SJA-Pre-KINDERGARTEN

SJoA Garden Fun

2010-05-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

SAVE THE EARTH

2010-04-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

Dr. Seuss's Birthday: T-K reading with 2nd Grade Buddies

2010-04-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

T-K : Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2010-03-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Spring Time in Pre-K

2010-03-08T09:43:00.000-08:00

This video shows the many spring memories that we have already created together here in Pre-K/ Transitional Kindergarten. The slideshow begins with pictures from Enrichment- learning all about the United States and the interesting places all throughout Europe.

The second group of pictures are taken before and during our field experience to the Murat Shrine Circus. What a fun time we had! The pictures following the circus were taken during "free explore" time in our classroom and a few were taken while the children were practicing their upper and lower case letters: Aa-Zz! They have learned SO much this year in Transitional Kindergarten and I am very proud of each and every student for all of their effort & true love for learning.

As you may have noticed in the pictures, we have several fun additions to our classroom, such as: the Hungry, Hungry Hippo game, a fish tank with eleven beautiful fish, a sensory table for the kids to explore in, a Post Office Station, and our very own Frog Habitat. We also have a computer for educational & Kindergarten-Prep activities, which they all have enjoyed!

Next, you will see pictures that were taken during snack time and our letter of the week was Vv. Mrs. Dinwiddie suprised the class with a healthy & yummy snack: Vegetable tray and ranch veggie dip! Everyone was very excited and seemed to love it!

There are pictures that were taken from recess time and library / story time with Ms. Batt. Oh how we love listening to Ms. Batt as she reads us wonderful stories...and don't let me forget...We get to hear both the English and Spanish version of each story! How cool is that?!~This is always a special time that we cherish each week.

Lastly, one of our favorite things here at school is when we have time to be with our 2nd grade buddies--Mrs. Breen's wonderful class! The pictures you will see on this slideshow were taken on Dr. Seuss's birthday. The 2nd grade class came to our classroom and paired up with a buddy. They then read two of their favorite Dr. Seuss books to their T-K buddy. We had an absolute ball...as always! Many thanks to our 2nd grade buddies for sharing their time and special stories with us!

Thank you for visiting our Transitional-K Blog and please be sure to come back soon!!

Much Love,

Mrs. Dinwiddie and the T-K team!

Catholic School's Week Slideshow

2010-02-08T11:08:00.000-08:00

Letter of the Week:Ss and Groundhog's Day Shadow Activity

2010-02-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

This video clip shows the children creating their letter S's by gluing sand all around the letter. The second part of this video is of our groundhog shadow activity. Each child was able to see their very own shadow, just like the groundhog did this year! At the end, they had beautiful shadow profile pictures of themselves! Please feel free to come in and see all of the profile pictures... they are posted right outside our classroom in the hallway!

Tatem's Visit to St. Joan of Arc!

2010-02-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

This video clip is a special presentation from Tatem Parker on “Tatem’s Bags of Fun” (one of the charities SJA sponsored last week during Catholic School's Week). Tatem is a 9 year old cancer survivor who puts backpacks together for children going through chemotherapy in Indianapolis. She is a beautiful, strong and loving young girl and we are very blessed to have the opportunity to help her raise money to make these wonderful bags!

Mixing Colors, 100th Day of School and "Free Play" in Pre-K!

2010-02-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

This video clip shows the children mixing primary colors together to create each color in the rainbow. We did this activity in pairs while we were in the art room and the children seemed to really enjoy working in the colorful environment!

The next video clip shows the children counting out ten pennies each. We did this activity on the 100th day of school. We then counted by putting each group of ten pennies into a jar to see how many groups of ten it took us to get to 100. The children seemed to understand that ten groups of any ten objects, added together will make a total of 100! They are so smart, it is truly amazing!!

The final clip in this video was taken during free play time and the girls were playing a board game together. ENJOY!!

JANUARY BIRTHDAYS

2010-01-24T19:54:00.000-08:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING!

I HAVE A DREAM...

HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY GABRIELLE!

SPACE: Wiggly Alien Eyes

2010-01-24T18:35:00.000-08:00

Our theme this month is Space. This video clip shows the children searching to find the wiggly alien eyes inside of their playdoh. After they find all of the alien eyes, they count how many they found. Lastly, they have fun creating their very own alien from outer space!

