january 20
We spent extra time in the classroom this morning — playing at the dollhouse, painting pictures, creating imaginary scenarios at the play dough table, cutting out snowflakes, and decorating letters for our art wall.
A while later, we enjoyed snack and a story Autumn shared with us today called, Can I Give You a Squish?
Then, our new puppets, Fantastic Fox and Friendly Frog, made an appearance and put on a show for us all about asking permission before we dive in for a hug or a kiss. We thought Friendly Frog was hilarious because she kept croaking and we loved coaching Fox when he wasn’t sure which words to use :) “Fox! You have to ask Frog BEFORE you give her a hug!!” “Fox! You need to say sorry to Frog because you made her sad.”
Finally, we mustered up the courage to gear up and head out into the cold. We’ve been working really hard to put on and take off all of our gear without any help from Deidre (aside from gloves, because those are extra tricky). Some of us can do it and some of us are almost there! We’re feeling very proud of how hard we’re working.
Because we only had a short time outdoors today, we stayed close to school and played in the backyard. We climbed into the trough and had a blast “ice skating” and bumping into each other. We noticed lots of bees, frozen in the ice at the bottom of the trough. Pretty cool! Then, we set out on a walk around the neighborhood. First stop was the mailbox. Deidre opened it up and tons of kisses from our parents flew out. We had to catch them as quickly as possible and rub them into our hearts :)
Our second stop was Bess and Brian’s house. They have a great little hill that we love running and jumping down.
Our third stop was Chris’s house. We noticed that her bee boxes are no longer outdoors. “Maybe she moved them into the living room so they could be warm.”
Our last stop was Ty and Sandy’s yard, where we enjoyed lots of rides on the dolly and a fun game of kick-the-ball-into-the-bucket.
We made our way back inside to defrost for lunch and then rest.
After rest, we had a dance party and got soooo hot and sweaty :) Then, we met at the chalkboard door to solve the picture puzzle. We worked together to figure out what each drawing was and then said the letters to each word aloud as Deidre wrote it below the drawing (F-R-O-G). Each time Deidre wrote a letter that happened to be in one of our names, we excitedly ran over to our new name placards on the wall and pointed to the letter. “I have an E!!!” “Me too!!!” “Three of us have E’s!!!”
Once all the words were written, we took turns passing the blue chalk around and coming up to the door to find/circle the letter F. It was f-f-f-fun :)
We ended our day with the Pizza Song and lots of *consensual* hugs goodbye.