Happy Valentine's Day

The weather this week was pretty gloomy, but the Ladybug room was still buzzing with energy and excitement as Valentine’s Day approached. Our dramatic play center transformed into a post office and friends were busy writing & delivering cards all across the room! We also used our scissor skills to make cards to give family (We really do love you to PIECES!). At arrival on Monday and Tuesday, everyone was encouraged to make a bead bracelet and share it with a friend. Our Ladybugs saw that their act of giving and kindness brought huge smiles to their classmate’s faces.

We searched for letters in our Valentines themed sensory table, and attempted matching items to their beginning letters. We also practiced building shapes with our magnatiles and played shape Bingo.

The Ladybugs were SUPER excited to share and receive Valentine cards that they brought from home!!! They all waited patiently while each friend passed out their cards and could hardly contain themselves as their bags filled up. We noticed that they all made sure the bag came home with them at the end of the day!!! There were some very big smiles and big hugs between friends! Miss Jenn, Miss Kelsi & I really felt the love, too. Thank you for your cards and gifts. ❤️

We celebrated 3 more birthdays this week! Happy 4th Birthday to Sienna and Happy 1/2 birthdays to Barrett & Jacob!

I will be sending an email shortly with the link to sign up for March conferences. School will be closed during conference days, March 12th & 13th. Please make arrangements to have childcare during the conference, so that we can all chat as adults and without disruptions. We promise it will be quick! Often parents have arranged to watch each other’s children (play on the playground!) while they have their conferences.

School is closed for Teacher Workday on Monday!

Happy Valentine’s Day & enjoy President’s Day weekend with your little Ladybug!

Put a Little Love in Your Heart

This week, as we prepare for Valentine’s Day, the Ladybugs have been talking about ways we can be helpful and show caring & kindness. We started by brainstorming and came up with this great list:

As we do writing together, the children learn that words have meaning and that there are different ways to use them. We talked about adding a title & making a numbered list as we wrote their ideas down.

We found lots of ways to work cooperatively in our classroom and ways to show kindness. We created hearts with a buddy to decorate our window for Valentine’s Day, helped each other put together puzzles, and made cards to give friends and loved ones.

We took care of each other in our dramatic play Doctor’s Office. There were real xrays to examine on the light pad, too. We learned the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme and used band-aids to put Humpty back together again.

We found many other uses for hearts this week, too! We worked on sorting, graphing and patterning with hearts and made heart prints at the easel. We also did a science experiment using 3 liquids- water, soda and vinegar- to see how conversation hearts would react in each one. Everyone made predictions (BIG new word!) about whether they would sink or float. We had fun watching the bubbles in the soda carry the hearts up and then pop to make them fall. They were dancing!!!

Which is a perfect lead in to the finale of our week- our Valentine Dance!!!! The Ladybugs practiced some of their best dance moves and chose their favorite dancing songs. The Chicken Dance and Goldfish songs were top requests! I hope everyone is having fun at the dance tonight (sorry I couldn’t make it this year 😔). We are so lucky to have such wonderful parents organize this special event for us!

Next week we will be getting ready for Valentine’s Day!! Bring in your cards by Wednesday/Thursday. We will have the children deliver them to their friends’ “mailbags” and bring them home to read!

We had four birthday celebrations this week!!! Happy 1/2 birthday to Wren M., Jameson & Cora!! And Happy Birthday to Miss Kelsi, too!

REMINDERS:

*SCHOOL WILL BE CLOSED ON FEBRUARY 14TH AND 17TH *

We are still looking for volunteers to visit and teach us about their jobs during our community helpers theme this month!! We have had dentists, physical therapists, artists, doctors, carpenters- all sorts of interesting jobs to learn about in past years. Please come share something about your work with our class. Let me know what works for you, and we can schedule a time!

Looking Ahead- Conferences will be held on March 12th(MWF class) & 13th (T/TH class). More information coming soon!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybugs!

Going on a Bear Hunt

We have expanded on our winter theme this week by including bears in our play in addition to our polar animals. We were happy to have so many bear (and other stuffie) visitors from your homes! Our bears joined us in our storytime, singing & center play. Some even helped do our jobs at circle time! We made feasts for them in the bear “den” and pretended to be bears ourselves! We finger painted over a polar bear and revealed a negative space polar bear hiding in our paintings!

Everyone enjoyed our Pancakes & Pajamas Day! Thank you all for helping to make this a special day for our Ladybugs- whether you donated, cooked, served or just remembered to send them to school in PJs! We could feel the love ❤️

We have been working hard to learn more of the letters in our names. This week we practiced cutting mosaic squares to glue onto the letters. Some friends also traced their name with markers and turned them into rainbow letters. The Ladybugs are showing more interest in letters and numbers everyday. We had fun learning a new game called Penguin Race to the Top. We rolled the dice & colored a square above the matching penguin to see which would reach the top first! I think the rainbow scarf penguin won. They did a great job taking turns and keeping score on their own!

After all our talk of hibernation and bears, we mentioned that the groundhog might come out soon to see if Spring is coming. We explored shadows and used a light to make shadows with puppets and toys from our room.

We also celebrated another 1/2 birthday this week! Lydia’s mom brought yummy cookies and read an ABC book. Happy 1/2 Birthday, Lydia! We will have a very busy 1st two weeks of February full of birthday celebrations- Sienna & Miss Kelsi and ALL of our August babies!

