Hallo Cedar Families, Happy New Year! It feels good to be back in school. It has been so great to have you all a part of the Cedar class. We really appreciate your support, generosity, and kindness. We look forward to continuing the school year with you and your little ones. These past two weeks we have been focusing on winter and tree studies.

 

New Cedar Students

Please join me to welcome Cedar’s new family, the siblings Saul and Juna, and parents, Mariah and Nic to our Cedar community.

 

Winter

It’s winter! Everyone painted a snowman with their own personality. We read books with winter themes, and they were available in the library for children to look at. There were art activities like coloring and making snowflakes by cutting coffee filters and decorating paper snowmen. There were also winter-related practical life activities on the shelf. Finally, we did an ice experiment. We talked about the 3 states of water and how the solid and liquid states can vary their shape depending on their container. We had been patient to wait until the melting water evaporated! It took a long time!

 

Trees

We learned about trees. A big tree puzzle and a plant in the classroom helped us study the different parts of a tree, especially these days with pouring rain 🙂 We talked about what plants need to live, like sun, water, soil, and space, and we learned how to take care of them by watering them and cleaning their leaves. Planting trees and cherishing trees is important because trees provide so much in our lives, such as food, medicine, materials (paper, toilet paper, tires, houses), and oxygen.

 

Human Relations with Animals 

Thanks to John’s mom, Amy for sharing her expertise in human-animal interaction and the different roles animals play in our lives, with the class. First of all, like trees, animals also provide food or materials to us. Some animals can be trained to support/comfort humans, for example, dogs and cats as family pets, working animals (shepherd dogs, guide dogs, riding horses), mice for science use, and so on which shows how close our relations with animals are.  Amy also brought some bridles and demonstrated how the bridle allows the rider to control the horse’s head, and also the speed and direction of the horse.

 

Sound of the Week–“i”

Noushin made a big pot of healthy and yummy vegetable soup with the children’s help. They chopped the vegetables needed.  This week’s letter is “i”, and there aren’t many words beginning with the short “i” sound. This led to a struggle to find food to make this week as well. We finally decided on “Italian soup.”—It’s Cedar-style Italian soup:)

 

Birthday Circle

We celebrated Westley’s 3rd and Austin’s 5th birthday last week.

 

Art with Julianne

Children picked different shapes and sizes of paper and began weaving the pipe cleaners through the holes.  They tried to bend the pipe cleaners into twists and hooks to link the paper together.  They all looked different and unique! 

 

Inside Time

 

Outside Time

 

Thank You

Thanks to Tilden’s family for bringing flowers to the class!