I hope that all of you are enjoying this blessed season of Advent.  This will be my last post for 2019.  

This past week was a flurry of leaning and activity.  We began with our Monday advent wreath prayer service.  The children do such a great job paying attention to the traditions and scriptures being broken open for them.  It truly is warming to my heart.  We also continued opening a gift each day of advent.  Each gift has a new figure for our classroom nativity set.  As we introduce the piece, we read a reflection that tells us a little bit more of the Christmas story.  My goal is to get the kids excited about the real meaning of Christmas.  So many mornings I hear them saying to each other "I bet its baby Jesus today!"  I love that they are longing for Him!  This week, we will continue opening gifts each day and will have our advent wreath service on Tuesday due to the snow day.  On Friday, we will attend an all school prayer service in the chapel at 8:15.  We will sit with our seventh grade buddies.

We have also continued to introduce the alphabet.  Last week we introduced the letter M.  In addition to listing M words (lots of names), reading our poem, doing our yoga pose, and guessing what was in the clue can (Faith did a great job getting us to guess monkey), we also painted with marshmallows.  We also talked about the significance of Mary as Jesus mom.

We enjoyed the story of The Gingerbread Man and played a gingerbread shape game and played with my home made gingerbread play-dough.  We made beautiful Christmas tree paintings, practiced patterns with Christmas light pictures, made pattern blocks into Christmas pictures and counted how many of each type of block was used, traced Christmas words and pictures, wrote letters to Santa,listened to Dr. Gilligan read Twas the Night Before Christmas, did yoga animals with Miss Katie, and cut red and green strips of paper to make paper chains.  It was a busy week.

This week we plan to finish some hand-made gifts we started for our families, make Christmas cards, play a Christmas matching game, and introduce the letter N.  I'm not sure how many other activities we will get to with the snow day today, and Friday being booked with other fun activities, but we will continue to work and play hard.  Speaking of Friday, our schedule that day is as follows:

8:15- 8:45 prayer service in the chapel

8:45-9:30 time in our room (restroom break, play/read with our 7th grade buddies)

9:30-10:15 watch primary Advent program in the gym

10:15-10:45 whole school dice game in the gym

10:45-11:00 restroom break pack up back packs

11:00-11:45 class party

11:45-12:00 get coats, pray, dismiss for holiday

If you would like to attend the class party, you are more than welcome, but you must check in at the office and you must have completed the Protecting God's Children program.  This is an archdiocesan policy.

It is my hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed 2020!

Blessings,

Mrs. Hale

Dates to Remember

Friday, December 20 - Noon dismissal

December 23- January 3 - Christmas break - No school

January 6 - School resumes

January 17 - Noon dismissal

January 20 - No school in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day