DON’T FORGET:

Our annual Valentine Dance will be on Friday, Feb. 7 from 6:00-7:30 pm. Put on your dancing clothes and shoes! The fellowship hall will be transformed into a party! This event is for your whole family. It’s always a favorite!

Valentine’s Day- Please send in Valentines with your child the week of February 10th. They will deliver them to one another on Wed. 2/12 and Thurs. 2/13 using their decorated bags we’ll make here in the classroom. Have your child sign their names on their Valentine cards and leave the “to” part and envelope, if there is one, blank. This way it is easier for them to personally pass out their cards and not be overwhelmed by reading all of their friends’ names. Give your child a chance to help create & personalize their valentines in some way. This can be by adding stickers, drawing a picture, writing their name on their own (or even just a letter or two), or decorating homemade cards. Whatever they do will give them ownership & pride and make the experience of delivering the cards soooo meaningful to them ❤️

*SCHOOL WILL BE CLOSED ON FEBRUARY 14TH AND 17TH *

We are still looking for volunteers to visit and teach us about their jobs during our community helpers theme in February!! We have had dentists, physical therapists, artists, doctors, carpenters- all sorts of interesting jobs to learn about in past years. Let us know if you’d like to share something about your work with our class, and we can schedule a time!

ALSO- we are in need of a box of gallon size ziplocs & a refill bottle of foaming hand soap. Let me know if you can pick that up for us. Thanks!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybugs!!

It Certainly is Winter!!

What a crazy week! With the holiday and the snow we only saw each class once this week. Our polar theme has been well represented in the weather forecast!

Last week the Ladybugs practiced drawing straight lines (vertically, horizontally & angled) to create snowflakes. This week they used those skills to draw a winter scene filled with snowflakes and a snowman in their journals.

They had so much fun with penguins and other polar animals in the water table. Penguins floated in tubes with matching shapes and polar bears balanced & jumped off of icebergs into the water. We learned polar bears can swim!

We mixed glue & shaving cream to make snow paint. After painting with the fluffy paint, the children cut out polar animals to add to their winter scene.

And at circle time we followed directions & danced to Jack Hartmann’s “Penguin Dance Chant”. Then everyone took turns trying to hold a balloon between their knees and waddling across the room like a penguin!

Everyone also discovered the “cave” tent set up in our dramatic play area. Next week everyone is invited to bring a bear (or other stuffie if they don’t have one) to hibernate in the cave with them. We will be learning about hibernating animals.

Don’t Forget!: Pancakes and Pajamas - We will have pancakes and get to wear our PJ’s to school this Wednesday/Thursday, January 29th/30th!

Also, a heads up- Miss Jenn will be on vacation next week. Miss Kelsi & Miss Vicki will be here subbing for her.

LOOKING AHEAD

Our annual Valentine Dance will be on Friday, Feb. 7 from 6:00-7:30 pm. Put on your dancing clothes and shoes! The fellowship hall will be transformed into a party! This event is for your whole family. It’s always a favorite!

Valentine’s Day- Please send in Valentines with your child the week of February 10th. They will deliver them to one another using their decorated bags we’ll make here in the classroom. Have your child sign their names on their Valentine cards and leave the “to” part and envelope, if there is one, blank. This way it is easier for them to personally pass out their cards and not be overwhelmed by reading all of their friends’ names. Give your child a chance to help create & personalize their valentines in some way. This can be by adding stickers, drawing a picture, writing their name on their own (or even just a letter or two), or decorating homemade cards. Whatever they do will give them ownership & pride and make the experience of delivering the cards soooo meaningful to them ❤️

One more thing…We will be discussing community helpers in February, and we’d love to have some parents come to visit and teach us about their jobs! We have had dentists, physical therapists, artists, doctors, carpenters- all sorts of interesting jobs to learn about in past years. Let us know if you’d like to share something about your work with our class, and we can schedule a time!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybug!

Ice & Snow

Well we only got a tiny bit of (icy) snow last weekend, but the children were very excited to tell us about their adventures. Some made tiny snowmen, went sledding, “ice skated” in their boots, and some caught snowflakes with their tongues! We continued our exploration of ice and snow in the classroom, too.

We painted ice and watched as it melted and mixed with the paints. We played with pretend snow in the sensory table- skewering it with the Yeti’s spaghetti 🤣 and building by moistening one end of the packing peanut snow and sticking the pieces together (just like snowballs). We painted with watercolors and revealed hidden snowflakes drawn with crayon. Then some friends tried drawing their own pictures to paint over! We also pretended shaving cream was snow and used it to draw pictures and letters.

Along with talking about the wintry weather, we have been learning about polar animals. We added polar animals to our block and sensory areas. We sorted them and other animals into their habitats. And we learned some new names for them. For example, reindeer can be called caribou!! That one was a fun word to say! We read about the caribou, arctic fox, polar bear, seal, walrus, and musk ox. On Friday we did an experiment to feel how blubber helps keep the animals warm (we will do it on Tuesday, also).

The Ladybugs are working on some new literacy skills. We practiced rhyming words and matched mittens that had pictures that rhymed. We also practiced making straight and diagonal lines as we tried to draw snowflakes. This will help as they begin to write letters soon.

