I hope everyone had a fantastic vacation!  With such a long break we have spent a lot of time in our first days back reviewing expectations, especially focusing on what it means to be kind, safe, engaged, and responsible during each part of our days.  We are working on creating a board game that will help reinforce these expectations and also give us practice with math skills.

We have also been talking about animals in winter and what different animals do to survive when it gets cold and snowy.  We have been sorting animals into three categories:  those that migrate, those that are active and need to find food, and those that hibernate (noting that some animals sleep very lightly and may even wake up and therefore aren't true hibernators).  We have read several books about animals in winter and have begun taking notes on what we learn, using pictures and words on larger posters for easy reference.   We will use these notes to do an informational piece of writing in the next few weeks.  We have also been acting out different animals in winter, which has given us some much needed movement when we've been unable to go outside!  I am hoping to do a visual project as well and would like to collect one shoe boxes or similar sized box for each child.  If you have any to share please send them in! (I have several already.)