2/22 Classroom Update

This week, we began learning about dental health because February is National Children's Dental Health Month! This week, we learned why our teeth are so important (we need them to eat, drink, talk, start digestion, and to make many facial expressions!) and learned the parts of a tooth. We also learned about what to expect at the dentist and shared our own experiences at the dentist. Due to the short week, we will continue our exploration of dental health next week and begin our transportation unit. Here are some picture highlights from this week:

Playing with the Parachute - girls turn under!

Boys turn!

We made the letter W into a walrus for our letter books!

We played a number recognition tooth brushing game!

We used a toothbrush to paint sparkly white teeth!

Important Dates/Reminders:

Kindergarten Registration: Intent to enroll forms for 2019-2020 kindergarten at EGRPS can be located on the tables by the tablets in the WECC lobby. Kindergarten registration information can also be found at this link: 2019-2020 Kindergarten Information. Intent to enroll forms are due next Friday, March 1st. I am happy to fill out a preschool form for your child as well. If you would like for me to fill one out, please print the form and fill out the top half. I will then complete the form and send it to our District Registrar.
*Hearing and Vision screens are scheduled for Woodcliff on May 14 & 15.

Spring Break: There are no preschool classes 3/29 - 4/8 for spring break. School will resume Tuesday, April 9th.

Have a great weekend!

2/15 Classroom Update

It was so nice to get back into our regular routine with a full week of school! We spent the week discussing friendship and how to be a good friend in honor of Valentine's Day. We also opened a new dramatic play: the post office! At our post office, preschoolers could write cards or valentines to one another and mail them in our classroom! Here are some more highlights from our week in preschool:

We sorted candy hearts, practiced one-to-one counting, and practiced writing numbers!

We painted flowers in our letter V vases for our letter books!

We made valentines for loved ones!

We enjoyed playing in all the snow outside!

We practiced clapping out the syllables in Valentine's day themed words.

We sounded out and discriminated between real and nonsense words!

Ms. Janet came and we played with a parachute!

We matched stamps to their letters based on their beginning sounds!

We worked on writing the letters N and V!

We played in a Valentine's Day sensory bin!

Important Dates/Reminders:

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Kindergarten Registration: Intent to enroll forms for 2019-2020 kindergarten at EGRPS can be located on the tables by the tablets in the WECC lobby. Kindergarten registration information can also be found at this link: 2019-2020 Kindergarten Information.
*Hearing and Vision screens are scheduled for Woodcliff on May 14 & 15.

Spring Break: There are no preschool classes 3/29 - 4/8 for spring break. School will resume Tuesday, April 9th.

Have a great weekend!

2/8 Classroom Update

What a crazy last couple of weeks it's been with snow days, ice days, and power outages! I'm hoping next week will finally bring back a full week of school so we can get back into our regular routine! We spent the last two weeks focusing on cooking and nutrition. We learned about the five food groups (fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy) and read many fun books about food. For each story we read, we also made a special snack to go along with it! Here are some picture highlights from the last few days we've been in school:

Coloring in healthy foods vs. treats!

Playing food groups bingo!

After reading Dragons Love Tacos, we assembled our own tacos at snack time!

They were delicious!

Sorting foods by food groups and drawing our own ideas of foods for each group!

Reading about healthy foods and focusing on the sight words "I like."

After reading Stone Soup, we made our own "stone soup"!

After reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, we worked together to bake chocolate chip cookies!

Important Dates/Reminders:

Valentine's Day Class Valentine: The week of Feb. 11-14 will be spent participating in Valentine’s Day activities in Preschool and discussing friendship. In lieu of a party and students bringing in individual Valentines for each member of our class, we are asking for students and their families to create ONE BIG VALENTINE using a heart that will be provided by school (I sent this home with students on Monday - let me know if you need another one!). You can use glitter, stickers, paint, yarn, pasta, crayons….or any other materials around your house. Please return your “Class Valentine” to school one day next week so that we may share it with the class and display it for our school community.

Scholastic Book Orders: This week, I sent home Scholastic book orders in your child's folder. January/February book orders are due by Thursday, February 14th (I extended this a week due to being out of school!). You can order books online by completing the steps below. You may also turn in your paper order and payment to me and I will input and send in your order for you.

1. Go to the Scholastic Reading Club Website here.
2. Click Connect to your Teacher and enter our class activation code: PJFBX.
3. Then click to order from this month's flyer. Our default flyer is the "Early Childhood" flyer; however, you may order from any of the flyers. You can view more details about each book and add them to your cart by clicking on them in the flyer. 
4. After selecting your items, click on the cart to create an account or sign-in to your existing account in order to check-out.  
5. January/February orders need to be placed by Thursday, February 14th.

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Kindergarten Registration: The EGRPS website regarding kindergarten registration information has been updated. Intent to enroll forms will be posted beginning Feb. 1. The link to the page can be found here: http://www.egrps.org/enrollment/kindergarten-program/.

Have a great weekend!

1/25 Classroom Update

This week, we learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and also focused on celebrating our differences. We discussed how it does not matter what people look like or if they are different than us, but what matters is that we are all special people on the inside deserving of kindness and respect. We celebrated our differences and what makes each and every one of us special and unique. Here are some highlights from the week:

After reading It's Okay to be Different by Todd Parr, we discussed how our differences are what make us special and unique. There is no one exactly like us! Our preschoolers then wrote and drew a picture of something that makes them special! 

We learned that Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream of a word where all people were treated equally and with kindness. We came up with our dreams of how to make the world a better place! Our "dreams" are currently displayed in the hallway!