It was Reese’s 4th birthday last Sunday, so we celebrated with her and her parents on Monday! Happy Birthday, Reese!!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

School is closed this Monday, January 20

During the week of Jan. 27th we will be focusing on bears, hibernation and shadows (Groundhog Day, ya know). The children may bring a favorite bear (or other stuffie if there is no bear) to play with at school during that week. Please make sure it is small enough to fit into their backpack!!

Pancakes and Pajamas - We will have pancakes and get to wear our PJ’s to school on Wednesday/Thursday, January 29th/30th. Watch for more details coming from our Room Reps, but for now, please mark your calendars.

LOOKING AHEAD

Our annual Valentine Dance will be on Friday, Feb. 7 from 6:00-7:30 pm. Put on your dancing clothes and shoes! The fellowship hall will be transformed into a party! This event is for your whole family. It’s always a favorite!

Valentine’s Day we ask that everyone please send 11 cards signed by your child (do not write friend’s names on them) for them to “mail” to each friend. Bring your cards the week of February 10th. We will make “mailboxes” at school. Give your child a chance to help create their valentines in some way. This can be by adding stickers, drawing a picture, writing their name on their own (or even just a letter or two), or decorating homemade cards. Whatever they do will give them ownership & pride and make the experience of delivering the cards soooo meaningful to them ❤️

One more thing…We will be discussing community helpers in February, and we’d love to have some parents come to visit and teach us about their jobs! We have had dentists, physical therapists, artists, doctors, carpenters- all sorts of interesting jobs to learn about in past years. Let us know if you’d like to share something about your work with our class, and we can schedule a time!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybug!

Wishing for a Winter Wonderland

Happy New Year & welcome back! We hope everyone had a wonderful break. Everyone came back to school with smiles and excitement to see their friends😃. Now it’s time to jump into 2025!! Time is flying by, and our Ladybugs are growing up quickly. It seems that some have grown taller in just a few weeks, and we noticed that many are becoming more independent in doing things like getting dressed for the playground and opening snacks. And as they are ready, we are adding some new challenges in the classroom each week.

For example, we have begun making patterns with our calendar numbers (because our number sets have 2 sets of pictures to choose from). Everyone has done so well with name recognition, so we will begin focusing more on learning the individual letters in their names and practice making the letters using various tools, too (for example- playdough, craft sticks, blocks and, of course, writing tools). We also changed the sit spots on the carpet to number spots to sneak in a little numeral recognition.

Not only have the children changed, but we talked about how the year & season have changed as well. We learned a song, “It’s a New Year, Yes it Is!”, and had a parade to celebrate. Everyone was very excited about the possibility of snow this weekend, so we talked a lot about winter and snow, too. We practiced using scissors to cut out snowflakes to turn our classroom into a winter wonderland! We also made snowball (marshmallow) sculptures and had an indoor snowball fight (they particularly delighted in nailing us, the teachers 🤣) There were some great throws and lots of work on eye-hand coordination! Some explored how paint sticks glided across shiny foil- kind of like the paint sticks were skating on ice. We rolled dice to match the numbers on a snowman. Some friends counted the dots and found the number. Children who weren’t ready for that challenge simply rolled the numeral dice to match numbers.

You really need to check out our picture album to see many of the fun activities that were not packable to take home! Here are a few:

We had a new friend join our T/Th class! His name is Ogada, and it was his birthday this week, too so we celebrated his first day with a birthday party. Hooray!! Welcome to the Ladybugs, Ogada and family.

Our 1/2 Birthday celebrations have begun, too. We celebrated Mary’s 3 1/2 yr old birthday on Thursday 😁 🎉

And finally, Lunch Bunch began this week!! Wow…so much excitement for 1 week. We really had fun.

Well, as I finish this it has REALLY begun snowing!! Yay!

We hope you have “snow” much fun with your Ladybug this weekend!!

Merry Christmas! 🎄

This week was full of excitement and cheer. The children all had a wonderful trip in their jammies on our Polar Express! We enjoyed hot cocoa while we listened to the audiotape (yes, we had an actual cassette tape…a history lesson for our Ladybugs 🤣). Then everyone had a blast decorating & eating real cookies after weeks of pretending to be bakers in our dramatic play area!

Your Ladybugs were very excited to finally be able to present you with the gift that they made wrapped in paper they painted all on their own. We hope it brings you joy and good memories for years to come ❤️

And finally, after weeks of practice in music class and pep talks about being brave and supporting each other on the stage, the Ladybugs gave an adorable performance at our Christmas Concert. We are so proud of them all!!

Miss Jennifer, Miss Kelsi & I want to thank you all for being such wonderfully supportive parents and for sharing your precious children with us! We are so grateful for your kind words, such generous gifts, and the children’s sweet notes and drawings. Our hearts are full❤️ We wish you all a joyous & magical Christmas with your families!

with love, Miss Sue, Miss Jenn & Miss Kelsi

REMINDERS- School will reopen on Mondays, Jan. 6th and LUNCH BUNCH begins on Jan. 8th/9th. (Check your email for a message with details about this!)

Joy to the World

Despite the rain we had this week, there has been SO much joy in the Ladybug classroom!

Busy placing orders from our bakery

Everyone has been working on cutting skills while giving Santa’s beard a trim or cutting out items for their wishlists. Friends have been practicing patterning with red & white beads to make candy canes to hang on the Christmas tree at home. And they have been working on sequencing and size order as they create trees from triangles and nest the stacking Santas back together, too.

