(upbeat music) - Hello, little learners, welcome back to our pre-K and TK classroom.

My name is Ms. Lara, can you tell me your name?

I'd love for you to introduce yourself, are you ready?

All right, let's hear it.

Oh, I heard it way over here in TV land, let me see if I can guess your special letter, is it big line down little line on top?

Let's see if our little line stays and doesn't fall off, there it goes, and another little line at the bottom, special letter I, is that it?

Did I get it?

No, don't worry, I guess more of them all week long.

Now, remember that I make a special sound it says, eeh.

♪ the I says ehh ♪ ♪ The I says ehh ♪ ♪ Every letter makes a sound ♪ ♪ The I says ehh ♪ All right so today is day four of the five days that we're going to be together and let me add another magnet to our board here.

Where should I add it at the bottom or the top?

The bottom?

Okay.

So we have two on top and two at the bottom together they make four and this week we're learning all about clothing, but we're going to take a pause because today is a very special day, in fact, most of you might be home today, it is Veterans Day.

And I know it's kind of hard to understand when adults say things like freedom and service men and women, but today is the day that we honor people who have served in our military or are currently serving in our military.

They fight for our freedom here in our country, which is the United States of America, and because today is a special day, we have a special song that we're going to sing, it's a new one so just try your best to sing along with me, it's a repeat after me song so I'm gonna say words, and then you're gonna say them after me ready?

It goes like this.

♪ See the Veteran, see the Veteran.

♪ ♪ Oh, so brave, oh so brave ♪ ♪ We thank you for your service ♪ ♪ We thank you for your service ♪ ♪ You're so strong ♪ ♪ You're so strong ♪ ♪ We remember, we remember ♪ ♪ On this day, on this day ♪ ♪ Fighting for our freedom, ♪ ♪ Fighting for our freedom ♪ ♪ We thank you ♪ ♪ We thank you ♪ That's right it's a important day to say thank you to those who have sacrificed for us so that we can live in our beautiful country.

Now, I think we have a letter from Miss Maria, she never takes a break even on Veteran's day.

Okay, let's see, here's our letter, and it helps us learn to track our words when we read.

So I want you as homework to pick up a book and start practicing tracking your words with your pointer fingers, say, hello, pointer, hello pointer.

Here we go, it says, Dear Miss Lara, I heard today is a special day called Veteran's day.

That's right it's a very special day and a lot of places are closed, including schools and banks, because we need to take time to celebrate.

Can you tell me more about it?

Why is it special?

Remember like I said, it's a day to honor people who serve in our military or have served in our military and what they've done to protect our freedom.

I think I have a book that's gonna tell us more about sacrifices that people have made in our country, which is the United States of America.

It is called "American Anthem" and it's written by Gene Scheer, that's the author of the book and remember the author writes the words and it has beautiful illustrations, we'll try to go slow so you can take a look at all of them, that's my favorite part about this book so let's read it together.

Well, there are some stars, American Anthem.

Now look at this, you can see a Statue of Liberty and it's a symbol, that means it represents something for us, that means freedom.

There's lots of faces in that one.

Here we go.

"All we've been given by those who came before the dream of a nation where freedom would endure."

Look at this beautiful picture, it has doves and a city and children right down here.

"The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day, what shall be our legacy?

What will our children say?"

Look at they are sewing, look, you can see a sewing machine and there's a beautiful quilt here filled with all the things that people have done, look, there's a person sewing, Native American person doing a traditional rug, right there, some art.

"Let them say of me I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received."

So look at these people here are fighting for our freedom, just like our service men and women do.

"Let me know in my heart, when my days are through, America, America, I give my best to you.

Each generation from the plains to distant shore, with the gifts that they were given were determined to leave more."

So look he has a pencil and he's drawing the future.

"Valiant battles fought together, acts of conscious fought alone, these are the seeds from which America has grown."

So you can see some of the soldiers down here and when I say service men and women, I mean, people who have been in the military, so sometimes they look like that.

"Let them say of me I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received.

Let me know in my heart, when my days are through, America, America, I give my best to you.

