Finishing up December...

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post... busy, busy, busy is all I can say. We celebrated the graduation of my oldest as he just finished nursing school... yea!!! We took care my second youngest who was sick with numerous problems and ended up with a ruptured ear... owww! We drove to Hyde Park, NY to pick up our second son from the Culinary Institute of America... so nice to have extra hands in the kitchen! We had a lovely Christmas that I thoroughly enjoyed... I love Christmas!!! And we celebrated our 25-th wedding anniversary with a big surprise from my husband... we renewed our vows, was given this beautiful ring, and had a spectacular dinner made by him and my culinary son. Of course, this was all a surprise to me!

As for the daycare... it too is hectic and busy along with overly excited anticipation of Christmas. We didn't get everything I wanted to get done this season, but I think we got pretty many things done along with our normal learning time.

We learned about the letter Kk the past couple weeks... with the snow and winter storm we had low numbers last week so I combined many activities into the past two weeks and this week is only a three day week with the Christmas holiday. As we always do we learned the letter Kk song from Mrs. Jones Kindergarten site and completed a letter book.






We took a trip to Holland and looked at pictures from Holland and talked about different things we saw. We talked about and made windmills.


We talked about wooden shoes and the history behind them. We also talked about St. Nicholas day and made a wooden shoe in which we put carrots and hay and then pretended to go to sleep so St. Nicholas could take the carrot and hay and replace them with a gift. They had fun role playing this.



Our next stop was Italy. We talked and looked at pictures of Italy. We then discussed how in Italy most churches have a nativity. We made a nativity scene.


We made a Christmas paper angel ornament.




A handprint and footprint angel.

And we painted a wooden angel as part of our parent gift from the children.



We then started running out of time and made a few more Christmas ornaments for the parent gifts. I found these fun foam kits at Walmart and the children really enjoyed making them.



We used our dot-r-markers to make wreaths.



We fingerpainted a Rudolph.



And made a paper bag Santa puppet all before Christmas.



Our Christmas party was a lot of fun. The children enjoyed opening new toys that stay in the daycare... a wooden train, magna doodle pads, a dollhouse van, puzzles, and matchbox cars. They have been having a lot of fun with these items. They also each took home a memory game.

After Christmas we talked about Africa and looked at some pictures. We talked about the holiday Kwanzaa and its origin. We made a kinara and a fruit bowl in celebration of Kwanzaa.



We made three different snowmen... a paper piece snowman, a cotton ball snowman, and a fingerpainted snowman.





We reviewed some numbers and did a number/counting recognition paper.


Lastly, we talked about New Year's Day and how and why we celebrate it. We made a New Year's resolution and the dropping New Year's ball (although it's not dropping).






Thank you for looking over all the projects and learning we did. I hope to see you back in the New Year! Hope you had a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.