We have finished creating and wrapping some very special gifts for mom & dad. Please make sure to put them under your tree to open Christmas morning (if your child will let you wait that long….I know mine never could wait!! 😉 )!

EVENTS NEXT WEEK

Polar Express Day on Monday & Tuesday, Dec. 16/17th. Send your child in pajamas (please still have them wear sneakers and jackets, because we will still have playground time). We will be decorating cookies to eat with our hot cocoa for snack and listening to the Polar Express story while we ride the “train”. Thank you all for signing up to contribute items to make this a fun day!

Our Christmas Concert will be on Wed., December 18th at 9:30.

We have been working hard to learn our Christmas program songs and will be practicing in the chapel on Monday & Tuesday. Hopefully that will help everyone feel confident when all the families come to watch! However, if your child gets overwhelmed and ends up in your lap instead of on the stage, please keep them with you during the performance (maybe they will sing along in your lap!). We want this to be a fun, not stressful, time for all. ALL classes are invited to be here. (Drop your children in the classroom at 9:00 and then find a seat in the sanctuary.) This concert is our Christmas gift of love to you. After the concert, we will say goodbye for the holidays. Of course, you may want a family photo in front of our BIG Christmas tree before you go!

Take some time to see Christmas through your child’s eyes this weekend. I know we are all busy with preparations, but children help us remember to stop and see the magic of the season ❤️ 🎄

Have a wonderful weekend!

We Caught the Gingerbread Man!

Run, run as fast as you can!! We had fun searching for clues all around the school and catching our gingerbread man. He brought us gingerbread cookies- YUM! I think everyone loved their cookie. I can’t say the same for the gumdrops they tried at snack. We had been doing some engineering (building) with cups, cardstock and gumdrops, so of course everyone kept asking if they could eat the gumdrops. We had some set aside just for this purpose we assured them. When we gave them each one at snack, some were very surprised at the taste!!

Our kitchen turned into a bakery this week and the children told us it was their workshop. Lots of holiday cheer!! We explored magnetic properties using bingo chips and jingle bells to decorate our Magnatiles creations. Some Ladybugs discovered that they could make the bells move & dance by sliding the magnet wand UNDER the tray! Whoa!!

We read various versions of the gingerbread story- The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Pirates and The Gingerbread Bear. Retelling stories helps develop sequence, vocabulary, and comprehension.

We were also a bit busy making some surprises……. 🎁

We will have our Polar Express Day on Monday & Tuesday, Dec. 16/17th. Send your child in pajamas (please still have them wear sneakers and jackets, because we will still have playground time). Thank you all for signing up to contribute items to make this a fun day!

On Thursday, Dec. 18th we’ll have our Christmas Music Program at 9:30. We’d like our T/Th classes to attend also, so bring your children at 9:00 on Wednesday & find a seat in the sanctuary (hint: best seating is middle to left) to watch your Ladybugs sing!! As the children enter to take their place for the concert please try to refrain from getting your child’s attention (there will be time for pictures afterwards). The Ladybugs will sit with the other classes to watch the performances until it’s their turn. If your child feels they cannot participate and comes to join you, please keep them with you until the end of the concert. It can be very distracting to the rest if one of their classmates is moving about. We welcome you to take pictures of your children dressed in their festive clothes in front of our beautiful tree after the concert! Class will be dismissed for Christmas break following the show. CCP will reopen on January 6th.

When we return from Christmas break it will be almost time to begin having Lunch Bunch at school!! How exciting! Be on the lookout for an email with more details.

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ladybugs!

Happy Thanksgiving! 🍁🦃

Our Ladybug classes each had one day to come together this week before the holiday, and we packed in a ton of fun!

Everyone brought a piece of one of their favorite fruits and we mixed and shared them with each other as a celebration of our friendship and thanks.

We practiced cutting again and used the cut pieces to fill a leaf shape in our journals. We worked on patterning turkey “feathers”. We had a blast scooping up floating cranberries to transfer to bowls in the sensory table. And since we were talking about floating cranberries, we decided to do a Sink or Float experiment with various objects. We learned scientists make predictions, test them, and then sometimes have to change their theories.

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family. We are so grateful to get to spend our workdays with your sweet Ladybugs! The daily hugs, laughter, challenges, accomplishments, and smiles make this the best job and your support of what we do here makes CCP the best school!

Wishing you full bellies and happy hearts 🦃❤️

Miss Sue, Miss Jenn & Miss Kelsi

Birds of a Feather

We have been talking about turkeys so much- singing turkey songs, creating turkeys, reading turkey books & practicing tracing our hands in our fine motor journals. So, we took the opportunity to expand our knowledge to other birds this week. We compared birds, put an egg in vinegar to watch the shell dissolve and turn the egg rubbery & bouncy, examined feathers and even used feathers to paint. We learned some birds have feathers, but still can’t fly. And we read Stellaluna and learned about differences & similarities between birds and bats.

It was fun exercising our fine motor skills as we laced beads for necklaces, talking about letters as we strung them. We are noticing more children recognizing and naming letters in their names and names of people they love. Some friends had fun singing the Name Game and making rhymes with their names, too! And other friends played a game of Alphabet Bingo.

