November Newsletter 2014

Last month’s news

A big thanks to the Vong family for opening their home to us for the Harvest Parade!

The fire department visited and all of your children loved hearing the alarms and touching the big red fire truck.

Thanks to Mrs. Hughes for her presentation on parent education night. Mr.Chan (one of our Dolphin parents) came and discussed with the children about how to keep their teeth healthy.

If you are participating in the See’s fundraiser, please turn in your orders by November 14. The candy delivery will be the first week of December.

This month’s events

Doctor visits- November 6 – 10:00 a.m.
Police visit- November 7- 10:00 a.m.
Veterans Day-November 11 (school open)
Veterinarian- D. Woods- November 14- 9:45am
Thanksgiving Feast- November 26 – 11:30pm in Parish Hall
School Closed- Happy Thanksgiving- November 27, 28

From the Director

Health and Safety

Some of the children are still learning to use their words instead of their hands to convey their needs and emotions. At this age children’s fingernails grow extremely fast. Please make sure to check your child’s nails at least once a week. When my children were little I would use an emery board to file their nails, because it was faster than clipping them.

You are invited to join us on Wednesday, November 26 for our Thanksgiving feast from 11:30A.M. until 12:30 P.M. We will be serving turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, Jell-O, vegetables, rolls and pumpkin pie. The children will help to prepare one small bowl of each item with their class the day before the feast. This is a great opportunity for parents to visit and help in the class with the teacher. Let your child’s teacher know if you would like to participate. We ask each of our families to help provide the ingredients for our meal. A sign-up sheet will be posted on the class clipboard. Please bring in the food on or before November 24. The Preschool will provide the turkey. We hope that each family will be able to attend for some portion of the feast. However, we understand if schedules will not allow it. The staff thanks you for your support of this activity and wishes you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Christmas Program will be held on Monday, December 8,2014. Please save the date!

From the Assistant Director

Hello Everyone!

We are enjoying the autumn season here at the preschool. The children had a marvelous time at the Harvest parties and parade. We enjoyed the time leading up to Halloween as well. We read stories and learned finger plays such as “Five Little Pumpkins” and “Five Little Bats.” One afternoon in the Dolphin class we had some fun with crepe paper and wrapped some of the children up as “Mummies.” It was hilarious. This month we have some more visits from some community helpers. I had a really great time substituting in the Rainbow Fish class. Ms. Debbie will be back with them now and we are happy to welcome Ms. Kim back into the Dolphin class. I would like to encourage parents to go online to Scholastic Book Clubs.com and order some books. A new selection is available every month. Enjoying books at an early age helps promote a love for literacy that will last a life time. Each time a parent orders books, the school earns bonus points, which enables us to purchase books for the preschool. I will also put order forms in your parent files every month if you would like to order from them and then turn the payment into the office.

Thank You,

Ms. Rita

Dolphin Class- Ms. Debbie/Ms. Kim

Last Month’s News

The children enjoyed our visit from the Arcadia Fire Department. Many of the children imitated the firefighters out in the yard. The teachers drew some pretend fire flames on construction paper and stuck it on the front of the playhouse. The children took turns saying “911!” and running to the “fire” to put it out. It was a lot of fun. Mr. Chan, Landon’s father, is a dentist. He and his assistant came to the preschool and taught us how to care for our teeth by brushing and flossing. They gave us a toothbrush and toothpaste to take home.

The class enjoyed making our bat costumes to wear in our harvest parade. The children painted their costumes and we made the cutest headbands to go with it. We read about bats and learned they are nocturnal creatures, which means they fly and eat at night and sleep in the day. We learned that bats sleep upside down and some bats eat fruit and others eat mice and insects. Thank You to all of our parents and friends who walked with us during the parade and who contributed to our class party. We had a lot of fun and truly appreciate all of your help.

Ms. Debbie

This Month’s Activities

This month we will read a story called Stone Soup. This is a favorite book of mine to read around this time of year. It is about a man who goes to a village and has nothing to eat so he knocks on people’s doors asking for food but they all refuse him. All he has is a stone, which he puts in a pot of water and goes to the town square and begins to make his stone soup. The villagers become curious and peek out of their windows to watch him. After a while they ask him what he is doing and they all offer an ingredient to help him make his stone soup. The story teaches a great lesson about kindness and sharing. We will make our own stone soup in class. If you would like to help us, please tell me. I will post a signup sheet for each child to bring in an ingredient for our soup. Fall is my favorite season. I enjoy the colors and the cool weather. I will take the children on a walk around our school and look for falling leaves and other nature items. We will make a fall collage with our found treasures and do some leaf rubbings.

Thanksgiving is a great time to talk about family and being thankful for all we have. We will do a “what I am thankful for” project. The children will draw a picture of what they are thankful for and I will write a sentence describing their picture. We will also do some fun thanksgiving activities such as turkey prints, horns a plenty and pilgrim hats.

We will continue with our tray tasking and letter of the week. Our letters for the month are G, H and I. I am so happy to be back. The children have welcomed me back with lots of hugs and special cards and drawings. Have a blessed month.

Ms. Kim

Rainbow Fish-Ms. Rita/Ms. Debbie

The class has enjoyed musical fun with songs like “Good Morning,” “Who Came to School today?” and “The ABC Song.” We danced with scarves to music and marched with rhythm sticks. At circle time we looked at noun picture cards. The children have learned the names of a lot of things. Some of the children have acquired more English words. A lot more conversations have been initiated between the children in the past month. They learn fairly quickly what to say to one another if the teacher models for them.

We have begun tray tasking with buttoning, scooping cereal into a cup, and bead stringing. We will start practicing how to fold a napkin next week.

The class enjoys playing play dough and building a marble game. They have a wonderful sense of humor and have even made a few funny jokes at circle time. They are having a really good time.

