December Events at TMA

Moms Night Out:  thirty-one party

Attention Moms: You are invited to attend a “thirty-one” party at TMA! Thursday, December 1st at 6:30 p.m. TMA mom, Amy Cousins is a consultant and will be available to talk about and display products--specializing in bags, purses, lunchboxes, etc.  Orders will be available for holiday gifts. Join us for an evening of fun!

WRAPPING UP THE HOLIDAYS 2011

Don’t miss this great Annual Community Event - Friday, December 2nd at 6:00 p.m.!  TMA is once again sponsoring three local families in need this year.  We would like to provide a holiday dinner as well as presents for these three families. All three of the families would be grateful to accept new or gently used items.  All donations should be delivered to the office prior to December 2nd.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Paige in the TMA office.

Winter Sing-A-Long

All families are invited to join us Friday, December 23at 10:00 for a TMA community winter/holiday sing-a-long in the gym. 

Please note: this is also an early dismissal day for the entire school. 

Welcome Cinnamon the rabbit!

Room 4 has a wonderful addition to the classroom! A new rabbit kitten, only 8 weeks old, has joined our family. The children are so glad to have our new friend and the entire Early Childhood building is equally enthralled with this cute little addition.

We have had lessons on proper holding techniques for rabbits and how to be gentle and loving with our new little bundle of a bunny. Cinnamon, the rabbit, has had a grand welcoming and is being very well cared for in our room. The children enjoy watching him in his cage and also giving him the opportunity to hop around the room.

Each room 4 family will have the opportunity to take Cinnamon home for the weekend and care for him. Please contact Miss Ann if you have questions regarding this matter, and please stop in and meet our newest family member; Cinnamon the rabbit.

Submitted by: Ann Stebelton

Ideas for the Picky Eaters Amongst Us...

Hopefully Fridays discussion will also give you some ideas about foods your preschooler will eat too!

Please join Ann & Julie Friday morning at 9:00 to talk about how to entice your child to eat different types of food.

We'll have:

• cookbook ideas
• child-friendly utensil ideas 
• creative lunchbox ideas
• ideas on how to incorporate your child into creating your evening meal...and hopefully preventing the late afternoon / early evening meltdown that occurs every time you enter the kitchen
• Provided there is time, we may even begin discussions on food dyes, high fructose corn syrup, and more...

Reduce, Reuse, Re-purpose

We are looking for crayons to Re-purpose.  Want to get rid of those broken, dull, torn crayons?  Please send them in with your child to school.  Starting Monday, November 7 there will be a collection box in the Early Childhood Building awaiting crayons to be re-purposed into creatively shaped crayons and beautiful works of art.

Life in Room 3

Fall is a wonderful time of year to teach children about the cycle of life in nature.  Some of their favorite foods are harvested in the fall.  In our class we learned about the parts of an ear of corn ( the husk, stem, kernel, and corn silk at the top).  We learned about how the apple tree comes to life in the spring to produce buds, then flowers that get pollinated, and finally apples that ripen in the warmth of the summer sun to provide us with delicious juicy fruit in the fall.  It was fun to cut up the fruit and cook it in a crock pot to make our own yummy applesauce.  We also pickled the last of the cucumbers out of Ms. Burns' garden to enjoy at a further time. 

The class  learned about plants starting as seeds with our sunflower tweezing work.  We purchased a HUGE cut sunflower from the farmers market and let it start drying out.  When the flower was fairly dry the seeds were easily plucked out with a pair of tweezers or even bare hands.  In addition to providing an opportunity to practice fine motor control the children were able to think about how this huge flower had started as a single tiny seed.  I even overheard one child wonder aloud if we were going to plant all those seeds all over the world!  We talked about how  the pumpkins we enjoy at Halloween and Thanksgiving also started their journey as a tiny seed.

As the leaves change and as the growing season gets put to bed, the children learn to appreciate the cycles of nature that provide them with so much nourishment and beauty.

Submitted by: Lindsay Turner