By Cindy Quay
Community correspondent
KNOX — For many of us, January and February are snowy, cold, tedious months to be endured on the way to spring. For the Knox Nursery School kids, these months provided numerous opportunities.
Remembering a King; building log cabins; cutting and pasting hearts of red, pink, and purple; and learning the Pledge of Allegiance were just a few of their activities.
January stories of the season resulted in one wall of plump penguins (handiwork of the 3-year-olds), while another displayed a huge mitten surrounded by a mole, rabbit, hedgehog, owl, badger, fox, bear and mouse. This familiar and favorite book appropriately titled The Mitten, tells a story about these forest animals that all squeeze into a child’s lost woolen mitten for warmth.
Their snuggly haven comes to an abrupt end when the big brown bear sneezes (due to the mouse’s whiskers tickling the bear’s nose). The mitten flies in the air, scattering the animals in all directions.
Later in the month, the kids were introduced to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Picture books helped explain the important role Dr. King played in American history and why we celebrate his life on a special day in January.
Then, just before we turned the calendar to February, a little brown animal took center stage. Although most had never heard of a groundhog, they had interesting ideas about how to tell when winter ends!
These thought-filled responses are posted on a wall along with our friendly groundhog. Oh, and by the way, in case you didn’t hear — he did not see his shadow.
Poor short February, so much to do and so little time (a couple of unscheduled snow days and a scheduled winter vacation reduced class time).
President Lincoln shared the spotlight with St. Valentine’s Day. Although most of the information the 4-year-olds heard about our 16th president did not quite compute, the fact that he lived in a cabin made of logs, piqued their interest. Log cabins constructed of brown paper strips, topped with black rectangular roofs with two windows and a door, completed their cabin project.
Valentine’s Day is always fun for the kids. Many, many hearts of pink, red, and purple were used for various valentine-themed crafts. Best of all was the kids’ excitement when exchanging cards with their classmates.
Even our 2-year-olds had their turn at pasting paper hearts, chocolate-dipping pretzel hearts, and frosting cookie hearts. (Yes, they went home with a slight sugar high that day!)
The 3- and 4-year-olds are progressing through the alphabet. Letter P is their latest conquest, which means only 10 weeks of letters remaining; that means the school year is more than half over — wow!
In addition, the 4-year-olds were introduced to the American flag by way of the Pledge of Allegiance. Within a couple of weeks, they were reciting the pledge word for word.
With both spring and Easter coming on the heels of our winter break, there will be no shortage of activities at the Knox Nursery School in the weeks to come.
The school is accepting applications for the 2013-14 school year. For more information and to request an application, please call the school at 872-2015.