How are we almost at the end of 2025?! We are rounding out the year with a look into our recent curriculum threads and some snapshots from our Winter Celebration and Christmas Share.

Curriculum Threads: Peekaboo, Repetition, Enclosures

In our beginning months, the curriculum in the White Room was grounded in the separation process. Much of the materials introduced leaned into exploring themes related to caretaking (baby dolls, kitchen tools), dumping and filling (water table, balls), properties of materials (playdough, Magnatiles, Korxx blocks), and the classroom community (family books, photo magnets). Through these recurring themes, we learned a lot about the children’s interests and how they turned these into moments for learning and discovery by asking ourselves the following questions: What materials and activities do the children keep returning to? What are their interests? What are they working on? What information does this give us about ways we can adjust our classroom to meet their needs?

So, as we settled into being at school, the teaching team sat down to begin mapping out some possible curriculum threads to extend on. We grouped topics under larger, overarching themes, and as you can see, many of these intersected with one another. What resulted was a map filled with many lines, illustrating the different ways children work to test and process all the ideas flowing through their active minds.

From here, we brainstormed ways to extend on the existing work, regularly returning to the map in our weekly planning meetings as we considered our observations, materials, the children’s development, and the developmental domains. Sometimes, plans needed to be shifted because of logistics or us simply trying something and it not working. Below is an overview of our planning process and the threads that we have dove into so far, with more to come in the new year!

Winter Celebration

Thank you for joining us for our Winter Celebration! It was so wonderful to come together as a community before we head into an extended break. To those who could not make it, we missed you. But, lots of fun was had as we munched on delicious treats and dug into some crafts.

A big thank you to our class parents for planning and organizing this celebration! If you haven’t had a chance to look at the beautiful memories frame, it is displayed outside of our classroom.

Christmas Share

As we move along in the year, we are continuing to invite families into the classroom to share about traditions that are important to them. We are reaching out based on what was shared in the questionnaire at the beginning of the year. However, if there is something that you are interested in sharing, but did not note in the questionnaire, simply reach out to us.

Yesterday, a family joined us for a Christmas share. We began first with a reading of The Night Before Christmas.

The festive mood continued as Christmas music played in the background while we decorated gingerbread cookies. All while taking bites of the cookie, sprinkles, and chocolate pieces – yum! Did you get a taste of the finished product?

Ask Your Child

Have you tried the snow in the sensory bin? What does it feel like?

Did you use boxes or Magnatiles to make homes for the mice?

Did you do any drawing or painting today? What colors did you try?