Parachute Fun!

2010-01-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

Indoor Recess

2010-01-24T17:42:00.000-08:00

This was during indoor recess in the gym. Pre-K and Kindergarten went to run around in the gym this afternoon. Instead of playing "Simon Says" I passed out yellow streamers. At first I gave them a few different directions to follow and then I allowed them to dance around freely! Oh what fun we have!

Math & Language Rotation Stations

2010-01-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

The students have loved the rotation stations and truly work so well with one another. A few of the stations shown in this video are: creating a number line with magnetic numbers and a baking sheet, matching objects ,such as plastic animals, to the correct beginning letter sound, counting marbles and placing them onto suction parts of a shower mat, digging through shredded paper to find objects, letters and numbers and recognizing numbers and counting the correct amount of marbles or beans. The stations are done atleast three times a week.

Winter Memories in Pre-K

2010-01-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

SILLY PICTURE! :)

OUR LETTERS TO SANTA!

OUR PRE-K FAMILY!

SNOWFLAKES!

2010-01-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

WE LOVE SNOWFLAKES!

Days of the Week

2010-01-08T15:11:00.000-08:00

This is a video of the Pre-K students singing "Days if the Week" first thing in the morning...So cute!

Science-SPACE

2010-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

This month we are focusing on SPACE. This week the students have learned the following: what planets are, why planets are in space, how many moons each planet has, that we live on planet EARTH-which is the only planet that has both air/oxygen and water, how the astronauts get into space, and lots more! The children are absolutely loving this unit. So far, they have had a blast making spaceships out of the letters in their names, as well as planets out of coffee filters that they painted beautifully and glued onto a black sheet of paper. Each child is full of questions, so we have created a KWL (What do you Know, What do you Want to know, What did you Learn) chart so that we can be sure to answer each of their questions in the following weeks.

Centers in PreK!

2010-01-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

This is a short movie clip of the Pre-K working on the Math Centers in the morning. The students truly get so much out of the hands-on math and it is a lot of fun observing them through each rotation. Please let me know if you would like to come sit in during math center-time because I know that you would be just as amazed as I am on how much they learn and also how well they work together as a team. I hope you all enjoy the video clip!

Transitional Kindergarten

2010-01-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Breen's 2nd Grade class came down to our room to help us write our New Year's Resolutions. This was such a neat experience and all of the Pre-K children loved having their 2nd grade buddies to work with. All of the New Years Resolutions are posted on our classroom door if you would like to stop by and read them!

Happy New Year from Mrs. Dinwiddie's Pre-K!

2010-01-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Moreau reading to our class...

2010-01-04T16:28:00.000-08:00

Christmas Excitement!

2009-12-14T14:36:00.001-08:00

Christmas Countdown Clockgreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

HOW TO ENLARGE SLIDE SHOW PICTURES...

2009-12-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE OUR PICTURES IN A LARGER FORMAT, SIMPLY CLICK ON THE PICTURE...IT WILL THEN ENLARGE ON A SEPARATE SCREEN FOR YOU TO SCROLL THROUGH AND ENJOY! :)

NEW DECEMBER PICTURES!!!

2009-12-06T15:20:00.001-08:00

December brings us Much JOY!

2009-12-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Friend and Family,

I can't believe that we are already in the month of December! We have already had a fun-filled time in our classroom. From introducing Advent and preparing for Jesus Christ's birthday to making snow and creating paper snowflakes, we are learning a lot and having the time of our lives.

Tomorrow we will be making the first part of our gingerbread houses with my Mother-in-law, Nancy Dinwiddie. After the frosting dries over night, we will decorate them with lots of holiday candy on Tuesday morning. We also have a special guest coming to our classroom tomorrow morning...St. Nicholas! He will come to visit us and talk about who he is with the children. The student's will place one shoe outside of the classroom for St. Nicholas to put little treats inside for them!

Thank you for visiting our blog and please be sure to come back frequently for updates on Pre-K's progress and lots of exciting pictures.

Stay warm & Let It Snow!

Much Love,

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie and the entire Pre-K team!

