Native Americans, Scissors and our new "Publix!"

 This week we learned about the Native Americans. We read the book, "The Inside Story, Tepee," by Dana Rau. We found out that Native Americans hunted buffalo to use for food, clothing and shelter. They needed homes that they could move easily to follow the buffalo, so they built tepees. We painted the canvas for our tepee with colorful Native American symbols and wrapped it around our cone shaped poles. Now we have our own tepee where we can build a nice, warm fire, cook and take care of the babies. Sometimes we even have time for games when all of our work is done! Then, if we are "ladybug of the day" we can sleep in the tepee during rest time.

 

Have you heard that there is a new store in Alpha? We have just this week opened a brand new "Publix" grocery store. It is the best because we can shop for groceries with our special baskets and then we have friends that can check us out at the cash register. Once our groceries are paid for, we can head home and put them away. Our house has a nice kitchen for cooking or we can relax in the den, downstairs!

Then we made green paper by painting with feathers and paint brushes made of rubber bands. We used our paper to make a BIG "Publix" sign for the front of our new store!

Mrs. Mundell had a new surprise for us in the "Magic Basket" this week, SCISSORS! How much fun, we learned how to place the scissors on our hands and then chomp, chomp chomp as we cut lots of snips of yellow brown, orange and red paper. Next we added little dots of glue to our colorful snips of paper and glued them to our beautiful fall leaves.

One of our favorite books, "Five little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," by Eileen Christelow has been especially fun as the children read the book through pictures using the characters and props to act out the story.

  

During Exploring on Friday the children folded strips of paper and chose colorful feathers to make turkey hats that they will wear for our Thanksgiving feast. They also enjoyed spending time in the tepee weaving on the loom, playing instruments and building a "pretend fire" with blocks and red and orange tissue paper. They also made and decorated their own drums and then used them to make music, just like Mrs. McIvor showed us with her drum! We made a special turkey snack with a cookie body, pretzel stick feathers and legs, raisin eyes and a candy corn nose.

We ended our week by attending the Shorecrest homecoming pep rally! The football players shared their helmets with us as we cheered for our team!

Please join us on Friday at 8:30 on the lawn behind the Lower School for "Poetry in the Park." If you could please send a plain red, black or white t-shirt this week for your child to wear on Friday. We will send them home with them in their yellow bags on Friday afternoon. See you there!
We will be taking a field trip to Publix on Tuesday November 15th at 9:00 to shop for our Thanksgiving Feast. We would love to have some parents accompany us. If you can join us, please let us know.
Our feast will be held on Friday November 18th at 11:00. We would love to have some parent volunteers for that special event, as well!