Ms. Rita

Teacher’s Corner

Hello! It’s Ms. Debbie.

I am looking forward to being back in the Rainbow Fish classroom. We have a new friend named Atticus. We will all have fun getting to know one another. I will play with the children and model for them language, manners, turn taking and how to play cooperatively with one another.

Ms. Kim

This Month’s Activities

The children enjoying playing in the dramatic play area together doing role playing. This helps build on the children’s problem solving skills. To coincide with one of this month’s themes of food groups, we will make a grocery store with pretend food, plastic pumpkins, and paper bags to pretend we are “buying” things. We will discuss how we choose an item, pay for it, and put it in a bag. We will cut out pictures of food from magazines and make a collage. We will sing some songs about food such as “Peanut Butter and Jelly” and “I am a Pizza.” We tie in the theme of food groups into learning about Thanksgiving. We will discuss the different foods some people eat at Thanksgiving, as well as how thankful we are to God for giving us our family, our school and our friends. We will learn a finger play called “Five Little Turkeys” which will assist in building our language skills. The children are continuously learning self-control and how to express themselves appropriately with their words. This skill takes a while to learn. We stay consistent, redirect them and model desired behavior for them.

I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Ms. Debbie

Turtle News-Ms. Cecilia

Teacher’s Corner

Hello Everyone! We all had a fun month of October. We were visited by some great community helpers and we had an awesome time at our Harvest party and parade.
Please bring in a family photo. We are going to make a family tree to hang up in our classroom.
If you would like to know if your child is ready to begin potty training, here are some signs to watch for.
1. Does your child realize when they have gone potty in their diaper?
2. Are they willing to sit on the potty?
3. Do they have interest in pulling their pants up and down by themselves?

This Month’s Activities

The class will continue to work on verbal skills. I will model appropriate words and behavior for them. We would like to promote kindness towards one another. I will show them how to touch a friend’s arm softly and say “Gentle.”
We continue work on following one direction, such as throwing a cup in the trash, or to sit down for story time. We sing a lot of songs and we will be learning some fun finger plays for Thanksgiving, such as “Five Little Turkeys.”
We will learn about different food groups. We will talk about what kinds of food we are eating during lunch and snack times. We will sing some songs about different foods and make some fun crafts.
We will be having a Thanksgiving feast this month and the day before our class will help to prepare one of the dishes. We are going to have a fun and exciting month.
If you bring a jacket to school for your child, please put their name inside the label.
I wish you all a Happy Autumn!

Ms. Cecilia

Starfish Class- Ms Frannie

Teachers Corner

The Starfish class has enjoyed doing music and movement. One of our favorite songs we learned last month was “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” Through this song the children have learned how to listen, follow directions, identify body parts, memorize, and increase their vocabularies all the while having fun. Another song they enjoyed this month was “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.

We are beginning to see progress in our potty training! Learning to use the potty is a big step towards independence. Overall, the Starfish are doing a great job using the potty. We have a daily schedule and we stay on track. Consistency is very important when teaching any new skill. A few potty accidents are expected to happen since some of the children are still learning to master their potty skills.

This Month’s Activities

In November, the children will practice working on turn taking skills such as rolling the ball to one another. I will also follow through with the children to have them share their toys with others. When the children are having a conflict I model the appropriate language for them to use. When a conflict occurs between two children I may ask one of them, “Can your friend use this for a little while and then you can have a turn?” As their ability to reason develops more, they are able to solve more problems on their own.

In the beginning of November, a pediatrician and some police officers will visit our school and give a presentation about their jobs. This month the children will also learn different names of food through a story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We will name and count the food pictures and identify their colors in the book. We will continue to practice using our polite manners such as “please” and “thank you” with our friends, teachers, and families. On November 26th, we will have a Thanksgiving luncheon at school. You are welcome to join us if possible. Happy Thanksgiving,

Ms. Frannie

Seahorse Class- Ms. Beth

Teachers Corner

October was a blast! We made delicious –looking gingerbread costumes for our Harvest Walk. We had a very exciting visit from the Arcadia Fire Department. The children were in awe as they looked at the awesome fire truck. We learned that if you ever want to tour the fire station with your child, you can just call and make an appointment. The children really enjoy learning about fire fighters, police officers, and other community workers.
The children worked on social interaction and team work with waffle block play. They used their imagination to create a house out of the blocks and pretend they were the
“Three Little Pigs.” The children really love bringing stories and their environment to life. They learn about one another’s feelings and how to interact with one another through imaginative play. They also discover cause and effect relationships, learning how one action causes a reaction. This teaches problem-solving skills as well as self-control.
We have begun our letter study through our alphabet bag of items and a game of I spy for objects that begin with the weekly letter. The children enjoy pulling objects out of the bag and identifying them. The game expands vocabulary and beginning letter sounds.
Tray tasking is going well. Each child approaches his or her tasks in their own unique and interesting ways. It is fantastic to see them in action.

This Month’s Activities

We will continue to study nature and some of the changes of autumn. We will look at different types of leaves and make rubbings with them. The class will also study light and shadow and learn about day light savings time. We will explore the light table and make sundials as we discuss the sun and how the Earth’s movements around the sun affects us.

This month we will also learn about Food Groups and Thanksgiving. We will learn which foods are healthy for our bodies and which foods we should eat only a little bit of. As we learn about Thanksgiving we will talk about being thankful to God for all of our blessings such as our families, our friends, our homes, our teachers. We will read stories about the first Thanksgiving and we will learn some finger plays and songs about Thanksgiving. We will connect these concepts with our art projects and make some creative cornucopias and hand print turkeys. We will decorate some paper tablecloths for the tables at our Thanksgiving lunch feast. I hope to see you all there!

Many Thanks,

Ms. Beth