DECEMBER

2009-12-04T14:26:00.000-08:00

2009-11-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

November 20th

2009-11-20T10:19:00.000-08:00

Dear Parents and Friends,
We have two new students in our Pre-K classroom! We have focused each day on special ways to welcome them both into our Pre-K family! The beautiful twin girls, Raylen and Ramiyah, have made friends very quickly and seem to be enjoying their new school! Their birthday is coming up soon too, it is December 3rd. J We will have another friend, Gracie, joining us in January and are very excited about that as well. We will then have a full pre-k class with a total of eighteen students.
Our letter of the week was Ll. A big thank you to Avery Laux for bringing Long pretzel sticks. What a creative idea! They were very yummy too. A few of our activities this week had to do with lions. We made a lion book and lion masks were made during open doors with the Kindergarten class. I brought in
“Lion-ade” today as a drink during snack time and the children loved it!
In Enrichment this week, Mrs. Powroznik read about our five senses. We had several materials that we were able to use our senses to smell, touch, hear, see, or taste. Mrs. Powroznik is allowing us to keep her books in our room for the next week! YIPPIE!
I borrowed the Arthur and D.W. stuffed animal friends from our school library for the week. A lot of our story time books this week have been Arthur books. We read, “Arthur’s Thanksgiving,” “Arthur’s Nose,” “Arthur’s Pet Shop,” and many more!
As a class/team, we created a “Kindness Tree.” The children came up with all sorts of ways to be kind to one another and all of God’s creation. They are posted on the tree outside of our classroom. J
Today the 1st grade class had an ABC Thanksgiving play and they invited our class to come and watch it. The 1st grade did a fabulous job and our class was a very respectful audience. SPECIAL PERSON’S DAY!
Next Wednesday, November 25th each child is to invite one special person to join them during mass at 8:45am. Mass will be followed by treats and time to visit in the gym here at St. Joan of Arc. My student’s special friends are welcome to join us at the beginning of the day in our Pre-K classroom. We will then walk together to the church for mass. After enjoying some treats and visiting, your child is welcome to leave with their special friend or be picked up by their Mom or Dad at that time. School dismissal is at 1pm and there will be a movie for those students that are here until 1pm dismissal.
**Please let me know if you have any questions.

HAVE A RELAXING WEEKEND!

Thanks,
Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

2009-11-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

WELCOME TO OUR NEW FRIENDS!

2009-11-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy Wednesday! I hope everyone is doing great. We want to welcome our two new twin friends, Raylen and Ramiyah, to our classroom. Today we sent home a bag full of goodies to welcome our new classmates. The bag had the following items:
an eraser= mistakes are opportunities for learning
smarties candies= we all have different kinds of "smarts"
a pencil= "Because I know that you are sharp!"
a stick of gum= we are going to stick together as a team
a Hershey kiss= we have a safe and caring classroom
candy= we are sweet and respectful towards each other

The children were very excited and are looking forward to receiving their baggies at the end of the day! Raylen and Ramiyah will help me pass them out to our friends.

There are several new pictures posted on our slide show as well! Enjoy and please come back soon.

Thanks,

Pre-K

2009-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Our letter of the week is Kk. Kennedy made us “Kiss Cookies,” and the children were very appreciative and excited about the chocolate kisses! Our main focus has been how to be kind to one another, God’s creations, animals, etc.

In religion, we have continued our discussion on God’s creations and how to take care those creations while out in nature. We have also made a list of things that we are thankful for and posted it up in our hallway for all to enjoy.

We read the super sized book titled, “The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body,” and the children went nuts over it.! After each page they got anxious to find out where Ms. Frizzle and her class were next in the human body. This week we have also been working on making our bodies, in action, on paper. We have added a brain, nose, spine, esophagus, windpipe, lungs, liver, heart, stomach, gall bladder, small intestine, large intestine, muscle, bone, blood vessels and nerves. We are hanging them throughout our classroom and the hallway. Stop by and take a look.

Did you know that we have 206 bones in our body and over 600 muscles?
Our discussion is about all aspects of good health and fitness. We need to eat well, exercise, wash our hands and stretch. Our weekly yoga poses have been very helpful for all of this and the children seem to be enjoying our classroom yoga studio a lot. We have such an enthusiastic group!