In our dramatic play area we practiced setting the table (now you can put them to work helping you on Thanksgiving Day!) and carved 🤣 the turkey. Everyone had fun feasting with their friends.

We will be closed Nov. 27-29 for Thanksgiving. We would like to have a small celebration of sharing and thankfulness in our classroom on the Mon/Tues before Thanksgiving. If each child can bring 1 piece of fruit (or small cup, if your choice is berries or something similar), we can create a Friendship Fruit Salad to share with each other during snack. I will send a reminder the night before.

The holidays are upon us and things are about to get super busy!! We will be working on some special surprises for our parents, so please let us know if you have any planned vacation days between now and Dec. 18th so that we can plan time to get everything ready!!

Please mark your December calendar…

On Dec. 16th & 17th we will climb aboard the “Polar Express” and listen to the story as we decorate some cookies and enjoy a cup of cocoa. The children are invited to wear their pajamas for this special day! Please use this link to sign up to contribute something for our Polar Express snack (you can drop it off to us anytime before the 13th): https://www.signupgenius.com/go/9040C4BADAD2FA6F85-53461492-lady

On Wednesday , December 18 at 9:30am we will have our Preschool Christmas Concert in the Sanctuary. Each class will sing a song or two and we will tell the Christmas story. It is our gift to you! TTH classes, please come too!! Bring your child to the classroom at 9:00 and find a seat in the sanctuary. We will begin at 9:30. Please keep in mind that you may need to park in the municipal lots around Southern Village since the whole school will be assembled.

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ladybugs!

Short & Sweet Week

Our week flew by! It’s amazing how one less day in the week makes it feel so different. Nevertheless, we fit in lots of discussion about forest animals this week. We read some stories about owls, including Owl Babies. I promised the kids I would share the link to the audiobook, because they wanted to hear it again and we ran out of time. We love the narrator’s accent and soft music that plays. Here it is: https://youtu.be/XO1kkIka9rs?si=GhxoIkZPyFcKRuZs After the story the children had the opportunity to create their own owls in a tree using cotton balls. Apparently the owl’s eyes made a big impression because the owls they created were really all about the EYES!!

We continued having fun in our campsite and playing with forest animals in the block center. Everyone took turns trying to feed the baby bird using magnetic worms. This took focus, patience and great fine motor control to slide the worm into the birdie’s mouth without using two hands.

We celebrated another Ladybug birthday this week!!! Happy Birthday Georgia!! We had a fun celebration with both her parents visiting ❤️

At the end of the week read a book about being thankful and shared lots of things that made us feel thankful. Things like blankies, Buzz Lightyear, Frosted Cheerios, and Disneyworld were mentioned, but above all everyone said their mommies and daddies! We practiced cutting some feathers and made turkeys with our faces and our thankful thoughts on them. Check out our classroom bulletin board to see them!

We have a regular week of classes next week and then we will have a short week again. We will be closed Nov. 27-29 for Thanksgiving. We would like to have a small celebration of sharing and thankfulness in our classroom on the Mon/Tues before Thanksgiving. If each child can bring 1 piece of fruit (or small cup, if your choice is berries or something similar), we can create a Friendship Fruit Salad to share with each other during snack. I will send a reminder when the time comes.

Please mark your December calendar…We will have our Preschool Christmas Concert on the last day of preschool before Christmas. It will be on Wednesday , December 18 at 9:30am in the Sanctuary.

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ladybugs!

Leaves, Leaves Falling Down

We are learning about Autumn! Although the seasons changed back in September, we are just finally seeing the leaves in full color and really falling now. It’s the perfect time to explore the changes we see outdoors with a nature walk! Everyone had fun shuffling through the piles of leaves in our picnic grove and finding all sorts of Fall treasures- changing leaves, mushrooms growing, bark, pine needles, twigs and feathers.

Back in the classroom we read Leaf Man and used our treasures to create all sorts of creatures of our own. On the art table we used markers to color coffee filter leaf shapes and sprayed them with water to watch the colors bleed into each other and magically turn into “paint”. Some of us even tried creating leaf rubbings- it’s super tricky to hold the paper still and rub over the bumps at the same time! We also used giant leaf & tree stencils on the easel with crayons and dot markers.

The first step in learning to write is making strokes and shapes with the writing utensil. This week we used crayons to trace straight, wavy & zigzag lines to make the leaves “fall” in our fine motor journals.

There were forest animals and “tree” blocks in our block center and a campsite was set up in dramatic play- complete with marshmallows to toast!! Another new center in our room this week was the light table. Seeing the light shine through our leaf gems on the trees was mesmerizing…and calming. Some children also sorted the leaves by color and counted them.

We sang the song Bingo at circle time, but changed the words. This is how it goes:

There is a friend who’s in our class

And ______________ is his/her name-o

Then we put up a name card, identify it, and spell the name (J-A-C-O-B, etc)

It is very catchy and will hopefully help each child learn to spell their names. We point at each letter as we sing, to help make the connection between our words and the written letter. Everyone is excited about learning their name!!

Faye’s mom came to celebrate Faye’s 4th Birthday on Tuesday!! She read a Mercy Watson book to us- Faye’s favorite pig🐷 Happy Birthday, Faye!

Remember Monday, Nov. 11 is Veteran’s Day and CCP is closed.

