Our class was abuzz with sights, sounds, and smells of the holiday. The children's voices are ringing with holiday songs as we practice for Thursday's show (and just have fun!).
We began our morning with play practice, letting the children choose their parts. It all worked out without any fussing! Everyone is excited for their part. Play practice ran straight to Ms. Michelle's OT session. She set the room up into centers of a long fabric tunnel and pipettes and colored water. The children enjoyed using fine motor skills to pick water up in their pipette and placing it on a individual platters with small circles. It took one pinch of the pipette to to fill each circle. What colorful, messy fun! Finally, we presented Ms. Michelle, a strong supporter of our program, with a TSGI t-shirt and handmade cloth wreath banner. We can't wait for her to return after Christmas.
Following a short outside time with our DUMC friends, we returned to the classroom to make sock snakes to stock our 'Pet Store' on Thursday. The children followed directions to pull apart small pieces of polyfill and stuff it into the bottom of their selected sock. This took concentration, fine motor skills, and lots of hard work. Once the sock was stuffed, we tied it off with yarn and added eyes. These will make slithery pets for our community store!
Because of the holiday activities, we read our story, Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear, after lunch. The children were huddled over in anticipation as Little Mouse bravely took presents to Big Hungry Bear because he never gets presents. In the end, Little Mouse went home with a big present, a nice reward for his bravery and kind gesture. This book presented many opportunities for questioning of inferences, answering wh- questions, and predicting.
Tomorrow we are reading The Night Before Christmas, have a dress rehearsal for our play, and our gift exchange. Holiday fun!