On Tuesday, Mrs. Powroznic was here for enrichment and read another super sized book titled, “Big News Straight from the Heart,” from the American Heart Association. The story was followed with a discussion about the different ways to take care of our hearts and a short movie clip.

Have you heard about “The Minute Challenge?” To keep our bodies healthy, students are participating in three activities, jumping jacks, toe touches, and ball bouncing. The students must first estimate how many of the above tasks they think they can do in one minute. We then count how many the student completes and compare his/her estimate to how many the student actually completed. It is amazing to see how many jumping jacks your children complete in one minute!

Thanks for visiting our blog and please be sure to come back often!

Peace,

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

Mrs. Young

Ms. Courtney

Ms. Brittaney

NOVEMBER FALL FRIENDS

2009-11-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

2009-11-03T10:23:00.000-08:00

October-End of the month fun in Pre-K!

2009-11-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Dear Pre-K Parents, Family and Friends,

This month was full of fun fall adventures! The pictures on our new slide show are from the following activities:

The Pre-K class helped clean out my pumpkin. They then did a math activity where they counted all of their pumpkin seeds and glued them into a book.
Family Pumpkin Carving Night here at SJOA...This was a great turn-out and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves!
We made heart shaped bird feeders using wheat bread, egg whites and bird seed. After they dried, we hung them outside our classroom windows on two of the trees. We think that the squirrels enjoyed them more then the birds did so we have decided to make them again in the winter when there is a lot of snow.
The 2nd grade students were kind enough to come and share their stories with our class. Each child had a buddy and it was a great experience--We hope to continue reading with our 2nd grade buddies throughout the school year!
We had a grand time at our Halloween class party! The pretzels were warm and fresh!Thank you to all who contributed to the yummy treats for all of us to enjoy, we had more than enough, that's for sure! We also had a shaving cream word + number review and the children absolutely loved this. Thankfully, we were able to borrow the smocks from the art room so that our costumes didn't get dirty. All of the costumes were great and I loved the variety and creativity put into them.
Lastly, there are a few pictures of free play time in our classroom. The boys have enjoyed building big, tall buildings and castles with our building blocks.

THANK YOU for visiting our blog and please come back soon to hear about all of the exciting things coming up in the month of November.

Many Thanks,

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

Ms. Courtney, Ms. Brittaney and Mrs. Young

Story Time and Heart Shaped Bird Feeders!

2009-10-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2009

2009-10-20T13:21:00.001-07:00

HAPPY TUESDAY!

Today was a great day. We continued practicing our new sight words that relate to the letter of the week, Ii. The children are doing fantastic with the sight words, it is very exciting! This afternoon we made pine cone art and you can check out our new pictures on the slide show.

Thanks again for visiting us and please come back later on this week for more pre-k updates!

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

Baking Time! Thin and Thick pizza...Yum-Yum!

2009-10-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

We had such a wonderful time cooking our "thick" and "thin" pizza's this morning. We even discussed what fractions are! Can you believe it?! We made each pizza with 1/2 pepperoni and 1/2 cheese. So, the pizza as a "whole" has two 1/2's and each half was a "different" topping. The children loved each minute and you can see that in our pictures on the slide show. It was a wonderful experience for all of us and we will be cooking more often, for sure! They did great working together as a team!

We then were able to enjoy our pizza's during snack time. I have never seen the children eat so much...it was great! We were even able to share our yummy leftovers with the SJA staff in the office. :)

There are also a few seperate pictures along with our pizza pictures. Some of them are during circle time when we sang the "If You See A Big White Ghost" song and one of them is of Eurie and Cole being silly together during indoor play time-- too cute!

Thanks again for visiting our blog and please come back again soon!

Much love,

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie
Ms. Courtney
Ms. Britney
Mrs. Jennifer Young

October Fun in the Pre-K!

2009-10-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

October 13th -- Noah's Birthday!!