We will also be closed Nov. 27-29 for Thanksgiving. We would like to have a small celebration of sharing and thankfulness in our classroom on the Mon/Tues before Thanksgiving. If each child can bring 1 piece of fruit (or small cup, if your choice is berries or something similar), we can create a Friendship Fruit Salad to share with each other during snack. I will send a reminder when the time comes.

Please mark your December calendar…We will have our Preschool Christmas Concert on the last day of preschool before Christmas. It will be on Wednesday , December 18 at 9:30am in the Sanctuary.

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ladybugs!

A Spook-tacular Week!

This week was a little different. We switched our specials to Monday & Tuesday, so that we could spend Wednesday & Thursday celebrating Halloween. The Ladybugs rolled with it. Now that they’re accustomed to all our routines in the classroom, they are becoming more flexible! We always have our class schedule (with pictures) posted in our circle area, and some really like to check it daily to see what the plan is for the day! You can try the same at home, if your child is struggling with change and transitions.

The Ladybugs had such a fun, exciting week! We continued to practice counting using dice and counting out monster eyes, as well as finding the spiders in our sensory table to match the numbers on the wall. We used our cutting skills to cut more streamers in the bin, too. At our art table we squeezed mini Elmer’s glue bottles and practiced making dots of glue as we created candy corn pictures.

On Tuesday we had a special visit from Wren M.’s mom. She read There’s a Monster in My Book and brought cool “whoa dough” (found in Target, if you want to try it) to make monsters! Thanks you Taylor!!

We want to thank all of our parents for cheering us on as we paraded in our costumes and for making the day special with treats, crafts and games. You are awesome! We had such spooky snacks- mummy wrapped applesauce & jack-o-lantern clementines were a couple of the favorites along with spider cupcakes and pumpkin rice crispy treats (some were wary of eating a leaf!! but happy to find it was really just candy🤣). Everyone loved decorating masks, and we even did some bowling, too.

Our Friday Ladybugs got a special treat of exploring and playing in the Whales class for a bit. After we all had a turn telling about our Halloween trick or treating & our favorite candy (they all agreed that their favorite was “ALL OF IT!!!!!!”), we made a Skittles rainbow!! Some cool observations were made. Go watch the video posted in our Google album!

In November we will be celebrating Autumn truly, finally coming to NC. We’d love to see what treasures your child finds outside- leaves, acorns, twigs- bring your signs of Fall to show at circle time! We will be learning about forest animals and Thanksgiving in November, as well.

We will have school spirit days on Nov. 6th & 7th. Wear your school shirt or something RED.

School is closed on Monday, Nov. 11th for Veteran’s Day and again Nov.27-29 for Thanksgiving.

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybugs!!

Big Pumpkin!!

We had so much fun creating spooky art this week! The Ladybugs found eyes 👀 on our easel paper and drew monsters, friends, pumpkins and more. We practiced scissor skills as we cut paper & tape “bandages” to wrap mummies. On Friday we made scratch art spiderwebs, too. Our Tuesday Ladybugs painted their pumpkins this week. Each one was special & unique!

We did some math work as we measured monsters using snap cubes and pompoms. We lined them up across the monsters, counted each item and found the matching numbers to add to the monster’s card.

I think the children’s favorite activity this week was listening (again & again) to the story Big Pumpkin!! You can listen to the story being told on YouTube. The kids love the voices so much. We retold the story using picture cards.

https://youtu.be/QpLK8AWsVMA?si=MlIZtRxCcX5Owe4W

We also really enjoyed singing & acting out Mister Kipley’s “We’re Going on a Monster Hunt”

We are so grateful to the Chapel Hill firefighters for taking time out of their day to teach us about their gear and truck. Everyone got an up-close look at what firefighters would be wearing if they needed to come into your home. Hopefully this will never be necessary, but the children learned their uniforms are like that to help them breathe and keep them safe. They even showed us the tools in their truck and let us sit inside it! It was an exciting day

Halloween celebrations:

We will have a costume parade with the Frogs class through Ascension Hall on October 30th & 31st shortly after dropoff. Please stay a few minutes to watch, cheer and take photos! Our class will celebrate Halloween with a party in the classroom afterwards thanks to the wonderful organizing help from our room reps. You should have received an email from them about any help they may need gathering supplies for the party.

**It is best to put your child’s costume over their school clothes, so that we can easily take it off when they’re ready. Most children usually want to shed them to play more comfortably. If that is not possible, please stay for a moment after the parade to help your child change. Thanks!

We will have school spirit days on Nov. 6th & 7th. Wear your school shirt or something RED.

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybugs!!

Finally Fall!!

It is finally starting to feel like fall, and we have been loving our time on the playground!! We examined pumpkins, big and small, this week and used a venn diagram to compare pumpkins to apples. We cut a pumpkin open to see and touch the insides and cut yarn to create our own pumpkin guts picture with real seeds and everything. We used shapes to make jack-o-lanterns to decorate our classroom for Halloween, too.

On our science shelf we examined the pumpkin guts & seeds, as well as leaves and acorns, with a microscope and magnifying glass. In our sensory table we played with stretchy spider webbing and searched for spiderweb cards. We counted the spiders in the webs and matched them to the correct numeral. Some friends also noticed that they were color coded…good observation kids!!