During circle time, we compared a brown egg and white egg. We noticed that while they were different colors and sizes, they both felt the same when we touched them. After cracking them open, we noticed that they looked exactly the same on the inside! We talked about how people are kind of like the eggs: we all look different on the outside but we all are people who deserve kindness on in the inside!

Learning about beats and rests with Ms. Janet!

After reading the Dr. Seuss classic The Sneetches, we each got to share something that makes us special!

Important Dates/Reminders:

Scholastic Book Orders: This week, I sent home Scholastic book orders in your child's folder. January/February book orders are due by Thursday, February 7th. You can order books online by completing the steps below. You may also turn in your paper order and payment to me and I will input and send in your order for you.

1. Go to the Scholastic Reading Club Website here.
2. Click Connect to your Teacher and enter our class activation code: PJFBX.
3. Then click to order from this month's flyer. Our default flyer is the "Early Childhood" flyer; however, you may order from any of the flyers. You can view more details about each book and add them to your cart by clicking on them in the flyer. 
4. After selecting your items, click on the cart to create an account or sign-in to your existing account in order to check-out.  
5. January/February orders need to be placed by Thursday, February 7th.

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Kindergarten Registration: The EGRPS website regarding kindergarten registration information has been updated. Intent to enroll forms will be posted beginning Feb. 1. The link to the page can be found here: http://www.egrps.org/enrollment/kindergarten-program/.

Have a great weekend!

1/18 Classroom Update

This week, we focused on ways to keep our bodies healthy! We emphasized the importance of washing our hands, covering our mouths/noses when we cough and sneeze, and the importance of rest. We did a demonstration with glitter to show germs are spread from person to person, and also met my friend "Sick Simon" (a spray bottle) who is learning how to cover his mouth when he coughs and sneezes. We will also check back in on an experiment we started last week where we rubbed potatoes on different surfaces we thought might have germs to see what happens 😆. Here are some picture highlights from our week in preschool:

We finished our polar bear paintings from last week. They are now displayed in the hallway!

Our dramatic play center is now a doctor's office!

During free choice time, playing with our Zoo Phonics letters has become a favorite pastime. These friends were matching the Zoo Phonics letters to the same letter on the carpet.

Painting our "A is for Alligator" letter book pages!

We made germs out of foam dough and other fun materials. 

We counted germs and put them in order from the smallest to the biggest number.

Important Dates/Reminders:

No School 1/21: There is no preschool on Monday 1/21 in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Kindergarten Registration: The EGRPS website regarding kindergarten registration information has been updated. Intent to enroll forms will be posted beginning Feb. 1. The link to the page can be found here: http://www.egrps.org/enrollment/kindergarten-program/.

Have a great weekend!

1/11 Classroom Update

Happy new year! I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing break with your families. As nice as the R&R time is with family, it is so nice to get back into the swing of things and to see all our preschoolers again! Not only was I very happy to see everyone, but I was also very excited to share our new classroom projector and screen with our preschoolers. This will open the door for lots of fun, new learning experiences!

This week, we learned all about polar animals that live in the Arctic and Antarctic. We located the north and south poles on the earth, and discussed what the climate is like there. We learned about four different types of penguins and also did a fun penguin dance (You can do it at home here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf0uKmKwnKs). We also learned how different animals survive during the winter (hibernation, adaptations, etc.). We conducted an experiment to see how blubber keeps polar bears warm by insulating ice cubes in "blubber" (shortening) and comparing how quickly they melted to plain ice cubes. We also began to work on identifying pairs of opposites! Here are some picture highlights from the week:

We sorted animals based on whether they live in the Arctic or Antarctic.

We played Polar Bear Bingo and practiced looking closely for details that make things the same or different.

We started a very fun and messy polar bear painting. We will be finishing up our paintings next week!

We also learned about opposites and practiced identifying pairs of opposites.

We used the etch-a-sketches to practice writing our letters of the week before working in our HWT books. 

We made rabbits and kangaroos for our letter books!

Important Dates/Reminders:

No School 1/21: There is no preschool on Monday 1/21 in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Have a great weekend!

12/21 Classroom Update

Thank you all for such a wonderful first semester and all of your generosity this holiday season. It is such a gift to be able to teach your children each day, and I am so very thankful that you share them all with me each day. Thank you as well to all of the parents who donated their time and resources to our winter party - our preschoolers had a blast!

This week, we read the classic story The Mitten by Jan Brett and practiced retelling the story through song and play in the snow table. We worked on using adjectives/describing words to describe things, and described our own mittens that we designed and stitched. We also read our The Mitten mini-books that follow a pattern. Your preschooler can practice reading it at home too! We also began working on simple addition! I apologize for my lack of pictures this week with being out due to illness on Monday and Tuesday, but here a couple of pictures from our mitten exploration:

We wrote our own class book of The Mitten where each preschooler picked a different animal to climb into their mitten.

After coloring and describing our mittens, we stitched the outside of our mittens with yarn. 

Important Dates/Reminders:

Winter Break: School will be closed from December 21st - January 4th. Classes resume Monday, January 7th!

No School 1/21: There is no preschool on Monday 1/21 in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

Mid-Winter Break: There will be no preschool on Monday 2/18 and Tuesday 2/19 for a mid-winter break. School will resume on Wednesday 2/20.

Happy holidays from my family to yours! Wishing you all a relaxing, wonderful winter break full of holiday magic and blessings!

See you in 2019!