2009-10-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

Today it is Noah's 5th Birthday! Happy birthday Noah! :) Noah brought in "Ghost Strawberries" as his birthday treat. So, this morning we made predictions on what we thought Noah's "Ghost Strawberries" would be. The following are the children's predictions word for word: Ghosts with strawberries in them? Ghosts could be red? Strawberries could have ghosts all over them? Strawberries with ghosts on top of them? Strawberries with mummies? Strawberries with "ghosteses" people on them? Ghosts with pumpkins on it? Cupcakes with ghosts on them and strawberries? Strawberries with flowers on it? Batman strawberries? Strawberry might be white? Strawberries is the ghosts body?
*Robert's prediction was pretty close as he said, "Strawberries might be white?" Noah and his Mom made us fresh strawberries dipped in white chocolate and they were delicious! Thank you for the yummy and healthy treat Mrs. Montgomery! Noah even took one to our principal, Ms. Sharpe. He then said, "Maybe our music teacher would like to have one too?!" (SO CUTE!) So, we delivered one to Mrs. Hatfield and she was very thankful. This afternoon we will do a Noah's Arc activity. I have read the Noah's Arc story a few times to the children and I thought it would be appropriate to do our activity today on Noah's birthday! They are all very excited.

Our YOGA pose for the week is called 'Take 5' and it is an expression meaning to take a break. When you take five breaths it gives you a quick rest whenever you need it. If you are angry, tired, frustrated -- just breath. Take 5 also helps you focus and concentrate.

*YogaKids Affirmations:
"When I get upset, I take 5."
"When I get frustrated, I take 5."
"Before a test, I take 5 to quiet my brain and focus my mind."
"I take 5 and feel calm."

In Math, we are talking about thin and thick. On Thursday morning we will make a thick and thin pizza. We plan on enjoying them as our snack on Thursday, so if you would like to join us you are more than welcome!

Tomorrow is our trip to the pumpkin patch and we are very excited! Friday evening we will gather together for our Family Pumpkin Carving Night here at SJA.

That is all for now, thanks for visiting our classroom blog. Come back soon!!

Enjoy this gorgeous fall afternoon.

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

ORANGE SNOW CONE FUN!

2009-10-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

October Fun in the Pre-K!

2009-10-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hi Family and Friends!

We have had a fabulous week. The pictures below are from the following events: Gianna's 5th birthday celebration, P.E. class-sorry that the picture is so dark- Mrs. Dinwiddie and Ms. Courtney putting on a silly play with our new puppet's, the pre-k "snow cone mess", and our mini plants that we are growing in our classroom. This afternoon we took a nature walk across to our vegetable garden and over to visit the St. Francis of Assisi statue. We said a prayer at the end of the day for all of God's beloved creatures. Sunday, October 4th is Saint Francis of Assisi Memorial, so we prayed and thanked God for letting us share the earth with such wonderful and amazing creatures. You may bring your pets to St. Joan of Arc on Sunday at 3pm to have them blessed. We look forward to our alphabet review next week and lots more!

Have a relaxing weekend!

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie

October Fun!!

2009-10-02T10:39:00.001-07:00

FEVER Pep Rally Pictures

2009-09-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Fever Pictures from our School Pep Rally!!

2009-09-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

There are some great shots on the web of teachers and your students at our pep rally at SJA.
Link Below:
http://www.wnba.com//fever/photos_090924.html

*Tomorrow night is Game 2 in the Eastern Conference series! GOOD LUCK FEVER!!

Have a FANTASTIC FRIDAY!!

Mrs. Dinwiddie

Adventure Walk to the fire house!!

2009-09-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

Our Pre-K class filled our classroom bucket up with ten crystals, so we were able to watch two movies during rest time! This was so much fun! We watched a Veggie Tales movie called, "God Wants Me to Forgive Them!" We also watched "The Story of Jesus" Part 1.

More fun in our Pre-K classroom!

2009-09-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

This week has been a lot of learning and lots of fun! Today, we had Mrs. Powroznik in our room. This week we are finishing up our unit of study on all living things. We looked for pictures of living things and cut them out of magazines to paste and create collages. The children loved this and made several wonderful collages! They are all hanging up in our classroom. This afternoon, we made firefighter masks. We used paper plates and a few other materials. We then went on a "silent parade" up to the third floor and were able to walk by Ms. Sharpe's office and wave to her.
My Mother-in-law, Nancy Dinwiddie, donated a lot of new dress up clothes, purses, scarves and shoes. Everyone enjoyed our new items and danced around the room in their dress up clothes!

