Sammy Spider's First Hanukkah
Happy Thursday everyone! We had another fantastic day full of learning, singing, and dancing! We started our morning asking Nimo, “Where is Sayaka???”. Unfortunately, Sayaka wasn’t feeling very well so she stayed at home to recover. To cover for Sayaka we had another lady join us in Petals. Her name is Yuri and she was helping out in Buds Class this week. At first we were very confused and suspicious, but after we spent our morning free play time together we became good friends! We played with LEGO blocks and people figures. We made dinosaur machines and houses for the people. At our craft table we continued working on our Christmas Cards for Asahi Yochien. Today, we sat down and did some cutting! Nimo prepared small squares of paper with shapes drawn on them. The green square had a triangle on it and the brown paper had a square. We used scissors to cut along the thick lines. When we cut the two pieces out, we used markers to stamp dots on them. When we glued them on our cards we noticed that it looked like a Christmas Tree! Nimo let us choose 10 stickers to put on our cards!
After our morning free play time, we had our snacks then sang our “Good Morning” song to greet Yuri and introduce ourselves! Nimo brought some candles, tops, and a book for our morning circle time. “What is that?” we asked Nimo curiously, as he began to read the story to help answer our questions.
“Sammy Spider’s First Hanukkah” by Sylvia A. Rouss and Katherine Janus Kahn. The book was about a small spider named Sammy as he watched the Shapiro Family celebrate Hanukkah. We learned that Hanukkah is another big day that people celebrate other than Christmas. Hanukkah is just as important and big as Christmas in many parts of the world! Just like how we have Christmas Trees and Santa Hats, Hanukkah has Menorahs and Dreidels. Nimo brought the Menorah we have in Petals and we counted how many candles there were. There’s one big daddy candle called the Shamash and 8 little candles for each night of Hanukkah. We had a fun counting activity we did with the Menorah. During Hanukkah Josh, the little boy in the story played with the dreidel by spinning it. “I don’t have those in my house” R said pointing at the Menorah and Dreidels. “I have those” G pointed at the Christmas Decorations. We played with the dreidels and then sang the “Dreidel Song” for our winter party.
We went to the park and we had the green area all by ourselves! We had a great time chasing our teachers and friends! When we got back to school, we sang our Winter Party Songs, then Maryna came for our dance rehearsal! Before we had our snacks we had a surprise guest come to Petals Class. It was a tiny little frog! We took a close look at the frog and tried to think of a name for it, but we decided to call him “Frog” after all.
We had another wonderful day at school! Hope everyone has a great evening and we will see you all again tomorrow!
Love,
Petals