October is also Fire Safety Awareness Month. We have begun by adding a burning building and firefighter gear to our dramatic play area. The Ladybugs have been busy saving people and spraying the fire (squeezing those spray bottles is an excellent exercise to strengthen hands for better fine motor skills 😉). We added firetrucks to our fine motor journals and drew the ladders ourselves. In doing this the children practice making various types of lines, starting with straight lines. This will help prepare them for writing letters.

On Friday we did an experiment with a candle. Miss Jenn taught us the word oxygen and we took turns blowing out a candle. Then she had us predict how we could put out the fire without blowing on it. Some thought we should clap it out. Miss Jenn showed them how putting the lid on the candle jar took away the oxygen and made the candle go out. We practiced stop, drop & roll afterwards. We will be learning more about fire safety next week when the fire department is scheduled to visit on Tuesday (Oct. 22). MWF Ladybugs are invited to join us in Ascension Hall (with a parent or caregiver) at 9:30 on Tuesday to meet the firefighters and see their truck!

Thank you to everyone for bringing pumpkins for us to paint! The Friday class had so much fun painting and decorating with jewels & glitter glue. Their pumpkins are unique and special, just like each of them. We will paint on Tuesday with that class. We will be using acrylic paints on the pumpkins so, please send your child in clothes that you will not be upset possibly getting messy on Tuesday!

REMINDERS:

As the weather gets cooler, please change out your child’s extra clothes with long pants and warmer shirts. Don’t forget a coat and to write your child’s name or initials on the tag inside.

We will have a costume parade with the Frogs class through Ascension Hall on October 30th & 31st shortly after dropoff. Please stay a few minutes to watch, cheer and take photos! Our class will celebrate Halloween with a party in the classroom afterwards thanks to the wonderful organizing help from our room reps. You will hear more about our plans from them soon.

**It is best to put your child’s costume over their school clothes, so that we can easily take it off when they’re ready. Most children usually want to shed them to play more comfortably. If that is not possible, please stay for a moment after the parade to help your child change. Thanks!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybug!!

Can We Build It?

Thank you all for taking time to meet with me for conferences this week!!! I enjoyed having time to connect with each of you and share how your Ladybug is doing in class. While we were meeting, the children were busy being construction engineers in the classroom! They used problem solving skills to configure a marble maze, followed blueprints to build items with shape blocks, and used drills to construct cars and tractors. Their fine motor skills were put to work using nuts and bolts to build, also.

We read The Three Little Pigs and retold the story using felt pieces on our feltboard. We also read Not a Box and imagined all the things a box could be. My neighbor just happened to be disposing of a couple VERY large boxes, so the children decorated one and used it to be a house, a boat, a rocket, and many other things. It was especially fun to count how many friends fit into the box!!

On our art table we used hammers, instead of paintbrushes, to make paintings with bubble wrap.

In our sensory table we used construction trucks to move kinetic sand and rocks around. Kinetic sand is so fun and helps children learn about textures, shapes and cause & effect. It is mesmerizing to watch as it goes from a firm ball to a soft growing pile of sand. And it is so calming (which some children….and teachers….may have needed with all the banging of hammers in the room! 🤣).

We celebrated John’s 4th birthday on Tuesday with cupcakes and a story with his mom. Happy Birthday, John!

Picture Day will be on Tuesday, Oct. 15th and Wednesday, Oct. 16th, with family pictures on Saturday the 19th.

Please send a pie pumpkin (it’s the small size…not tiny. I’ve heard they’re available at Trader Joe’s for $2.50) to school by Friday, October 18th.

As the weather gets cooler, please change out your child’s extra clothes with long pants and warmer shirts. Don’t forget a coat (even if they are off in the carseat, we need them to go to the playground each day!) and write your child’s name or initials on the tag inside. You would not believe how many times we’ve asked whose coat is lying on the floor and no child claims it!! LOL

We will have a costume parade with the Frogs class through Ascension Hall on October 30th & 31st shortly after dropoff. Please stay a few minutes to watch, cheer and take photos! Our class will celebrate Halloween with a party in the classroom afterwards thanks to the wonderful organizing help from our room reps. You will hear more about our plans from them soon.

**It is best to put your child’s costume over their school clothes, so that we can easily take it off when they’re ready. Most children usually want to shed them to play more comfortably. If that is not possible, please stay for a moment after the parade to help your child change. Thanks!

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybug!!

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

This week was all about apples. We learned the parts of the apple- skin, flesh, stem, leaf & seeds. We read that apple seeds can be called pips!! So funny! We also discovered that if you cut the apple’s top off (horizontally), there is a star inside!! And we were being scientists when we examined what happens to the apple flesh once it is cut open. We put 1 piece in water, put one in lemon juice, and left one out exposed to air to examine later. We checked on the apples throughout the week to see what changes were happening. I wonder what they will look like NEXT week.

We used the apples to make apple print paintings and played a pass the apple game at circle time. We also built apple trees with toilet paper tubes, green craft sticks and pompoms. It took patience & control to balance the sticks and pompoms. Our apple theme extended to our dramatic play area where we pretended to be chefs and baked apple pies.

But the most exciting activity was making our own applesauce!! All of the children used plastic knives to help cut apple slices into small pieces to add to our pot. It was a challenging task that required good fine motor control, but we saw that some of our Ladybugs must be practicing their sous-chef skills at home. They were so proud to be able to help! Then we read our recipe and added some water, cinnamon & a bit of sugar to the Insta-Pot and set it for 8 minutes. The hardest part was waiting for it to cool, so that we could try it! Almost every Ladybug gave it a taste. Some gave it a thumbs up and gobbled it up, and some said “thumbs down” and threw it out. We told them we were just glad they were brave enough to try something different.