For those who think they have nothing to share who fear in their hearts, there is no hero there."

Look he's looking in the mirror.

"Know each quiet act of dignity is that which fortifies the soul of a nation that never dies."

So see, I love this book because it talks about how, what we can do as ordinary people to kind of make this country great, while remembering those that have sacrificed a lot to be in our military and protect us.

"Let them say of me I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received.

Let me know in my heart, when my days are through America, America, I give my best to you."

And look here's some music, so you can actually, if you know the piano, you can set the story to music and in the back there's actually all of these illustrations and it discusses what each of them mean, right down here and it talks a little bit more about service men and women and the things that they did for our nation.

Now I know some of these concepts can be really hard to understand, how can I make you understand freedom for example?

Well, we're gonna do some shared writing right now, and I think I'm gonna try to draw some pictures and write some words, that's gonna help you remember Veteran's Day or at least spark a conversation with your family.

So let's walk over to our writing place.

So let's see right here, I get my marker, and remember you can write along with me, if you have a marker and a piece of paper, we can write about the things that remind us of Veteran's Day, remember Veterans Day is a time where we say thank you to the service men and women who serve in the military or have served in the military.

So I'm gonna write the words, thank you, that's the most important thing.

Thank you, T, H, A, N and the ending sound is, ck, ck, ck, that's a K, thank you.

How might we say thank you?

Well there's a movement and a symbol that represents thank you for Veteran's Day and it's the Poppy, it's a flower that kind of looks like this, and it's red with black in the middle, I have my red marker here, maybe I'll draw it, and in our project place, we're actually gonna make a Poppy wreath, so that when you see or make a Poppy, people will know that you're thinking about them.

Let me color this in.

So you can say thank you that way.

What's another way?

You can kind of smile at someone who you know who's the Veteran, you can also bake them something delicious, you can wave at them, or just say the words thank you, thank you for your service.

What else reminds us of Veteran's Day?

Well here where I live, there's parades, there's parades with lots of flags and cars and people marching, and they might even have an American flag.

Do you know what that looks like?

It might have stars and stripes, and they have different service men and women that ride in cars and they waved their hands, so you can wave at them and some will even throw you delicious candy or if you have a flower, you can hand it to them at that time, so hopefully there's a parade in your area.

I'm gonna write two words, I'm gonna write flag and parade.

So right up here, I'm gonna write flag, which is, fh, ll, ah, gh, gh, G, flag, because that represents America, and a scene around Veterans Day, and parade, special letter, P, A, R, A, D, E. So as a community, we celebrate our Veterans by honoring them with parades.

The next word I wanna write is kind of hard, but it's freedom.

So sometimes have you ever been at home and you know, somebody wants to play with your toys and you know, you're not wanting them to, and they're not letting you play?

It's kind of the same, you have to protect your toys, right?

So it's the same with our country, we have to have people who protect our toys so other people don't take them.

So that's kind of what freedom is, it's allowing us to do the things that we normally do here in the United States, like go to the grocery store and drive cars, without worry that someone's gonna try to stop us and actually a lot of countries don't have the freedoms that we do here, so we have to be very grateful for the blessings that we have, so we can do the things that we do here normally.

So freedom is a word that I want you to take with you, put it in your pocket and talk about it with your family because that is a very hard word to explain to a three or a four year old, and I can't do it justice while I'm here with you in this little amount of time, so I hope that you unpack it with your family.

The next thing I wanna talk to you about Veteran's Day is sacrifice, that's another in your pocket word, I'm gonna write that word right down here, sac, ri, fice, sacrifice, so our service men and women sometimes go to faraway places, to protect us, they don't get to be home, so if you think about the holidays like Thanksgiving, that we're going to be celebrating, some people can't be with their families, they have to sacrifice and be somewhere else to protect us here so that we can enjoy time with our families, so that's why we say thank you on Veteran's Day.

Now in our project place, I have a way that you can say thank you more publicly, we'll do some art, so let's walk over there and I'll show you our activity.

How many steps am I gonna take?

