Getting Ready for Winter (and the Holidays)

This week we are beginning to decorate for Christmas and learning about what animals and plants do to get ready for winter.

We read The Sparkle Box, which is a great reminder or introduction to kids about giving to others during the holidays.  The back of the book has a sparkle box you can make, so we made ours and have started filling it with good deeds.  The Night of Las Posadas is a Tomie dePaola Christmas story, talking about the tradition of Los Posadas or the reenactment of Mary and Joseph's search for a place to stay the night.  In his story, the people chosen to be Mary and Joseph become snowed in but luckily replacements show up.  Merry Christmas Strega Nona is another in Tomie dePaola's Strega Nona series.  Big Anthony is tired of all the work Strega Nona is tasking him with to get ready for the big Christmas feast she prepares for the town.  But when Big Anthony gets distracted and forgets the shopping, she worries everything is ruined.  Instead, Big Anthony surprises her.  Dream Snow is an Eric Carle classic with counting to 5, farm animals and a farmer that resembles Santa Claus.  Bear Stays Up for Christmas is another book in the bear series.  It has a catchy rhythm, can be a reminder about hibernation, and demonstrates the wonder of giving.  Runaway Dreidel is a cute Hanukkah story set to T'was the Night Before Christmas.  It includes some typical traditions and reminds readers of the letters on the dreidel.  Llama Llama Holiday Drama is a reminder of how difficult it can be to be patient and wait for the holidays when there are so many reminders.  It also reinforces that the important thing is to spend time with family and friends.  The Clown of God is a story by Tomie dePaola that may bring a tear to your eye as a juggler performs his beautiful act as a Christmas present to the statue of Mary and a young Jesus.

We are still working on making Christmas presents and getting ready to send them out this week.  We decorated reusable bags with glitter glue in Christmas shapes like trees, presents, snowmen and more.  We also decorated plastic ornaments in different ways.  We filled them with pom pom or tissue paper and painted some with tempera paints and glitter glue.

The Busy Little Squirrel was a fun book.  All the animals wanted to spend time with squirrel, but he was too busy gathering food for the winter.  Baby Animals in the Snow is a short introduction to some animals that live in cold places like penguins, polar bears, snow leopards and Arctic foxes.  When Will it be Spring is the story of Alfie bear who is too excited about springtime to hibernate through the winter.  Chaucer's First Winter follows Chaucer the bear as he ignores the fact bears are supposed to hibernate and instead discovers some of the fun things to do in the snow.  Bear Snores On is the first of the bear books in Karma Wilson's series.  It follows a predictable word pattern which is great for early readers and examines several animals who stop in bear's cave to warm up while he sleeps.  We also read a National Geographic book about penguins to explore another cold weather animal.

We've been to the zoo and a petting zoo this week and have noted differences in animal behavior as well as thicker winter coats.  For instance, the lion and tiger were sleeping but the snow leopard was really active, which we don't often see.  We also have been talking a lot about the changes we see in plants, and how trees have list their leaves so they can sleep for the winter.  We created a hibernation cave, setting up a comfy place to sleep.  We also demonstrated migration, talking about the butterfly episode of Wild Kratts.  Under Frozen Pond is another great Wild Kratts episode for this topic.

On a side note, Tobias has really been demonstrating his sense of rhythm this week, dancing or bouncing to all sorts of tunes.  Genevieve keeps reminding me that I told her the myth from Ovid's Metamorphosis about Narcissus and Echo as we walk through the tunnel under the train tracks near our house.  She likes to say echo as we walk through the tunnel so I shared the myth and now she likes to remind me "turned to flower.". She's also really been enjoying the holiday specials on Amazon Prime.  Snowy Day has been changed from Keats' original story of a snow day into Peter getting ready for Christmas and meeting friends along the way who share their holiday traditions.  She prefers If You Give a Mouse a Christmas Cookie, based on the Laura Numerous books with mouse, moose, dog, cat and pig all working together to save the holiday play.