We had a blast using the parachute to move with the tempo of the music in music class with Miss Vicki this week! And Pastor Lee brought his favorite blankie and taught us how God’s love is like a blanket wrapped around you whenever you need it.

We celebrated Palmer B.’s 4th birthday on Friday with a reading of Room on the Broom and cupcakes!

Happy Birthday Palmer!!

We’d love to paint pumpkins with the class, so we’d like to request that you send a small “pie pumpkin” (they are usually about 6”) with your child by October 18th. Thank you!!

I look forward to meeting with you at conference time next week! Ladybug conferences will be held in the Disciple Room off of Ascension Hall. You will need to ring the bell to come in at that time, but I will try to be on the lookout (there is also a direct entrance into the disciple room to the left of the church front doors, if you’d like to wait there).

REMEMBER:

Miss Jenn & Miss Kelsi and a substitute will be with the class on Tuesday & Wednesday during our conferences.

School will be CLOSED on Friday, Oct. 11th

Picture Day will be on Tuesday, Oct. 15th and Wednesday, Oct. 16th, with family pictures on Saturday the 19th.

Send a pie pumpkin to school by October 18th.

Have a wonderful weekend with your Ladybug!

Fine Motor Skills on Fire

We worked a lot on our fine motor skills this week. Everyone was very excited to have a turn using scissors!! We cut rainbow strips and glued our cuttings into our fine motor journals.

We’ve also been focusing on our names. Most of the Ladybugs recognize their written names, but learning to spell it and identifying the individual letters is the next level skill we will be learning. We used those fine motor skills to find letter beads to lace our names. We also used pincer fingers (helping to strengthen our grasp for future writing) to pick up gems & mini erasers to build the letters in our names.

The easel has been a VERY popular center. This week we used paint brushes to make original paintings mixing blue and yellow paint to make green. We finished off our Senses unit with sound bingo, headphones for listening to audio books and instruments in our science center.

Next week we will explore a unit on apples. Pack your child’s favorite type of apple (or apple product) in their snacks!

Don’t forget to sign up for a conference, if you haven’t already.

MWF Ladybugs-https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0A4EAAA928A4FB6-51482330-fall

T/Th Ladybugs- https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0A4EAAA928A4FB6-51482357-fall

Here are some additional events coming up in October:

October 8 & 9- Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 11- School Closed for teacher’s professional development day

October 15 & 16- School Pictures

October 30 & 31- Ladybugs & Frogs Halloween Parade- stay to watch our quick parade around Ascension Hall at 9:15. Ladybugs will celebrate with a party in our classroom after the parade.

We’re sorry that our week got cut short by Helene! We hope that everyone is safe and spared from storm damage. We missed our Friday Ladybugs today.

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ladybugs!

Our Five Senses

We celebrated our first birthday this week. Happy Birthday Catherine!!

This week we have been learning about our 5 Senses. We sang a song about what each sense is for and sorted pictures to match the sense that is used. We discovered that some things use more than one sense! We used all 5 senses to see, smell, touch, hear and taste air-popped popcorn at snacktime. We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and used magnifying glasses & binoculars to observe things with our eyes in our science center.

In addition, we have continued sharing “All About Me” and learning how our friends are alike & different from us. We continue to have fun throwing parties in our dramatic play center. This week we added a stroller for our baby dolls to take a ride around the room! We are building fine motor strength by scooping colored rice and filling up presents and cupcakes liners in our birthday theme sensory table. We can count & add candles to the cupcakes, too. We also sang a song about Mat Man and learned the parts of the body. We tried drawing our own self-portraits in our journals. Many didn’t think they could do it, but when they saw my sad little stick figure drawing they had much more confidence in their own abilities! 🤣

There were a couple new activities happening in our class this week, too!!! We had Chapel with Pastor Lee. He told is how we can send our prayers up to God just like a balloon, taught us about lighting the candles to show God is with us and how to catch the light and carry it with us always. We always sing This Little Light of Mine at the end of Chapel.

We also had our first music class with Miss Vicki. Everyone was very engaged and loved singing, dancing and playing the instruments. Miss Vicki read a story about emotions, challenged us to use our gross motor skills to pretend to be the Little Red Wagon, and introduced us to drums, tambourines, sandpaper blocks & rhythm sticks.

Our first conferences are coming in the beginning of October. This is a time for us to connect and discuss how your child is adjusting to being a part of the Ladybug class. I look forward to meeting with you! If the times available don’t work with your schedule, please let me know, and we can try to find another time to meet.

You can use the following links to sign up:

MWF Ladybugs Conference Sign Up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0A4EAAA928A4FB6-51482330-fall

T/Th Ladybugs Conference Sign Up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0A4EAAA928A4FB6-51482357-fall

We will be having a fire drill next week on Monday & Tuesday. Miss Debbie will just use a bell to keep things very calm- no loud alarm to scare us. We will just be practicing how to line up and go to our safe spot outside quickly.

The photographer will be here to take Fall photos on October 15th & 16th. These are individual photos of each child. A class photo will be taken in the Spring.

Enjoy your weekends with your sweet Ladybugs!