November/December Newsletter

Orange County Jewish Preschool
Painting with corn is fun.
Two-year-old Class News
Our November was filled with turkeys, Thanksgiving and preparations for Hanukkah. We all made turkey color books, painted with corn and baked honey corn muffins that were yummy. We practiced our Hanukah songs every morning, made special gifts for our families and beautiful menorah cards. By December we were ready to perform our songs for our families at Family Hanukah Night. We even went on a field trip to Leisure World and performed for Congregation Sholom. We made Hanukah cookies to share with the congregation. The rest of December was filled with the smells of frying latkes. We painted dreidels, made menorahs and played the dreidel game for Goldfish crackers.
I hope that everyone has a fun and safe winter break. See you all on January 3rd.
Miss Vanessa

Three-year-old Class News
Thanks to an unusually early-falling Hanukkah, we spent November working on both Thanksgiving and Hanukkah activities. The children created colorful turkeys and dictated to us what they are most thankful for– Mommies and Daddies were the most popular answers. We learned Hanukkah songs to sing to our families and entertained the residents of Leisure World with a Hanukkah concert.
We learned all about the Maccabees and the story of Hanukkah, we feasted on our hand-made latkes and applesauce and gambled our Goldfish as we spun the dreidel.
We also finished our paper mache ants and studied the life cycles of the butterfly and ladybug. We started our alphabet unit, working on a letter each week. For B Week we made our own bread and butter and for D week we’re learning about dinosaurs and fossils. We’re also working on an alphabet book that we’ll add a page to each week.
We hope you have a wonderful and restful winter break.
Miss Stella and Miss Julie

Pre-Kindergarten News
Our November was busy with Thanksgiving activities. We made a teepee for our classroom, complete with Native American symbols. The children chose Native American names for themselves and made headbands with feathers they earned for their good deeds. We used our repertoire of symbols to decorate our Native American vests. The class made Navajo sand paintings: the Navajo rain god we painted even made it rain that morning!
December was all about Hanukkah. We made gift trays for our families and drew pictures of each family member on the trays.
We’ve been practicing writing all the straight line letters, with our “writing frogs” jumping to the top of the letter. We are preparing the children for their beginning reading books by focusing on word tracking. The class is also making stick puppets for each letter to practice the letters’ sounds. We finished our graphing unit in math and we’re onto even more complex patterning.
Enjoy your children over the winter break.
Miss April and Miss Kat