Dear families,

We have reached the holiday season and like our young students, we are anticipating the upcoming weeks of family, food, and festivities. But before we get ahead of ourselves we must also reach the end of the alphabet.  We will be adding X, Y, and Z to The Word Wall, giving students more practice at recognizing and writing those tricky diagonal letters. 

During the next two weeks we will be reading David Wiesner's lushly illustrated children's book, Tuesday, which contains almost no text. The book follows a group of frogs that leave the swamp to fly on their lily pads and find adventure in the neighboring town.  This fantastical froggy tale will build on the reality vs. fantasy discussions we have had in the last few weeks and now we will introduce the element of dreaming into the conversation. What is a dream? When do we dream? What have you seen and done in your dreams? Are dreams reality or fantasy?

'Reading' this wordless book encourages students to sequence a storyline solely through the visual images; they will get a chance to tell their own visual story when they are challenged to craft a narrative out of a series of sticker images. 

Continuing on in the animal kingdom we will discuss nocturnal animals (with a take home memory game), and the differences between frogs and toads.  Students will also have a new poem about amphibians under their belt:

Green green frog

On a brown brown log.

You wait for a fly

To come buzz buzz by

Your tongue's so quick

When you give it a flick -

It's Bye bye Mr. Fly!

As we settle into these long November nights, instructors will introduce the idea of the sunrise and the sunset, explaining that the sun sets earlier in the winter and later in the summer.  Students will create their own sunscapes as they learn the difference between 'rising' and 'setting.' Understanding the math and science at work in the world around them helps bridge connections between class time and everyday life. Building on that idea, our math stations will reinforce number writing, everyday math skills like number identification with clocks and calendars, and the concepts of more vs. less, subtraction, and full/half/one quarter. 

This holiday season is the perfect time to introduce the notion of gratitude and the importance of extending a 'thank you' when someone helps you. We will discuss the Thanksgiving holiday and the value of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, sampling a variety of foods and identifying each one as well as its color, seeds, stem, and skin.  Just in time for dinner, everyone will make their own placemat with outlines for the plate, cup, and silverware, and to top it off we will craft Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon floats and stage our very own float parade. 

So as we enter this week of Thanksgiving, I would like to take the opportunity to give thanks to you, our New York Kids Club families. We are grateful that your dedication to the 3s Club has fostered a community of trust, support, and most of all, fun.  Thank you for your belief in us; we are honored to learn and laugh with your children each day.