A SPOOKtacular Week!

We had so much fun this week with all the different spooky halloween activities and our end of the week halloween party!  The children were very excited to get involved in all the different halloween table jobs.  They loved tracing the different sized pumpkins, making spooky felt board scenes, and dissecting a pumpkin and pulling out the pumpkin seeds.  A lot of the children were unsure about putting their hands in the pumpkin and getting dirty but once offered gloves were extremely excited to pull out those seeds.  When we were done hollowing out the pumpkin we moved the pumpkin to the art table where the children painted the pumpkin from orange to green.                                          

Check out our have-to jobs this week.  All of these jobs gave the children a chance to practice their sounds, writing letters, counting, writing numbers, sorting, and most importantly to talk about what they were excited about, dressing up!  They also were able to express their thoughts not only through words but drawings as well.  Make sure to check out the board this week, your children worked very hard and are very proud of themselves! 

The have-to jobs were:

*The weekend report

*Picking spiders, counting, writing and drawing the proper amount

*What are you being for halloween?

*Sorting activity- what flies/what does not fly?

*Felt board halloween scenes

All the children were super excited when we got a special visitor on Tuesday!  A fireman (Ciara's dad from preschool) came to our school with the fire truck and some other firefighters to talk about their job and discuss fire safety.  The children absolutely loved getting a chance to go into the fire truck and see all the different tools they use.  They also were very excited to wear their helmets around for the rest of the day.  They were very interested in what the fireman had to say and asked some good questions.  Some questions that were asked were, "do you guys have a dog at the station?' and "what is in the big red things(fire extinguishers)?  

What a fun halloween party!  The kids all loved coming to school in their costumes.  We did a little fashion show at meeting where each child got to come up and strut their stuff and show their costumes off. We also got ready for the party by decorating our classroom with spider webs and spiders.  The children each got a strand of spiderwebs and spiders and were eager to find a place to hang them.  Look around our classroom and you will see many spiderwebs all over the place!  The children had a blast at the party.  They were excited about their snack, making bracelets and playing other games, and lastly, the parade up and down the halls.  What a successful halloween party!

Pajama day was so much fun!  The children thought it was so funny to see their friends and teachers in pjs. They also loved to help make the pumpkin pancakes.  They each got a chance to pour one ingredient into the mixing bowl.  Of course their favorite part was eating them!

New Programs:

February Vacation Program 

The theme for the week: Circus

 It will run from Tuesday Feb. 21 through Friday Feb. 24 from 9am-3pm.

We have lots of fun games, crafts, snacks and activities planned.  Tuition for the four day/full day program is $220 per week.  We are offering a half day program that will be pro-rated and you do not have to commit to the full week.

Also, we will be offering a Summer Adventure Program running from June 18-August 10.  We will have a new theme for every week and some of those themes include: Superhero Week, Animal Adventures, Ooey Gooey, and Everything Underwater.

For inquires please contact Deb Perry:

teachdebperry@gmail.com

Assessment time!

The children have really enjoyed the different jobs in the class this week.  As most of you have heard about or seen in the classroom we changed the dramatic play area into a farmer's market!  The children have been taking turns buying fruits and vegetables while someone else plays the role of the cashier.  They all did such a great job at taking turns as the cashier and enjoyed counting out the money and ringing the children up.   They have also really enjoyed decorating the tree in the area.  When asked what we should add to the tree the children responded with excitement "apples!" and "pears!".  They eagerly cut out apples, leaves, and pears out of construction paper and hung them up on the branches.

The children have enjoyed building and playing with the new dinosaurs in our block area.  They went into the block area and created a land for the dinosaurs and pretended the land was getting destroyed by the T-Rex and other dinosaurs.  It was really cute how excited they got when they saw them and how eager they were to play with them.  The girls have enjoyed building castles in the block area for the princesses and princes to live in.  They also have been working hard on princess and Cars puzzles at the round table.






















Now that parent teacher conferences are coming up, the children have been working hard on their assessments.  We have been pulling individual children to work with us.  There may not be as many have-to jobs on the board throughout these two weeks as we work with your children to prepare for the conferences.  That does not mean we are not working on academics daily but it may not be as apparent.  Some children loved the one on one attention,  while other children did not enjoy sitting for an extended period of time.  I look forward to seeing you in a week to discuss the progress of your children and how cute they are!

 

Fall is Here!

We had a lot of fun this week at school.  Now that the weather is changing and the leaves are starting to fall off the trees, it was a perfect time to go on a nature walk.  The children were happy to go outside with paper bags and collect nature items.  When they got back inside they were excited to dump out their bags and look threw them.  For their have-to job for the day they were expected to draw what they found and count out the items.  The next day the children made a collage with their nature items, which is now displayed in the windows.

We learned the letter "E", what sound it makes, and the proper way to form it.  Similar to the weeks past, we used the HWT long and short lines to form the letter and we had the children practice in their workbooks.  The children have really taken a liking to the weekly jobs they get assigned.  Every day they remind each other what they need to do in our class.  They also love using patterns to write the days of the week and morning meeting.  They have gotten used to the daily morning meeting routine and are able to sit for longer periods of time which allows for many opportunities to do math activities and other group work.

 

MUSIC

I am sure as the weeks go on all of you must be hearing new songs at home!  The children have really enjoyed music so far.  This week they made their own songs up as a class.  Amy asked each of the children in order whether they wanted to put the do, re or mi note on the music staff and when each child chose a note they then sang the notes together.  Later in the week she allowed the children to write their own notes to form a song.  They still used the same three notes in hopes that the children perfect those before moving on to the next notes.  The children have had a blast forming these songs and have really picked up the concepts very quickly.

REMINDERS:

* Please don't forget to sign up for conferences on October 21st.  

* Although it is getting colder we are still going to go outside so please bring a jacket for your child/dress them accordingly.

WISH LIST:

*Different types of apples for our apple theme next week

*Pumpkins, gourds, fall decorations

*Dress up clothes for our dramatic play area

*Halloween decorations to make our classroom spooktacular!