3 years, 8 months/1 year, 6 months, 2 weeks.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "homes sweet homes":

Dear parents,

We have been working on building our homes. Each person chose a box to
paint. We added much glue and some real wood for the floors and
furniture. We added colorful paper for wallpaper. Wednesday we let
some people from the doll house move in. One of the houses decided to
be an ice cream store instead of a home so we went to get ice cream
but when we knocked on the door, they told us they were closed. We
asked, "Who lives in your house?" Everyone accurately described their
families with two people saying their mamas have babies in their
bellies.

We have also been talking a lot about trees and leaves. We have been
watching and waiting for the leaves on our tree to turn colors. The
children have noticed that they are half green and half yellow. It's
like waiting for a snail. We collected leaves in the yard and have
been comparing them to each other and looking to see which tree they
fell from. Friday someone said the red leaves fell from the "wall
tree" referring to the vines. We have been talking about tree trunks
because we are beginning to create our family tree this week.

Thursday was our first yoga class with Frank. Someone noticed his name
was similar to Frankenstein. In the big room everyone got their own
yoga mat. We stood tall and strong like mountains, walked low and
heavy like dinosaurs and balanced on our bottoms like boats in a
river. We sang Row Row Row Your Boat and bent like bananas. People
laughed, posed and in the end were still and quiet.

We finished our thank you fire card for the fire station. We read The
Three Little Pigs and noticed they used trees for a couple of
different things. We made a list of things we can do with trees. We
read When Sophie Gets Angry and recalled after the book that she had
climbed a tree to calm down. We looked at her angry picture and made
angry faces.

Friday we made two big murals to use as the trunk of our family tree.
We decorated them using potato stamps, burlap, leaves from our yard,
and leather swatches for bark. We worked in two groups, some painted
and glued while others played in the big room. Then we switched. In
the yard we pretended to build a tiny campfire using small sticks.
Then we pretended to be warm.

We have been continuing to observe faces in books and talk about how
people feel. We are also looking at our friends faces and thinking
about how they feel. We are all working on using our words to ask for
a turn, ask for help if needed, and add to the discussion during a
book or at circle time.

Reminder to bring in a family photo. And Day Born story. 1. Family
photo.  2. Day born story.

Next week we will continue to grow our family tree.

See you all Monday,
Therese

3 years, 8 months/1 year, 6 months, 2 weeks.

Graham fell asleep holding onto his balloon string.  We decided the cuteness outweighed the risk of death by choking.

3 years, 8 months/1 year, 6 months, 2 weeks.

Graham is doing an excellent job reading Dinosaur v. Bedtime to Connor.  Everyone does the rawr parts.

3 years, 8 months/1 year, 6 months, 1 week.

Happy Halloween!  We came home from our trip to find two healthy, happy boys who were very excited to don their Thing 1 and Thing 2 costumes and run around the neighborhood in search of candy.  Connor didn't understand trick-or-treating at all, but he quickly figured out what candy is.  Special thanks to Grammy, costume seamstress, and to Graham, wig model.

3 years, 7 months/1 year, 5 months, 2 weeks.

A morning of puddle splashing spilled over into an afternoon of playing with Lily and Jacob today.  In the future, we would appreciate it if the morning and afternoon were separated by something called a "nap."

3 years, 7 months/1 year, 5 months, 1 week.

At the park this afternoon, Lucca and Graham rolled around on the grass giggling together while Connor honed his dribbling skills.

Thanks Nana for the Eagles shirts!  Connor got a number of "Go Birds!" shout-outs today, and an acquaintance from our old neighborhood recognized us because she remembered Graham wearing his Phillies hat when he was Connor's age, saw Connor wearing his McCoy shirt, and put two & two together.

Here's Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled, "Eye pie":

Howdy do,

This week we are continuing to learn about ourselves and the world around us through our five senses. After reading I Spy and looking around the room for colors, we spied at our reflections in a mirror. Each person decided what color their eyes were and colored a part of our "eye pie". It is hanging in the classroom.

We read The Listening Walk and sat with our eyes closed to see (hear) what we could hear. We heard a plane, a siren, some men talking and a barking dog. We used our ears again to listen while playing Simon Says. Some ears couldn't hear Simon very well so we decided it was time to ride tricycles instead.

We read Eyes and did not use our eyes, but our sense of touch, to guess what was in the Feely Box again. People guessed a ball, an apple and cold.

This week we introduced the calendar and talked a tiny bit about the season, month and the year. We also added photos to our attendance chart. Now when we sing good morning everyone puts up their name and photo on the classroom door so we can see who's at school and who is not.

While we splashed at the water table we added food coloring. And used our sense of touch too with shaving cream.

In the big room we dressed up, took care of babies, built beds using blocks, went lots of places on wheels, made meals, worked on our computer key board and hid in our castle aka jungle gym. Busy, busy, busy.

Friday we made our own fruit salad snacks. We cut up apples and bananas. We also sang about apples and bananas. We looked for apples in books. We found them in three of our books.

Next week we will play games and talk about classroom rules and how to be a good friend.

It has been a great start to a new year and is fun getting to know each of your beautiful children.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Therese

3 years, 7 months/1 year, 5 months, 1 week.