It's Been a Cold Week!

I think we are all feeling a little stir crazy after being stuck inside for SO MANY days.  Hopefully the weather will smarten up soon so we can take the kids outside for some much needed fresh air!  We stayed warm this week by baking cookies for Santa.  The kids had a blast rolling, cutting, and decorating the cookies.  They were delighted to each take a couple home for Santa.  The true test will be if they can stop themselves from eating them before Christmas Eve!  Click here to see some pictures of our cookie fun: Cookies for Santa

Welcome Mrs. Watt!

We are thrilled to announce that our educational assistant Mrs. Watt is now working with the afternoon class as well as the morning class.  Welcome to the afternoons Mrs. Watt, we are so excited to have you working with both of our classes!

A Group Effort

We had fun strengthening our fine motor skills by working together to cut, draw, and glue to create snowmen with our classroom occupational therapist, Mrs. Sangster.  Each child had different tasks to complete to help make our snowmen a success!  Click here to see some of our teamwork in action: Group Snowmen

In the Gym

We were so excited to see "Pool Hall Games" set up in the gym this week.  The kids enjoyed learning about foosball, air hockey, shuffle board, and ping pong as we tried out the different games.  Click here to see some action shots of our game time: Pool Hall Games

Sensory Bags

I hope your children were able to communicate to you what the baggie with shave cream inside was all about.  That was a snowman sensory bag - we worked hard to draw the faces on those bags.  The students loved squishing the bags to move the carrot nose around.  

MindUp Curriculum

This week we began chatting about mindful movement.  How does your body feel when you exercise?  How does your body feel when you are relaxed?  What tools can we use to help our body relax?  We can use deep umbrella breathing to help calm our bodies down.  

We also began to learn about mindful balancing.  We worked together to see how tall of a tower we could build out of blocks.  We found out that we were able to make our tower even taller if we were mindful about our stacking and thought about our actions before adding a block to the tower.

Christmas Party

We will be having our Christmas Parties on Thursday, December 22nd.  The morning Monday/Wednesday students are welcome to join the Thursday morning class, and the afternoon Monday/Wednesday students are welcome to join the Thursday afternoon class.  

This day will be a wear your pajamas and bring a stuffed animal day!

We will also be making gingerbread houses on this day.  Thank you to Sobeys for generously donating ALL of the icing for our houses.  I will provide the houses.  I am asking each family to send a small bag of candy for decorating.  I will mix all of the candies together for the students to share, to ensure there is an assortment of candies for each student to use.  I am still looking for one more volunteer to help out with decorating from the morning class.  If you are interested in helping out, please let me know!

Important Dates

• December 22nd - Christmas Parties
• Wear your pajamas and bring a stuffed animal
• Bring a small bag of candy for gingerbread house making
• December 23rd - January 8th - Christmas holidays, no school
• January 9th - Classes resume 
• January 11th and 12th - early dismissal days
• the morning class will dismiss at 10:25am
• the afternoon class will dismiss at 2:15pm