December News: Weeks of November 17th/24th and December 1st
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 website calendar.
Peapods
These past few weeks have been amazing! We have two very early walkers who are building up their confidence little by little. We also have a few crawlers and army crawlers. Everyone is moving! We enjoyed playing with the sensory table, we never know what we will find. It’s always fun. Our tunnel also came out. Most of us will crawl through it, some are being a little more cautious. We all enjoyed it.
We have started making holiday decorations. They will be hanging up soon! Hope you will like it! We enjoyed having a couple of books read to us. One was Duck and Goose It’s time for Christmas by Tad Hills and Chanukah Bugs by David A. Carter.
Peapods II
We hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving! Peapods 2 has quickly switched gears from fall and thanksgiving and into the winter holidays! We ended November by creating pumpkin pies using a paper plate, pieces of paper and glue! This was our first time using glue for an art project and we did great. During this art project we practiced our fine motor skills by picking up the piece of paper and placing it onto the glue. We also had a thanksgiving celebration with some special snacks!
We started off December by making some new art projects. So far we have used dot paint to create Christmas trees and gingerbread people which you can see displayed in our classroom. We have also used dot paint on paper dreidels which you will see displayed in the foyer. We are looking forward to many more celebrations this month and we can’t wait to see what we’ll learn next!
Seedlings
It has been a busy few weeks with the Seedlings. They definitely like to keep us on our toes. We had a lot of fun making our classroom turkey, who we named Mr. Turkey. Then we used our stickers to color match with his feathers. The Seedlings are getting good at matching colors and saying them, and we are continuing to work on that skill. We have been enjoying going outside to our playground whenever it is not too cold or raining. It is so much fun playing in the leaves and throwing them up in the air. Sometimes we like to collect them in a bucket to see if we can fill it up!
The Seedlings have also been learning about gingerbread. We colored a classroom Gingerbread Man, made a gingerbread house by using different shapes, and created a sticky wall Gingerbread Man with different materials and shapes. We absolutely loved it. During circle time, we read What is Thanksgiving by Harriet Ziefert and sang “Hello Mr. Turkey.” If you have any holiday season books you would like to share with the class, we would be more than appreciative.
Little Sprouts
The past three weeks have been full of fun and learning! We explored three exciting themes: Scarecrows, Thanksgiving, and Gingerbread. Each morning, we kicked off our day with our Good Morning song, practiced the days of the week, reviewed our ABCs, and counted together as a class. We enjoyed reading I Am a Scarecrow by The Learning Train, Gobble Wobble by Brick Puffington, and Gingerbread ABCs by Ally May. Our young artists were busy creating handprint scarecrows and turkeys, and they loved using dot markers to decorate their turkeys too!
We also made mini gingerbread figures and used dot markers to color a festive gingerbread house. We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you enjoy the weekend!
Beanstalks
What a great three weeks we’ve had here in Beanstalks. This week we are learning about Hanukkah. We loved reading about all the different traditions that families can participate in. We tore tissue paper to stick to contact paper to make some dreidel suncatchers and colored in our candles to make Menorahs. Our favorite book this week was Spin the Dreidel by Alexandra Cooper.
Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving. We really enjoyed discussing all the things we’re grateful for and dancing to Gobble Gobble Turkey Wobble. The week before, we were learning about animals that hibernate. We had so much fun using forks to make bears and pretending to be hibernating hedgehogs.
Saplings
We’ve been having great fun in the Sapling’s room! We have been working on a lot of skills in our room the past three weeks! We discussed what we are thankful for and what we like to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. We practice our color matching by helping the turkeys find the right colored fence. We also worked on our scissor skills and developing our fine motor muscles by scooping pom-poms up. Our favorite story was, Run, Turkey, Run by Diane Mayr.
This week we focused on fairytales and nursery rhymes! Our favorite story was There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Dragon! by Lucille Colondro. We learned many nursery rhymes, our favorite ones were, I’m a little teapot, Little Miss Muffet, and Mary had a little Lamb. We practice our pencil grip and pre-writing skills and also focused on the letters in our names.
Pre-K 3
November was a blast for PreK-3! The past two weeks we have been focusing on taking turns, being good friends, and Thanksgiving! We played some really cool board games with our classmates, such as Chutes and Ladders, CandyLand, and even Go Fish. We also worked a lot on our motor skills, the children loved cutting up their own school projects using scissors! But of course, everyone was really excited for Thanksgiving! So, we read a lot of Thanksgiving books and even used our scissor and gluing skills to craft some turkeys.
We sang some really nice songs with Ms. Lisa and had a great time running around like turkeys in Stretch and Grow! Some of our friend’s favorite books were ABCs of Kindness by Patricia Hegarty, The Friendship Book by Mary Lyn Ray, Thankful by Eileen Spinelli, The Night Before Thanksgiving by Natasha Wing!
Pre-K 4
It’s been a busy few weeks in Pre K 4. We wrapped up our fall activities learning about scarecrows, the difference between deciduous trees and Evergreen trees and types of leaves. We also learned some interesting facts about Turkeys! This week the children have had a fun week talking about Gingerbread People. We read several stories about different types of gingerbread people such as Gingerbread Pirates, Cowboys, Ninjas and Babies. We talked about the differences and similarities in each story. The children learned about characters, settings, repeated phrases and ending predictions. We continued work on counting quantities and number recognition. We counted in sets and compared numbers, graphed and put numbers in sequential order.
Additionally, we have been working on rhymes and syllables, recognizing lowercase letters and beginning letters sounds. We finished the uppercase portion of our Handwriting Without Tears workbook and have begun to write using lowercase letters. As we move into December, the children can look forward to learning about different holidays around the world and how they are celebrated.