December News: Week of December 15th

Sproutlings will be closing at 3pm on Wednesday, December 24th and closed December 25th through January 2nd. We will see you in the New Year starting Monday, January 5th! Happy Holidays!

*Moms Helping Moms Diaper Drive* The Moms Helping Moms Diaper drive is ongoing until December 24th. If you have any of the items listed on the flyer that you would like to donate, please place them in the labeled box in the lobby.

*Flu Vaccine Reminder* All children who are over the age of 6 months and are attending a licensed child care facility in New Jersey are required to have a flu vaccine by December 31st of each year. Please provide proof of vaccine to the office as soon as possible.

*Important Key Card Entry Information* Please make sure you have your keycard to enter the building. For security purposes the keycard registers who is entering the building. If you have mislaid your card, please let us know so that we can deactivate it and issue you a new one. There will be a $15 charge for new keycards. If you do not have your keycard at pick up or drop off, please expect a wait. Please do not hold the door open for anyone that you do not know.

*2025/2026 Holiday Closing Dates * Our 2025 and 2026 Holiday Closing Dates can be found on our calendar page here.

The Peapods are getting into the spirit of the season. We have been enjoying watching our snowflakes “dance” back and forth from the ceiling in our room. It makes them look like they’re twinkling in the sky. We hope you have had a chance to see how we topped the Christmas tree in the lobby with our star. We’re very proud of it. It’s always a lot of fun with our wooden stacking blocks. We love to build them high, even more fun knocking them down. A couple of books we read were Spin the Dreidel! By Alexandra Cooper and The Littlest Christmas Tree by Jane Chapman. The Peapod Team wants to wish our families a very happy and healthy Hanukkah and Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Peapods 2 ended the year by celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas! We used dot paint to decorate menorahs and we read a new book entitled Happy All-idays by Cindy Jin. We had a fantastic year and we are so lucky to be able to spend our days learning and growing with each other. We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy new year, we are looking forward to 2026!

Seedlings have been getting into the holiday spirit. We absolutely love when our friends share their holiday books with us. We cannot get enough of them. Since it has been too chilly to go outside, we have been bringing the outdoors inside. The Seedlings were thrilled to play and explore with snow in the sensory table. We noticed that it was cold and wet, and we even tried to make snowmen. The Seedlings had fun decorating our room for the holidays with Christmas trees, ornaments, dreidels, and menorahs. During circle time, we have been reading The Wheels on the Bus at Christmas by Sarah Kieley and singing “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” while spinning like dreidels. We would like to thank our parents for the special holiday party. We wish everyone happy holidays and a healthy new year, and we cannot wait to see you back next year.

What a busy time it has been in Little Sprouts! The children created dot art dreidels, painted a large dreidel, and made handprint menorahs. We also painted a Christmas tree and used stickers to design colorful ornaments. We enjoyed cozy story times reading Happy Hanukkah Little Dreidel by Brick Puffinton and Five Busy Elves by P. Hegarty, which the kids loved! As the year comes to a close, we want to wish you and your families a very happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year.

What a wonderful two weeks we’ve had here in Beanstalks. Last week we talked about Christmas. We decorated ornaments for our class tree and worked on our color identification and matching by pairing our holiday lights! We really enjoyed reading Pete the Cat Saves Christmas and singing “Jingle Bells”. This week we are learning about Gingerbread. We loved talking about all the different shapes of gingerbread cookies you can make. We made our very own gingerbread houses and people, and worked on our counting and fine motor skills with our gingerbread dice game. Our favorite book this week was The Gingerbread Man by Bonnie Dobkin. It has been such a blessing to watch your children learn and grow this year, and we look forward to seeing all they accomplish in 2026! Wishing you all a safe and happy Winter Break, and we’ll see you in the new year!

Happy Holidays from the Saplings class! We hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday and New Year! We’ve been getting in the holiday spirit by learning all about the different holidays families celebrate in winter time. We learned how to play the Dreidel game and what the symbols mean. We’ve been busy artists using cookie cutter to paint and decorate our own gingerbread house. We continue to work our fine motor skills, taking turns, and hand eye coordination. A few of our favorite stories were, Li’l Rabbit’s Kwanzaa by Donna L. Washington, I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Dreidel by Caryn Yacowitz, and The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. We wish you all a happy and safe holiday season!

Pre K 3 is wrapping up the year with learning about Gingerbread and Holidays. We had a lot of fun talking about Gingerbread (houses and people). We practiced AB patterns and letters while decorating a gingerbread houses. The children used their fine motor skill while lacing a gingerbread person. They loved creating their own gingerbread house out of play dough. Pre K 3 learned about Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. The children created a Menorah from their hands and paint. They got to water paint, salt in the shape of a Menorah. We used marbles to “paint” a candy canes and the children glued the letters of their name to make a string of lights. For Kwanzaa, the children glued candles together to make a kinara and using those colors to make a paper chain to decorate the classroom. Some of our favorite books were The Gingerbread Man retold by Bonnie Dobkin, The Ninjabread Man by C. J. Leigh, The Hanukkah Trike by Kathryn Mitter, Lil Rabbit’s Kwanzaa by Donna L. Washington and The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore. The teachers of Pre K 3 would like to wish you all Happy Holidays! May you have a safe and wonderful break! See you next year.

Over the past two weeks PreK 4 has loved learning about different holidays around the world. We have discussed Las Posadas, St Lucia, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. While learning about the holidays, we discussed different traditions and celebrations for each. We made poinsettia flowers for Las Posadas, drew Menorahs and decorated trees. Throughout both weeks, we have been working on recognizing lowercase letters as well as rhyming words. We have continued to work on writing lowercase letters through our Handwriting Without Tears work. Also, we have been working on recognizing numbers and putting them in sequential order. We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and a happy new year!