December 2022 at Pillar Kids
Welcome to 2023 everyone! Even though December flew by, we hope you all had a chance to slow down and enjoy some relaxing family time. Reflecting on last month at Pillar, the teachers and children had a great time learning about various holiday
traditions, including Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanzaa. The classroom was revamped with lots of beautiful decor, including a new fireplace for chilly days! Thanks Ms. Angelina for creating such a fun addition to the classroom. Of course there were plenty of exciting holiday activities for the children to explore. We also had a great time celebrating at our Pillar Holiday gathering thank you to everyone who came out to close the year in celebration!
Toddler Group (Ms. Lam’s group)
The toddlers got to explore an Arctic Sensory Table filled with penguins, polar bears, walruses and whales. Ms. Lam enjoyed watching her friends use their fine motor and engineering skills to creatively arrange the sensory items, like rocks that they stacked together, adding animals to finish their creations. The group also talked about how the arctic animals move their bodies, for example walruses using their fins to move vs. penguins who waddle. One of our table activities involved matching an arctic animal with their corresponding feet.
Here are some of the books the children enjoyed reading:
1. “That’s Not My Snowman” by Fiona Watt ( They enjoyed touching the different materials in this book)
2. “Little Blue Truck’s Christmas” By Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry
3. “Clay Boy” By Mirra Ginsburg
Next Up for Toddlers!
We will be learning about Bugs and Insects this month. Ms. Lam will be setting up an “I spy” sensory bin filled with Ants, Bees,
Spiders, Ladybugs, and Butterflies. Ms. Lam will be reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” for circle time and will try to set up an actual lifecycle of butterflies for the children to observe.
Preschool Group (Ms. Angelina’s group)
The children were eager to make lots of Christmas crafts, playing and exploring with Christmas-themed activities. We were also fortunate to have Ms. Amirh and her children visit the class to teach us about Kwanzaa, and, of course, we loved having Mr. George visit us for music time. I sincerely hope that your holidays were restful, and you were able to enjoy quality family time 
together.
Next Up for Preschoolers!
We hit the road running in January talking about the Winter Season and Snow, and using investigative skills to experiment with ice. This month, we will also explore snowmen while incorporating science, math concepts, and fine motor skills, to name a few. The preschoolers will continue to learn about Arctic animals through the end of this month. We will be busy little learners, starting the year off right!
classroom for the occasion. Naturally the children were excited to share about their costumes for trick-or-treating, and enjoyed the yummy treats from the festivities. Our first annual Fall Fest was certainly a success! We had so many of our past, present, and future families show up to enjoy the day. That was followed by our Halloween Parade in the office space. Thank you to all of the families who were able to participate, we had a BLAST!
explored the topic of spiders, learning they have eight legs, are hairy, and are not usually harmful to humans. We also learned about bats. We discussed how they are nocturnal (active at night), use sonar (sound) waves when hunting prey, and sleep upside down. While the focus was on Halloween, the circle time lessons were about taking the “scary” out of these subjects, while learning more facts about the subjects. We also addressed monsters, what they are and do we really need to be afraid of them? We also talked about the difference between a pumpkin and a jack-o-lantern. The children enjoyed finger painting, gluing, and using our imagination to turn everyday objects into beautiful works of seasonal art.