Dear Parents,

 

This week we continued our Thanksgiving unit.  We read One Little, Two Little Pilgrims, by B.G. Hennessy and The Story of the Pilgrims, by Katharine Ross.  We then had a great discussion about the meaning of Thanksgiving.  We learned that we celebrate Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday in November by having a feast.  

The children came up with a list of traditional foods their families eat on Thanksgiving, such as: turkey stuffing, rice, squash, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn and pumpkin pie, chicken, and and believe it or not crab spaghetti.

The children were surprised when they discovered that Native Americans did not have stoves but cooked their meals outside on a fire. They were also amazed when they found out that they didn't have supermarkets back then.  The Native Americans hunted and fished for their food and bathed and washed in the river.   

The children also learned some new Thanksgiving songs, such as: Ten Little Turkeys, I'm a Little Turkey , and Thanksgiving Dinner. 

We made festive corn decorations out of pipe cleaners and yellow, brown, white, and orange beads.  Each child strung a few pipe cleaners with the beads.  We finished it off by twisting all the pipe cleaner together to make the top of the corn.  Please take a look at them displayed in our front window.

This week we practiced writing and sounding out the letter "O."

The children also came up several words beginning with the letter such as:  orange, octopus, ox, and olive.  

So far we have learned all the horizontal and vertical letters such as: L, F, E, I, T,  and now we are working on the curved letters such as C, O, Q, G, and S.

On Wednesday we had a special guest, "Big Joe the Storyteller."

The children seemed to really enjoy Big Joe and his puppets.

On Friday we created water for our teepee village river.  First, we painted a river-shaped template with corn syrup mixed with blue food coloring and water.  Finally, we added a fish to our river. 

We concluded our week by having a dance party.  The children listened to several songs by Greg and Steve (Animal Action) and followed along with the movements.

Love, 

Ms. Bonne and Ms. Mallari