Fabulous February

February may be the shortest month, but it is the richest in celebration opportunities! In my class, we celebrate anything and everything. So, thank you, February! This year we even get an EXTRA celebration with Leap Day on the 29th!

Right off the bat, we celebrated Ground Hog's Day by having a flashlight Groundhog hunt. We found groundhogs and their shadows.

Although the day started out cloudy, the sun came out in time for us to go outside and make our own shadows. Each child told me what his shadow was doing and we compiled them into a class book that the children can take home and share with their families. It looks like our local Groundhog, General Beauregard Lee, is being true to his word because we are either having a very mild winter or a very early spring here in Georgia!

This shadow is being Tinkerbell!

Then, of course, there's the February biggie ~ Valentine's Day. We spent a lot of time on that, counting plastic hearts, playing Hugs and Kisses tic-tac-toe, making Valentine surprises and decorating our classroom.

We played mailman and delivered our Valentines to all our friends and we made St. Valentine puppets with our moms.

We read the book Be My Valenslime  by J.K. Arden. Then we made slime with cornstarch, water and food coloring. It was so much fun. We had slime everywhere. 

February is also Dental Health month so we painted with tooth brushes and with dental floss.

                                We made elephant toothpaste and discussed taking care of our teeth.

And then it was President's Day. Since Presidents are well-represented on our coins, we started a unit on money. We are doing a continuing spend and save activity. The children made paper "piggy banks". Each day they get a penny which they can spend or save. The first day all but one child spent their penny on a Hershey Kiss. Then they started to figure out that there might be something they wanted more.

By day three, they were even realizing that they could save up and get more than one thing. We will continue this activity for at least another week.

 Right on top of that was Mardi Gras. For some reason, I don't have a picture of the masks we made, but we did celebrate with a Kings Cake and some stories about New Orleans.

And last but not least, we get Leap Day on the 29th. Since this falls right in the middle of our Dr. Seuss' Birthday celebration,Wacky Wednesday, we will make origami frogs, play Leap Frog, and read Theo LeSieg's Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog? I'll write more on that next week. 

Hooray for holidays, celebrations and February!

THIS is Another Reason I Love Teaching

I was not particularly looking forward to going to preschool today, but I am the teacher. Yesterday was not such a good day. I received an indignant note from a parent regarding something that she perceived to have happened to her child last week. First of all, I was hurt that she would think that I or my co-teacher would treat any child in this manner. Secondly, I was sorry that a mistake had occurred that caused her to feel that way. I wrote her a note of apology, but it sort of ruined my whole day. Today her son walked in with a small gift bag and note. It was a thank you note and teacher mug. I had written each of  "my children" a note on an index card telling them something that I valued about them for Valentine's Day. He had written me a thank you note for my card. Later, he told me that last night "when he was sad and missing" me, the note made him feel better. Now, I truly doubt that he gave me much thought after he left school yesterday, but it made me feel better to know that I have not failed with this child or his family.

And the day just got better from there! Apparently we were all feeling a little philosophical today.Each morning in circle time, we pray the Hail Mary prayer. We have been learning this prayer for a couple of months, but today, at the end, one little boy stood up and asked, "What does 'full of grace' mean?"  I had just been pondering Grace this morning so I threw out a couple of ideas like loving kindness and blessings from God. I am the "token Protestant" in a Catholic preschool, so when it comes to matters of doctrine, I want to be sure that I am steering them in the right direction. I took the question to my curriculum director who found me a book explaining the prayer for children. She also suggested that we ask the priest to come and explain it to us. We wrote him a note of invitation and he said he will come. I am anxious to see how he explains Grace to four year olds (and their 29+ year old teacher).

A little while later, as I was working in small groups, I had an interesting conversation with yet another little boy. These are the three boys being themselves. The child on my right was asking for help so the boy on my left reached across the table to show him what to do. I thanked him for helping and he said, "It's good to help, because that's what's important." A bit later, he looked at me again and said, "Today in the prayer, I said thank you to God because God is precious to us. Did you know that He is always next to us? I learned that when I was three." My first thought was to ask where God had been when he was cutting up our dress-up clothes a few days ago, but I held my tongue because these moments are precious to me!

As it turns out, the girls were feeling it, too. Lately the girls have enjoyed playing salon, doing each others' hair, make-up and nails. One little girl, rather distraught, came up to my co-teacher and said, "She wants me to make her beautiful but Mommy told me beauty comes from the inside." Oh dear, I guess we will be talking about "Beauty is as beauty does."

At lunch, one little girl was taking a particularly long time finishing. Some of the other children were getting anxious to go to the playground and were starting to rush her. One sweet little girl looked at them and said, "I'll sit here with her so she doesn't have to sit alone."

In afternoon circle, we had a guest reader who asked if they could guess what the books were about. One little boy said, "Blessings from God. I really like blessings."

I am just shaking my head. All year I have said that this is a special class but today was a one-of-a-kind day! There was a lot of deep thinking going on. I don't know if it was because yesterday was Valentine's Day and they are still basking in the love or what. I do know that kids are the BEST and this is the best job in the world!