Chanukah Week - Newsletter

A Note From the Teacher

We had a great time with the silly opposite dress up days last week! The kids were very creative with their outfits! :-)

This week we start our holiday celebrations. Our final celebrations will be on Thursday and Friday, December 20th and 21st at 10:45 am for the morning classes and 2:00 pm for our afternoon class. We will sign up sheets out in the next week so that you can sign up to bring something to our parties. It’d be great if you would ask your child what they would really like to bring to the party to share and then you can sign up to bring that, so that they feel like they are involved in the process. You are all invited to join us! :-) Also, we’ll be doing a book exchange during the party. Please bring a book that could be a gift for a girl or a boy, wrapped. A great place to pick up a book would be the book fair!

Speaking of our book fair...It will be open during school hours and during the Christmas programs. The proceeds help us buy new things for our classrooms. Along with the book fair, we are still collecting loose change to purchase books for children in Nicaragua who don’t have any books. Our class has been doing a GREAT job bringing in our change...keep up the good work! The last day to donate is this Friday, December 7th.

-Teacher April

This Week in the Sunshine Class

I was thrilled to find out that we have at least one Jewish family in our class. They have been helping me come up with some culturally accurate activities to help us celebrate Chanukah. For instance, I learned that most foods served at Chanukah celebrations are fried. Yum! One treat often enjoyed is donuts so we’ll be enjoying some. They also shared with us a great Blue’s Clues book that’s all about Chanukah.

For fun, we’ll be playing with dreidels and I have a math game that involves rolling dice and adding candles to a menorah.

We’ve got some projects planned such as dreidel magnets and star magnets. We’ll also be using our hand shapes to create our very own menorahs. We’re hoping to make candle prints by rolling candles in paint but we need to collect some used candles first. If you have any around your house, we’d love to use them!

We’re also throwing in a craft that will help us honor Las Posadas, a Mexican holiday that occurs just before Christmas. We’re going to be using our art to decorate for our holiday parties.
If your family has any special holiday traditions that you would like to share with our class, please let us know! :-)

Oh yeah, we’re working on a secret Christmas project just for you! :-)