Circle Time:  We prepared for the workbook page for the letter S.  The children had to follow the lines made by a skate and snowboard.  Then they traced the letter S four times and colored a skate.

Story:  The Biggest Snowman Ever is the story of two mice who try to build a snowman for the city snowman contest.  They each create a large snowman but discover that if they work together, they can make one really big snowman  and win.  This book has the same characters and story line as The Biggest Pumpkin Ever that we read at Halloween time.  So we did a compare and contrast following the story.

Group Time:  The children couldn't wait to take their snowflakes out of the borax mixture from yesterday.   The borax and water created crystals on the pipe cleaners.  The children looked at them using magnifying glasses. 

I have mentioned that we were going to start a new study this month.  We are looking to see if there would be an interest in a ball study.  I gathered several different balls into a basket and let the children explore.  We made of list of things that were similar and things that were different about the balls. 

Art:  The children are bringing home the snowmen that we painted yesterday.  I told them that they could try to peal them off of the wax paper if they wanted to.  They may need your help with this.

Snacks:  I think I may have confused a few of you by putting Cooking Day on the calendar. This was supposed to be Birthday Day but we didn't have any birthdays in either class for January. We usually cook on Birthday Day and I didn't want to miss it, so we just called it cooking day.  Our plan for the day had been to make "Snowballs".  These are made by mixing peanut butter and powdered milk and then rolling them in coconut or powdered sugar.  However, we have had several kids absent with illnesses in the past two days, so I thought that maybe a snack where we have to mix and roll with our hands wouldn't be a good idea.  So we frosted graham crackers and made snowman faces with M&M's and chocolate chips.  We'll do more cooking next month. 

No School on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  We'll see everyone on Tuesday!