2009-09-21T14:50:00.001-07:00

September 21, 2009

2009-09-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

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

Thursday New Blog--Short Week!

2009-09-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

*Reminders:
Friday, September 11 - NO SCHOOL
September 30th - 1pm Dismissal
Tuesday, September 15th Please send in your child's favorite cereal in a sandwich zip lock baggie *More info. *SEE BELOW*

We began our week feeling refreshed from Labor Day weekend. Children excitedly shared ways their families spent time together over the weekend. From out of town adventures to Michigan and other destinations to playing outside or at the Children's Museum were some of the comments they shared.

They enjoyed Music class on Tuesday morning, as always! They had the opportunity to sing along and practice their listening skills while they repeated different verses of songs.

This week we have been practicing the letter of the week, which is the capitol and lowercase letter Dd. The children love when they get the opportunity to read and create their own little books. I hope that they have shared them with you at home! This weeks book was the Dinosaur book.

We introduced free dancing time to the children late last week and they absolutely love this. I have great pictures to post from when they were dancing freely around our classroom. I apologize for not posting pictures yet, I am still waiting on the cord to connect my camera to the computer.

In Math we are practicing our shapes, as well as alike and different. We have also been practicing our colors and writing our numbers.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Powroznik was with us for enrichment. She read a story about lions to our class and we continued our discussion on living things and all of the different habitats that they live in. The children then got to draw a picture of their habitat/home. These pictures are posted in the hallway outside of our classroom!

Next week brings our first visit to the library right after lunch on Friday. Our librarian will read a book to our class in which relates to our weekly themes(Living Things, Safety and Community Helpers). The children will then have the opportunity to explore the library and look through books. Eventually, we will allow them to check books out, but for now I am going to use that privilege as one of our "Bucket" surprises. So, your child may come home excited to share their book with you for the evening or maybe even the weekend! Please be sure to remind your child to put the book back into their backpack after reading it to them.

On Tuesday we plan on making friendship cereal. Please send a cup of your child's favorite cereal to school. We will blend all the flavors together for a delicious snack.

Have a weekend of peace,

Mrs. Stephanie Dinwiddie, Ms. Courtney, and Mrs. Young

Happy Tuesday!

2009-09-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope you all had an enjoyable and relaxing long weekend! Today has been a terrific Tuesday! We have had a full day of learning and I am sure your little ones will be exhausted by the end of the day! Today we started the Language for Learning program and it went really well. As a whole-class, the students follow simple instructions in which they do the following: listen and repeat actions, learn different information about their school, practice saying their full names and practice with object identification. The content of Language for Learning provides a basis for reading comprehension. After the oral lesson, the children go back to their seats and work on the workbook page that follows each lesson.

Today, we also reviewed the letters that we have learned up to this point: Aa, Bb, and Cc. Our new letter of the week is the letter Dd. We discussed the soft and hard sounds for the letter Dd and created a class-chart of words that begin with the letter Dd. I am sure they will share their dinosaur sheet with you! The children have done such a great job with each letter! I truly am impressed with how much knowledge their developing minds have at such young ages!

Thank you for visiting our blog! We hope you have enjoyed hearing about our wonderful day!

Mrs. Dinwiddie and Ms. Courtney

pre-kindergarten

2007-08-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

We are excited for this year! We have many new activities planned for your children. Our goalis to have a fun, happy learning enviroment that prepares the kids for a successful beginning to their early years of education.

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jeanne Conner. My husband, Bruce, and I have three grown children and three grandchildren. I have been in the early childhood and elementary school setting for over 25 years.

Patty Vanlanot, Pre-K assistant, came to SJA in November 2006. She and her husband Ray, have one son at Indiana University. Patty has many years experience in Washington Township schools in Elementary and Special Education.

I look forward to working with Patty and my sister, Peggy Kline.

Any information or concerns you have about this school year I welcome your suggestions. Please feel free to contact me through the school office, 283-1518 or e-mail jconner@sjoa.org.

Weekly communication will come through our school and classroom newsletters on Thursdays.

Thank you so much for sharing your child with us.

Jeanne Conner