Arctic Animals and Purim Week

 Dear Parents, 

We celebrated Purim this week! The children gave their baskets to their families which were filled with yummy hamantaschen and other treats.  We made our own masks for the Purim Festival. The children first painted them with watercolors, then added a craft stick, gems and feathers to make them extra vibrant. 

Monday was crazy hair/hat day

                                          

Here are a few friends on Wacky Wednesday 

We are all looking great on room color day 

We are also learning about penguins and polar bears this week. 

Penguins:

-can’t fly

-are aquatic animals so they love to swim 

-live in cold and warm climates such as Antarctica and South America

-eat fish, krill, and small ocean animals

-live in large groups called colonies

-like to waddle and go tobogganing on their bellies

-the Emperor is the largest penguin and the blue penguins is the smallest. 

-they have dense waterproof black and white feathers 

-Rockhopper penguins have yellow feathers on their head

-females lay 1-2 eggs a year and both parents take turns keeping the egg(s) warm under their feathers. 

We made penguins using water bottles. First we filled the empty bottles with cotton balls. Then we painted the bottles with black paint, leaving the front clear so that the white bellies show. We added flippers for the feet, wings, and used googly eyes and beaks on the head. 

Since some penguins live in icy climates, we put toy penguins in an ice tray with some water and froze them overnight so that we could play with them in their habitat.  The next day, we skated the penguins on the ice and had so much fun! 

The next arctic animal that we learned about this week was the polar bear.  Polar bears:

-live in the Arctic 

-have black skin

-have clear fur

-have layers of blubber on their body to keep warm

-live in dens

-babies cannot see or hear when they are born and they drink their mother's milk 

We made our own polar bears on Wednesday.  The children first painted an empty fruit cup with white paint, for the snout. Then we glued crinkled white tissue paper onto a paper plate for the fur. When everything dried, we added ears, eyes, and a snout. They look amazing! 

Purim was such a fun filled day! We started off our day watching a performance of the story of  Esther. Then we paraded around the school with our groggers in hand to show the staff in the building our fabulous costumes.  We went to the Purim carnival where the children made crowns, hamantaschen out of clay and masks. There was even a play camel to ride! 

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Bonne & Denise