Hmmm, I think seven, let's go and see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, oh I'm always coming up short.

Okay, so we're gonna be making this beautiful wreath, and this is something that you can put on your door and it says, remember, and remember I told you the flower for Veteran's Day, that represents Veteran's Day is the Poppy.

So we're gonna make a Poppy wreath that you can hang on your door.

For this activity the materials that you're going to need are some red paper, a paper plate, scissors, some glue, and some black paint or a black marker, and if you wanna write the word, remember, in the middle, you'll need some paper or a sentence strip and a marker to write that as well.

So let's get started with our project.

The first thing you're going to need to do, is take your paper plate, and you're gonna cut out the middle part right here, and this will make your wreath shape.

Now there's lots of things that you can do to honor Veterans on Veterans day isn't there?

And I think this is a very beautiful way to show them that you care and are thinking about the sacrifices they're making.

I wonder if some of you have family members who are not with you this November, or if you have parents who have served in the military?

Take this time to ask them, what was that like?

Were you scared?

Did you miss us when you were away?

I bet they did.

Okay, here's our wreath shape.

The next thing we're going to do, is we're going to tear out some Poppies using different color red paper.

So I'm gonna start with this strip of red paper here, and I'm just gonna tear it down the middle, tearing is a good fine motor activity for children.

(paper rips) You're gonna just tear it into a circle, I'll show you here as I finish, see?

That's a circle, and then here comes the really fun part, this is my favorite part, you just take it and crumble it up and then kind of take it apart and right in the middle, which is the center, you're gonna add a little dob of glue and you're gonna put it right on your wreath, so there is our first flower, I'll show you in just a minute.

All right, let's keep going.

I'm gonna make another one here, now this might take you just a little while to get through.

(paper rips) As I was thinking about Veteran's day, I thought about how people don't really know, you know, why we have the day off.

Sometimes we just think about, oh, we don't have to go to work, or we don't have to go to school and I really want you boys and girls that are watching to know that it's for a very special reason, if you take some time to talk about it with your families, every family is going to have different experiences and different stories to share about Veteran's day.

All right, here's another one, I love that tearing part and crumble, go, go, go, go, go and take it apart, there it is, and dob of glue in the middle.

Okay, we'll keep going, we'll do a few more here before I show you how to paint the middle, and you might have to hold it down for just a minute.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Now that was very thin paper, I have some leftover cardstock, that's a different color red and we're just gonna get that.

Now why do you think the Poppy is the flower that represents Veteran's day?

I wonder if your family knows, there are some great books in the library that you can actually check out and also on the Sora app there's some great books about Veteran's day that go into a lot more depth than I'm able to here.

But why the Poppy?

There's one book that I recommend called "The Poppy Lady" (laughs) that's a really good one to discuss Veteran's day and the Poppy with your family.

Okay, here we go.

We have a little bit more time, so I'm gonna get to fill my wreath, sometimes your flowers come out looking like this, you just got to fix them.

If you have a little hands, it's hard to get a perfect circle isn't it?

Okay crumble, and here we go.

There's a beautiful artist named Georgia O'Keeffe who did some lovely paintings of Poppies, so if you wanna make a connection with art, look up Georgia O'Keeffe, she was a very interesting lady.

There, okay, so now I'm using some construction paper, making them a little bigger, crumble, crumble crumble, putting them here, I'm gonna try to fill it up as much as I can so I can show you what we do next, and I'll show you a little trick after this.

If you don't wanna take a lot of time to do it, like I'm taking, you can actually stack your paper and make multiple flowers at the same time.

Here we go and crumble.

Now there's a lot of talk of crafts versus art, in the early learning world, a lot of people don't like to make crafts like this, I kind of have mixed feelings about it, I don't know about you, but I think that crafts like this, can be a conversation starter and it can be really fun and engaging for students, it's important to just encourage them whichever way they make it, however it comes out.

Okay, did you see what I did?

I didn't talk you through the trick, it was stacking two pieces of paper on top of each other, and you'll get more flowers.

I'm gonna try to fill out a little bit more of this white, and then we'll do the middle part.

