1/29 Classroom Update

 Important Dates/Reminders:

Valentine's Day Heart Project: The week of February 8-11 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 Thursday - let me know if you need another one!). You can use glitter, stickers, paint, yarn, pasta, crayons….or any other materials around your house. Upon completion, please return your “Class Valentine” to school so that we may share it with the class and display it for our school community in our classroom windows.

Progress Reports/Conferences: Preschool progress notes will be sent home the week of February 15th in your child's folder. Due to COVID, this year we will be offering virtual conferences the week of February 22nd for any parents who have questions regarding placement for your child for next school year. Sign-ups for conferences will be sent out the week of February 12th. 

2021-22 WECC Enrollment: Enrollment for next year, for current families, will be the week of March 1. Open enrollment for new families will be the week of March 15th. Ms. Jackie will be sending an email with specific enrollment information at a later date. 

No School 2/15: There will be no preschool classes Monday, February 15th for President's Day/Mid-Winter Break. 

Spring Break: There will be no preschool classes Friday, April 2nd through Friday, April 9th for Spring Break. Classes will resume Monday, April 12th. 

Scholastic Book Orders: Last week, I sent home Scholastic Book orders in your child's folder. This book order is due today (Friday, January 29th) . 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. Here are the steps for online ordering:

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. Orders need to be placed by Friday, January 29th. 

Kindergarten Registration: The EGRPS website regarding kindergarten registration information has been updated. Intent to enroll forms are now available. The link to the page can be found here. Please let me know if you plan on enrolling your child and would like me to fill out a Preschool Teacher form for you!

Warm Clothing: Please continue to send your child's winter/snow gear in their canvas bag each day. Please double check that their bag contains their snow pants, boots, coat, hat, and mittens. Many items look similar, so please label your child's coat, snow pants, boots, hat, and gloves/mittens. We go outside daily as long as it is not raining, the wind chill is above zero, and the playground is not too muddy/icy. 

School Shoes/Slippers: If you have a pair of school shoes or hard bottom slippers that you would like to keep at school, let me know and we can keep them at school to avoid having to lug them back and forth each day. 

T/Th 3's Class:

This week, we learned more about polar animals and how they adapt to living in the cold. We discussed how people stay warm versus animals. We also did an experiment to see how blubber keeps polar animals warm, and were surprised to learn that we could not feel the ice water with a "blubber" glove on. We had lots of fun building shelters for bears and playing with polar animals outside in the snow.  We learned about the letter N, learned the sign for the letter N, and made our handprints into a night sky. Here are some picture highlights from our week in preschool:

PM 5's Class:

This week, we learned about the Arctic and Antarctic, and many of the animals who live there. We discussed how the North Pole and South Pole are on opposite ends of the Earth, and we identified many pairs of opposites. We had lots of fun playing outside in the cold and snow, and spent time discussing how people stay warm. We compared how we stay warm to how polar animals stay warm. We enjoyed learning interesting facts about many different types of polar animals, and solved polar animal riddles. We also learned about the letter K and made the letter K into a Kangaroo for our letter books. We have also been practicing counting to 100 by 10's! Here are some picture highlights of our week in 5's:

Have a great weekend!