, by Jane Yolan

 
Songs we sang:

• Jolly ‘O’ Jingle
• In Music, we continued to sing holiday songs, including “A Latke”, "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer“, and "White Christmas". 

 
Places we visited:

• In Library, Lindsay read “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and children checked out their books to take home.
• In PE, children worked on their balance and hula hoop skills.

 
Enjoy the photos and have a beautiful weekend!
 
Sincerely,
 
The Yellow Room Teachers