Let the Holidays begin!
November/30/09
The girls and I got out all the Christmas stuff to decorate for the Holidays and I came across this that my former 4/5 yr old student Kolby made me last year. I don’t know if its suppose to be a necklace but it was still attached to the ribbon they used to decorate the plate of cookies it accompanied. I wore it all evening as we listened to Christmas music and decorated. Very enjoyable. Thanks Kolby!!
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Thomas
November/30/09
THOMAS SANCHEZ:
Thomas is our 1st spotlght. I thought it would be fitting as Thomas was my 1st enrolled student when I started Little Star Preschool here in this area. He has come such a long way socially as well as in language as he comes from a Spanish speaking home.
Story from home:
Thomas is our 1st spotlght. I thought it would be fitting as Thomas was my 1st enrolled student when I started Little Star Preschool here in this area. He has come such a long way socially as well as in language as he comes from a Spanish speaking home.
Story from home:
Thomas Ivan Sanchez, born March 18 2005 in Ogden Regional Hospital. He born with a lot of hair and sideburns, one of the nurses said the Tommy won the contest "Who is the baby that have more hair" they said the Tommy was "The King".... Tommy always have a energy to do a lot of thing... he start to walk when he has only 10 month in the first birthday party he was just running for all over the house... He love to eat chinese food, and peruvians dessert. Green is his favorite color. He is taken Karate clases, and he love his master Aranda. Tommy is a really good boy since he born,...we try to correct some behavior with the magic word "Time Out",....he understand really good that he needs to go to his room and think what he did. One day I was so stress and I answer him in bad manner and Tommy say to me: Ok mami you are in time out now,...go to you room and don't came out.,,,,, Tommy is a funny and silly boy,... We love him so much. |
Thomas in the Spotlight
Songs for kids
November/28/09
I came across this site and thought I’d pass it along. The kids just love all the songs we do. Even though this is not my source currently for songs I plan on buying a few from here because they seem very age appropriate. Regaurdless, having a CD or 2 at home might be nice:
http://www.supersimplesongs.com/cds.html#3
PIE!!
November/27/09
A Brief History of Pie
By Laura Mayer Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008
They're simple, they're American and come Thanksgiving, everybody saves room for them. But the pies we know today are a fairly recent addition to a history that goes back as long as mankind has had dough to bake into a crust and stuff to put inside it. In medieval England, they were called pyes, and instead of being predominantly sweet, they were most often filled with meat — beef, lamb, wild duck, magpie pigeon — spiced with pepper, currants or dates. Historians trace pie's initial origins to the Greeks, who are thought to be the originators of the pastry shell, which they made by combining water and flour. The wealthy Romans used many different kinds of meats — even mussels and other types of seafood — in their pies. Meat pies were also often part of Roman dessert courses, or secundae mensea. Cato the Younger recorded the popularity of this sweet course, and a cheesecake-like dish called Placenta, in his treatise De Agricultura.
Contrary to grade school theater productions across the United States, there was no modern-day pie — pumpkin, pecan or otherwise — at the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621. Pilgrims brought English-style, meat-based recipes with them to the colonies. While pumpkin pie, which is first recorded in a cookbook in 1675, originated from British spiced and boiled squash, it was not popularized in America until the early 1800s. Historians don't know all the dishes the Pilgrims served in the first Thanksgiving feast, but primary documents indicate that pilgrims cooked with fowl and venison — and it's not unlikely that some of that meat found its way between sheets of dough at some point. The colonists cooked many a pie: because of their crusty tops, pies acted as a means to preserve food, and were often used to keep the filling fresh during the winter months. And they didn't make bland pies, either: documents show that the Pilgrims used dried fruit, cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg to season their meats. Further, as the colonies spread out, the pie's role as a means to showcase local ingredients took hold and with it came a proliferation of new, sweet pies. A cookbook from 1796 listed only three types of sweet pies; a cookbook written in the late 1800s featured 8 sweet pie varieties; and by the 1947 the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking listed 65 different varieties of sweet pies.
There are few things as American as apple pie, as the saying goes, but like much of America's pie tradition, the original apple pie recipes came from England. These pre-Revolutionary prototypes were made with unsweetened apples and encased in an inedible shell. Yet the apple pie did develop a following, and was first referenced in the year 1589, in Menaphon by poet R. Greene: "Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies." (500 years later, we have "I'm Lovin' It", thanks to McDonald's and its signature apple pie in an individual-serving sleeve.) Pies today are world-spanning treats, made with everything from apples to avocados. The winners of this year's annual APC Crisco National Pie Championship included classic apple, pumpkin and cherry pies, but citrus pies, banana foster crème and Wolf Pack trail mix pies have all made the awards list. Pies have come a long way since the days of magpie and pepper, but many bakeries — including The Little Pie Shop in New York City, in the audio below — say a classic apple pie is still their top holiday seller.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1862315,00.html?iid=digg_share#ixzz0Y7IXihMV
HERE’S MRS.BANU’S FAMOUS APPLE PIE
By Laura Mayer Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008
They're simple, they're American and come Thanksgiving, everybody saves room for them. But the pies we know today are a fairly recent addition to a history that goes back as long as mankind has had dough to bake into a crust and stuff to put inside it. In medieval England, they were called pyes, and instead of being predominantly sweet, they were most often filled with meat — beef, lamb, wild duck, magpie pigeon — spiced with pepper, currants or dates. Historians trace pie's initial origins to the Greeks, who are thought to be the originators of the pastry shell, which they made by combining water and flour. The wealthy Romans used many different kinds of meats — even mussels and other types of seafood — in their pies. Meat pies were also often part of Roman dessert courses, or secundae mensea. Cato the Younger recorded the popularity of this sweet course, and a cheesecake-like dish called Placenta, in his treatise De Agricultura.
