September 21, 2009

Dear Families and Friends,

HAPPY MONDAY!

*Friendly Reminders*

Thursday, September 24th - We will be walking down to the firehouse at 10:15am.
(More information below)

Friday, September 25th - School Spirit Day *This is the last Friday of every month and the children may wear school spirit clothing items and jeans! (Pre-K can wear jeans any day of the week).

Wednesday, September 30th - 1pm Dismissal

Thursday, October 1st - Gianna's 5th Birthday!!

Wednesday, October 14th - PUMPKIN PATCH FIELD EXPERIENCE!

Thursday, October 29th - Fall Break

Can you believe we have been in school for four full weeks? These weeks have just flown by! We are truly enjoying getting to know all of your uniquely individual children.

Monday began with P.E. and our class had a wonderful report! We then had our morning meeting and reviewed our letter of the week, which was Ee. Our guest reader, Mrs. Moreau, then came to read to us. The children just love her!

On Tuesday, we made our friendship cereal and the children absolutely loved this experience! We talked about what a good friend is and what you do as a good friend. We added each bag of cereal one at a time until the bags were full of each child's favorite cereal. We then passed the "nut" and "no nuts" bags around for each child to shake with love three times. This was a great way to mix it all up! They enjoyed each piece and were very thankful for all of their friends!

On Wednesday, Mrs. Powroznik came for enrichment and she talked to the children about living and dead things. They got to look at dinosaur bones, a shark tooth and a (dead) horse shoe crab. The horse shoe crab was alive at one point and Mrs. Powroznik found it on her honeymoon and brought it back with her to share with her students. She let us keep the horse shoe crab as our class visitor for the rest of the week and the children loved this!

This Wednesday, Mrs. Powroznik will be introducing Native Americans to our class. We will then continue our study of Native Americans for the next two weeks. If you have anything at home that relates to Native Americans and would like to share it with our class, please either send it in with your child our you are always welcome to visit and share it with us.

In Math, we have been working with shapes, numbers, and simple addition with pictures. We did a painting activity where I would call out a color for them to use while painting each shape. They turned out great and are hanging in the hallway. We also did a couple activities where the student's traced shapes and cut them out and then glued the pieces on a separate sheet of paper.

Science- We had our first "stations" or "centers" experience where each group of five rotated every fifteen minutes. One of our stations had magnetic and non-magnetic items all mixed up in shredded paper. The children took turns using the magnetic sticks to collect the items. together they counted how many magnetic items there were and put the non-magnetic items aside to talk about later during our end of the day meeting. This was a blast and so much fun to observe!

In handwriting, the children are practicing grip, starting at the top with uppercase letters, and a series of alphabet songs with exercises. We have been using our white boards and the children write a letter or number along with me. They then show me the letter or number after writing it. They really enjoy this!

On Friday, we celebrated Paula's mighty 5th birthday. She sure feels so grown up since turning five. We also had our first library visit. The children loved reading Clifford stories and being able to pet our stuffed animal friend Clifford. We sat in the back on the Bing bags and read several stories.

Last week, we discussed fire safety and introduced all of our community helpers. It worked out great because our letter of the week this week is Ff, and on Thursday we will be visiting the fire house on 42nd and college. At 10:15am, we will walk down to the corner of 42nd and college and the firemen will help us cross the street safely. They will then talk with the children about fire safety and the importance of having fire drills at school. They will also show the students how they come down the fire pole and how they put all of their fire gear on. The children will then be able to explore the fire truck before we walk back to school. We are very excited!

Lastly, I have finally found a connector for my camera and I am downloading all of the pictures right now. I am hoping to have them posted before I leave the classroom today! I apologize for the delay and I hope you enjoy seeing all of the different activities that we do together in this wonderful Pre-Kindergarten classroom!

Thank you all for your continuous support and have a fabulous week!

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

Ms. Courtney

Mrs. Young