Valentine's Day

Valentine Celebration

This week and next week we will be spending much of our learning on writing letters, the alphabet, the post office, mail carriers, delivering mail etc…  The theme correlates very well with Valentine’s Day.  On Tuesday February 12^th and Wednesday February 13^th we will celebrate Valentine’s Day by making a special craft, eating a special snack and exchanging Valentine cards. You are welcome to join us.  Our celebration will be from 1-2 p.m.  Your child is welcome to bring in Valentine cards for his/her peers.  Please encourage your child to sign his or her name on the Valentine cards.  If your child is able he or she is welcome to write the first names of his or her peers on the envelopes.  We will make card boxes or bags for the children to bring their cards home in. 

Photo Upload

Good Afternoon.  It has been a long time since I've had a chance to upload photos.  For some reason my computer was not cooperating and thank goodness now it is.  Here are a bunch of photos from the last couple of months.  They aren't all in chronological order but they give a snapshot of some of the amazing things we've been up to in preschool.



Happy Birthday,  Donnie!



Our dramatic play center has puppets to play with.

The puppets encourage and help build communication.

We take turns being the audience in our puppet theatre.

We have hand puppets and stick puppets.  The stick puppets are from the story we read the last couple weeks, The Mitten by Jan Brett.

Sophia and Maddie made matching structures out of wedgets.

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

More puppet show fun!

Happy Birthday, Maddie!

Happy Birthday, Sophia!

Reading books to our animals on our teddy bear picnic day!

Our stuffed animals hid from us while we were in the motor room.  We had to follow the clues to find them around the school.

Elmo was hiding on the gym steps.

Our hunt even took us to the school office.

We measured and recorded our animals length in inches.

We even had to go to Mr. Thacker's office to find an animal.

Ms. Sandy reading a story at our teddy bear picnic.



Some of our animals even enjoyed a snack.



Our picnic.

Riley found a clue to help her find her animal.

Some of our animals hid in high places.

Motor room parachute fun!

Playing with the dollhouse.

Listening to a story on tape.

Making play dough.

Happy Birthday, Aiden!

Welcome Ethan K. to our Tues/Thurs class.

We found a very LARGE worm on the sidewalk.  Of course we had to stop and investigate.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.  I hope everyone had a happy and healthy winter break.  I know that I enjoyed the little bit of snow we had.  It was fun to take my 3 year old sledding and enjoy that experience with him.

We've finished up our bear and holiday themes and are currently learning all about snow, winter and reading stories from one of my all time favorite children's authors, Jan Brett.  We have begun to read The Mitten by Jan Brett last week.  I'm fortunate enough to have collected enough copies of the book throughout my years teaching that at group time each child has the opportunity to hold, turn pages and read along with their own copy.  This way of reading a book helps children follow directions and understand that print has meaning.  As I read aloud I point to the words as a I read and often the children do the same.  We are also able to pay more attention to the very detailed illustrations.  We will also act out the story using animal props and then eventually pretend to be the animals ourselves. 

Conferences are coming up on January 31st and February 6th.  Conferences are not mandatory but if you are interested keep a look out in your child's communication folder for a sign up.  Peggy Fangman our speech pathologist will be here on February 6th so if your child receives speech therapy please consider requesting February 6th. 

Scholastic flyers went home last week.  It's a great way to purchase books for your child at a reasonable cost and also help our class earn points to buy more books.

Remember never hesitate to call, email or write with any questions or concerns.

Happy December

Dear Families,

        I hope you are finding yourself enjoying the beginning of the holiday season.  Things are going very well in preschool.  We have transitioned from our bear theme to a Gingerbread/Christmas/Holiday/ theme.  We are reading the books; Gingerbread Baby and Pete the Cat Save Christmas.  We are learning songs to play with jingle bells.  Our dramatic play center is full of baking supplies, a Christmas tree to decorate, and dress up clothing.  Our sensory table has “reindeer food” (oatmeal) that the children will bring home next week to put out for Santa’s reindeer to eat while they are waiting for Santa to deliver toys.  We have many craft activities going on right now including ornament making. 

        We welcome Ethan K. to our Tues/Thurs class.  We now have 10 students in our Tues/Thurs class and continue to have 7 students in our Wed/Fri class.

        Holiday parties are coming up next week. You are invited to join us for a group time, snack and a craft activity from 1-2 on December 20^th or 21^st.  Our sweet treats are covered for these parties but if you’d like to send in juice boxes, fruit, napkins or plates please let me know via email, phone call or in the communication folder.

      Don’t forget to subscribe to our class blog.  I add photos and updates periodically of the happenings in our class.  Also, remember never hesitate to call, email, or write with any questions or concerns.

Updates

Dear Families,

Scholastic orders are due this Friday.  It's a great way to get great books for Christmas.  See the link to the right to place an online order.

Holiday parties are on December 20th and 21st from 1-2 p.m.  Please let me know if you are interested in bringing: juice boxes, napkins, plates, snacks, etc... 

We just started our bear theme.  We are reading many bear books including, Bear in the Square, Brown Bear Brown Bear, Bear Snores on etc...  Our dramatic play center is set up for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

We will have a teddy bear picnic on December 6th and 7th. Please see note in backpack.

Ms. Sandy's last day is December 7th.  She is moving on to student teach in a Kindergarten class in a Cincinnati Public School.  We will miss her very much as she has made great connections with the students and has been such an asset to our class.

Ms. Janie is BACK!!!!  We are very excited to have Ms. Janie back healthy.

News and photos

A few notes:
-Conference slips have gone home and you should have received an email from me as well.  Many of you have signed up.  Please let me know if you'd like a conference.

-Scholastic book club flyers have been sent home.  It's a great way to get Christmas gifts for all the children in your family.  There is a link in this blog to order.  The Pete the Cat books are always a favorite of preschoolers.

-Ms. Janie is coming back on the 19th! We are so excited.

-Ms. Sandy is doing her lead teaching project this week meaning she has done the lesson planning and will run our group times and transitions throughout the day.  She has set the classroom up for learning all about pizza.  Pizza is a fun theme as we can incorporate so many different things such as learning about shapes, parts to a whole, the letter "P", and so on.  We will taste test toppings and graph the results.  One of my favorite parts about preschool is that we are learning all day long but the learning is so much fun and natural.

-October was a busy  month.  Check out our pictures below.

The fire department visited our Wed/Friday class in October. 

We acted out the spooky walk with our Tues/Thursday class.  Here is Collin crawling through the "grass."

Feeling the "cold and slimy" in the cave.

"Rattling bones and ghostly moans."

Couldn't get enough of the cold and slimy.

Happy 5th Birthday, Kyle!

Happy 4th Birthday, James!

We carved a pumpkin on the morning of our Halloween party!  Ryan enjoyed it!

Sophia

Christopher

Collin

Ethan

Zander

Kyle

Aiden

Maddie

Acting out one of our favorite October stories, "Big Pumpkin" by Erica Silverman.

Riley

James

Hailie

Donnie

Riley busy in our pizza parlor.

Bree serving up a pizza.

Our pizza making station.

A couple of our class chefs.

Gabriel the chef.

Collin the customer.

Busy making pizzas.

Corn starch and water make for a fun sensory experience.

Gabriel

This is Noah and our Tap-it.  The Tap-it is an interactive device similar to a smart board but designed specifically for various levels of competence.  We really enjoy the website starfall.com.