Contrary to grade school theater productions across the United States, there was no modern-day pie — pumpkin, pecan or otherwise — at the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621. Pilgrims brought English-style, meat-based recipes with them to the colonies. While pumpkin pie, which is first recorded in a cookbook in 1675, originated from British spiced and boiled squash, it was not popularized in America until the early 1800s. Historians don't know all the dishes the Pilgrims served in the first Thanksgiving feast, but primary documents indicate that pilgrims cooked with fowl and venison — and it's not unlikely that some of that meat found its way between sheets of dough at some point. The colonists cooked many a pie: because of their crusty tops, pies acted as a means to preserve food, and were often used to keep the filling fresh during the winter months. And they didn't make bland pies, either: documents show that the Pilgrims used dried fruit, cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg to season their meats. Further, as the colonies spread out, the pie's role as a means to showcase local ingredients took hold and with it came a proliferation of new, sweet pies. A cookbook from 1796 listed only three types of sweet pies; a cookbook written in the late 1800s featured 8 sweet pie varieties; and by the 1947 the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking listed 65 different varieties of sweet pies.
There are few things as American as apple pie, as the saying goes, but like much of America's pie tradition, the original apple pie recipes came from England. These pre-Revolutionary prototypes were made with unsweetened apples and encased in an inedible shell. Yet the apple pie did develop a following, and was first referenced in the year 1589, in Menaphon by poet R. Greene: "Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies." (500 years later, we have "I'm Lovin' It", thanks to McDonald's and its signature apple pie in an individual-serving sleeve.) Pies today are world-spanning treats, made with everything from apples to avocados. The winners of this year's annual APC Crisco National Pie Championship included classic apple, pumpkin and cherry pies, but citrus pies, banana foster crème and Wolf Pack trail mix pies have all made the awards list. Pies have come a long way since the days of magpie and pepper, but many bakeries — including The Little Pie Shop in New York City, in the audio below — say a classic apple pie is still their top holiday seller.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1862315,00.html?iid=digg_share#ixzz0Y7IXihMV
HERE’S MRS.BANU’S FAMOUS APPLE PIE
Local Sub for Santa
November/23/09
Program needs Sub for Santa help
When the weather outside turns frightful, it can be a real threat for some families who cannot afford winter basics like coats and gloves. Thanks to Head Start, more than 62 families were supplied with coats, hats, gloves and some much-needed clothing this year.
The annual clothing drive sponsored by the Davis Head Start/Early Head Start program brought in boxes and boxes of donations. Pairing up with the Foster Foundation, the drive provided enough items for students and families who utilize those programs.
Families who do not qualify for food stamps and other assistance were also given food supplies, thanks to an accompanying canned food drive.
But the need doesn't end there. Head Start officials are hoping they can help just as many families with the annual Sub for Santa program.
Last year, 527 children in the Davis County area were provided with Christmas gifts thanks to donations. This year, Head Start is expecting even more will need help due to the economy.
Elizabeth Wood, a family services worker, said most of the families they helped in years past came from referrals after home visits. This year, however, more families are approaching them for help.
Wood said the Sub for Santa program runs through Dec. 9, but the program can help families up until about Dec. 18. Individuals can request a minimum of two needs and two wants. However, "a lot of them get their whole Christmas," thanks to the generosity of donors, she said.
The Head Start program receives a lot of help from Davis School District employees, but needs outside help from church groups, Eagle Scout projects, businesses, families or other individuals to meet all the needs. Those interested can sponsor a child or family, or make a donation.
"Last year we received wonderful help from the school district, but if we didn't have outside help, there's no way we could do it," Wood said.
To help, call Debra Hansen at 801-402-0704, Joanne Oyler at 801-402-0751, or Wood at 801-402-9755.
Imagination
November/20/09
Belle married the farmer and her friend princesses came to visit! LOL. awesome! Later Jasmine rode a tiger to the farm to visit as well :)
Free Range Kids Article
November/19/09
“Can These Parents Be Saved?” asks TIME Magazine Cover Story
Posted on November 20, 2009 by lskenazy
Hi Readers — Wow. This is my dream article, and (perhaps) not just because it is high on Free-Range Kids! Check it out! Yay, Time! And please allow me to quote a part I find particularly salient:
Obsessing about kids’ safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google “America’s Worst Mom,” fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. (“Malta! An island!” she marvels. “Who’s stalking the kids there? Pirates?”) Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, “hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers.”
Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons’ school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being “at least part Sikorsky,” hiring a football coach for a son’s birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?”
From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, “10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It’s the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.
That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with “How can you let him go to the store alone?,” she suggests countering with “How can you let him visit your relatives?” (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) “I’m not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn’t be prepared,” she says. “But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources.” Besides, she says with a smile, “a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It’s nowhere you’d want to be.”
Let’s say it again: Hooray for Time Magazine! The tide is turning! — Lenore
source: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/can-these-parents-be-saved-asks-time-magazine-cover-story/
Donate coats and blankets
November/18/09
Check City is accepting new or gently used sweaters, blankets and coats for adults and kids. Please take your donation to any Check City location from 11/2/09-11/30/09. All items will be donated to the Catholic Community Services. For a list of Check City locations in Utah, visit: http://www.checkcity.com/StoreLocator/state/Utah/Utah.aspx.
Opposites
November/16/09
This week we are doing opposites. The 4/5 yr old classes are making opposites books (3yr olds will do a simple project and take home game)which you will see at the end of the week. Go through the book with them and let them show you what they have drawn on the pages and traced the words
Composer Mozart
November/16/09
This months Composer is Mozart. The 4/5 yr old class has music on fridays and we have started adding Composer/Instrument of the month. This months instrument is violin. We listen to the composers music at the begining of class during free play.
Also this weeks vocab word is composer.
I am thankful for...
November/13/09
Today we did the "I am thankful for..." project. They loved it so much we did it for double the project time (which was ok b/c it was a little nippy outside). Remember to casusally converse with your kids about what you and they are thankful for :)
3,4,and 5 yr old Milestones
November/08/09
There is no one like your child
Every child's development is unique and complex. Although children develop through a generally predictable sequence of steps and milestones, they may not proceed through these steps in the same way or at the same time. A child's development is also greatly influenced by factors in his or her environment and the experiences he or she has. The information in this guide explains what child development experts consider to be "widely-held expectations" for what an average child might achieve within a given year. Please consider what you read in the context of your child's unique development.
3 yr olds
4 yr olds
5 yr olds
Vocabulary Words
November/07/09
Every month I add something new to our palette of learning. This month we have started the days of the week song and vocabulary words. This post will be the start of an ongoing list. This weeks vocab word was:
1. harvest |ˈhärvist|
noun
the process or period of gathering in crops : helping with the harvest.
2. zigzag |ˈzigˌzag|
noun
a line or course having abrupt alternate right and left turns : she traced a zigzag on the metal with her finger.
3. composer |kəmˈpōzər|
noun
a person who writes music, esp. as a professional occupation.
4. percussion |pərˈkə sh ən|
noun
musical instruments played by striking with the hand or with a hand-held or pedal-operated stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles
5. Christmas |ˈkrisməs|
noun ( pl. -mases )
the annual Christian festival celebrating Christ's birth, held on December 25.
6.Equality |iˈkwälitē|
noun
the state of being equal, esp. in status, rights, and opportunities : an organization aiming to promote racial equality.
1. harvest |ˈhärvist|
noun
the process or period of gathering in crops : helping with the harvest.
2. zigzag |ˈzigˌzag|
noun
a line or course having abrupt alternate right and left turns : she traced a zigzag on the metal with her finger.
3. composer |kəmˈpōzər|
noun
a person who writes music, esp. as a professional occupation.
4. percussion |pərˈkə sh ən|
noun
musical instruments played by striking with the hand or with a hand-held or pedal-operated stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles
5. Christmas |ˈkrisməs|
noun ( pl. -mases )
the annual Christian festival celebrating Christ's birth, held on December 25.
6.Equality |iˈkwälitē|
noun
the state of being equal, esp. in status, rights, and opportunities : an organization aiming to promote racial equality.
Student Spotlight
November/06/09
I'll soon be starting a student spotlight. I've been gathering quotes, mannerisms, stories, etc of the kids and will hopefully be successful at getting little video clips of them individually.
Hopefully you are all following the blog because only here am I asking for your input :) Send me a short story of your child for me to include (funny, dramatic, baby, proud moment, tear jerker, whatever)
THOMAS SANCHEZ:
SAPPHIRA ANNE FIRTH:
WESTON BRIAN KING:
RYLEE JOY JOHNSON:
BRINLEY AYRTON:
COLE FREEMAN:
Abigayle Ilene Pack:
Addison Edwards:
Seth Damron:
Cassidy Kieper:
| TYLER KING: |
birthday bug
5th graders ski/board free!
November/03/09
too good not to share. if you have a 5th grader that skis or snowboards they can go 3 times to each participating 13 utah resorts with the $25 5th Grade Passport!
http://www.skiutah.com/winter/locals/5th_grade_passport/index.html
Field Trip
November/02/09
April 19th from 12:30-1:30pm
wear comfy clothes
All classes welcome
$5/ child
No regular class this day
Website:
http://www.lilflippers.com/home
The Day After
November/01/09
It was great to see some of my students (this years and last) last night. Thanks for stopping by, I loved all your costumes! I hope you didn't eat TOO much candy like this pumpkin on my porch ;) Hope you had a good Halloween though. See you monday.