Now I know what you're thinking, I don't have red paper, Miss Lara, what am I supposed to do?

I can't make a best project, not true, you can actually use the regular white paper or newspaper, you have a little bit of red paint you can use that, or you can just leave it beautiful newspaper and color it with markers, crayons, anything you have, you know I like to save my scraps, see this pile?

Not going in the trash can, going in the scrap pile, you might see it become like Rudolph's nose later in December or something.

All right, we're gonna finish up here.

See, I could do that in about three minutes.

Last one, I'll fill out the white part and then I'll show you how to make the center of our flower.

So this is what it's looking like, when you finish almost all your paper flowers, I might go and add some more in.

So it looks like this, big one is wanting to come off here, of course, you're gonna be more patient and let them dry, but right now I have a little bit of black paint that I'm going to put on a piece of paper, and I'm gonna use some black paint to create the center of a Poppy, because as you can see, my Poppy's have a black center right there, so we're gonna put that in, and just kind of dab the center in the middle right here, and you'll want your Poppies to be nice and dry when you do this so they're glued on pretty sturdily, that way they don't move around, you can just kind of kiss the paintbrush to the paper.

All right, almost done, I have one more.

All right here is what it's looking like so far.

Okay the next thing you're gonna wanna do, just so people know that you're meaning for this to be a Veteran's day activity, is you're going to write the word, remember.

So remember is a word that starts with R so you can write along with me, have your family help you, R, E, M, E, M, B, E, R. Oops, my R looks like an N. (laughs) Guess I can't write upside down very well, then you're gonna cut it out, now in this wreath over here, I put it behind my flowers, so I kind of just used a little bit of tape and put it behind, but this one, I made it a little larger, so I'm gonna put it in front of my wreath like this, and you can just use a little bit of glue to hold it down, I'll add a little bit of glue here, bring up my flower, okay and then the last part of this activity is going to be adding a ribbon, kind of looks like this, you're going to wanna add a ribbon like I did here, if you have one, you can add a burlap ribbon, white, or just another piece of paper, and then you can hang it on your door and talk about why Veteran's day is so important and if you have someone in your life, that's a Veteran, make sure that today, of course everyday, but especially today, you say thank you to them for everything they've done for this country.

All right, looks like we have time for our goodbye song.

Our long alphabet song, we did it a lot this week didn't we?

And then I'll let you know what book we're gonna do for our final day of our clothing.

All right, ♪ A is for amazing that's what you are ♪ ♪ B is for brave that'll carry you far ♪ ♪ C is for caring and community ♪ ♪ And D is for determined to be the best you can be ♪ ♪ E is for empathy caring for all ♪ ♪ F is for friends that'll catch you when you fall.

♪ ♪ G is for grateful for everything around ♪ ♪ and H is for hopeful there's more good to be found ♪ ♪ I is for imagine all the fun things we could do ♪ ♪ J is for joyful how I feel when I'm with you ♪ ♪ K is for kind to people and animals too ♪ ♪ And L is for love put it in all that you do ♪ ♪ M is for mindful be present every day ♪ ♪ N is for nice words in everything you say ♪ ♪ O is for original always be you ♪ ♪ And P is for persevere until you make it through ♪ ♪ Q is for quiet those bad thoughts ♪ ♪ R is for remember all the greatness that you've got ♪ ♪ S is for strong body and mind ♪ ♪ And T is for talent why not make yours being kind ♪ ♪ U is for unique, special and loved ♪ ♪ V is for victorious, always rise above ♪ ♪ W is for worthy and wonderful too ♪ ♪ And X don't X out those mistakes they're what make you you ♪ ♪ Y is for yes we're getting to the end of this rhyme ♪ ♪ And that's the alphabet I'll Z you next time.

♪ All right, boys and girls, join me Friday, which is tomorrow when I'm filming this and we're gonna have fun reading about a little old lady who made a coat with the help of a porcupine, a goose, leaves, woof, you'll have to tune in to see.

Until then, big smooch from me to you.

(lips smack) Goodbye.

(upbeat music)