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!

Ladybugs are Kind

Wow!! What an amazing start to our year. I must tell you how impressed we are with your little Ladybugs! The beginning of the school year can be super exciting, sometimes a bit scary, and it is often difficult for the children to navigate all the new routines and expectations. As you know, we put a high value on teaching social skills and self regulation at CCP, using Conscious Discipline as our guide. Well…even with all the big emotions they may be having, these kiddos are already paying attention to each other’s feelings and responding with so much kindness!! ❤️ Bravo!! We’ve even seen friends using our Safe Space to take a break & calm themselves with the tools there (our breathing ball, especially). We told them they need to pat themselves on the back & give each other a round of applause!!

Some of their favorite activities this week were feeling the slippery, cool fingerpaint glide under their fingers as they mixed red & blue to make purple, building waterfalls, castles, tunnels and more with our new rainbow “blocks”, making obstacle courses & balancing on the giant blocks on the playground, dancing in princess dresses, using big arm motions to paint and draw at the easel, and filling our new color houses with MILLIONS of pompoms in the sensory table!

This week we introduced our classroom jobs, as well. Each week each child will have a new job to do. Having jobs not only teaches responsibility, but it fosters community and gives the children a sense of pride and accomplishment. Our jobs are:

• Star Breath (leads us in taking one of our 4 types of breaths as part of our Brain Smart Start)

• Wish Well (moves friends into the heart to wish well)

• Calendar (adding a number & counting them along with friends)

• Weather (colors a square on our weather graph)

• Song Leader (chooses a favorite song for us to sing)

• Gardener (waters our plant)

• Line Leader

• Door Holder

• Electrician (turns classroom lights off when we leave)

• Caboose (very important to make sure everyone is safely in line!)

• Recess Helper (can choose toys to take out)

• Sweeper (helps keep our floor clean)

We sang a new morning song at circle time- Do You Know My Friend’s Name?- and tried to read each name as it was added to the pocket chart. We will be focusing on identifying the letters in our names and practicing spelling them.

We will be starting Chapel and Music on Wed/Thurs this week. Chapel is at 9:15. Please try to be prompt, so we can get settled and make it to church on time!! lol

Reminder- if you have any plastic spice bottles with shaker lids (with the holes), we’d love to have them to make scent jars!! We will be talking about our 5 Senses and will use them the week of Sept. 23rd.

Happy Birthday to Miss Jennifer!!! We had a great celebration on Friday with lots of beautiful pictures, flowers and some yummy cupcakes! I know that it made her day 🥰

Have a wonderful weekend with your little Ladybug!!

Welcome to the Ladybug Class

Hello Parents! Welcome to our blog. Every Friday I will be updating you on what we have been doing in class and sharing some pictures from our week. Make sure to follow the “read on” link at the bottom of the email you receive to be redirected to our website! Here you can check out additional photos in the album (remember…our photos are password protected to keep our kids safe. DO NOT copy & share any pictures that include children other than your own, please!).

We had a great time getting to know each other during our small group visitations on Tuesday & Wednesday! We gathered at the table to play with our magic color-changing playdough. Then we moved to the carpet to have circle time where we learned our Hello song and read Pete the Cat Rocking in His School Shoes! We toured the classroom centers, played birthday party in our Dramatic Play center, painted at the easel with paint sticks and built block houses & roads for the cars.

Everyone was so excited to see ALL their friends, new and old, when we met again on Thursday & Friday. We began learning the classroom routines for cleaning up, coming to circle, snack time, using the bathroom and walking in our line to the playground. We also had a quick lesson about our Safe Place and how to use the tools there to help when we are feeling big emotions. Everyone practiced taking big breaths with our breathing ball. The Ladybugs had more time to explore all the fun activities in our centers before finally going to the big playground! Please remember to put on sunscreen and/or bug spray in the morning before school!! We are the last group on the playground, and it is very sunny by that point.

Next week we will start reading our “All About Me” books, so if you haven’t finished your page yet, try to do it this weekend! We will keep this class book about our friends in our library all year. It is always a favorite!!

A couple of reminders:

Please label EVERYTHING, especially water bottles & snacks. When you arrive at school, please take water bottles & snack out of the backpack & leave it in their small cubby for your child to get at snacktime.

Remember- the expectation in the 3 yr old class is that all children be potty-trained. Because some of our youngest students have just turned 3 this summer, we are flexible at the beginning of the year. We ask that you really focus on this task and children be in underwear by the beginning of October. Unfortunately, we do not have the facilities to change diapers in the Ladybug room and cannot continuously have a teacher leaving the classroom to go change them. If your child is still in pull-ups or diapers after the end of October, we will need to call you to come change them or take them home if they have had a BM. (We do understand that potty-trained children also have accidents occasionally, but it is our experience that this happens rarely once they are in underwear) If you have any questions about this policy or are looking for some potty training advice, please let us know. We’d be happy to meet with you to discuss it!

Thank you so much for the support you have shown us during this first week! We truly appreciate the donations we have received and all the kind words. Here is a link to our classroom wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2GHEXHLIX551O?ref_=wl_share (We have already received 2 gifts…wow!! We can’t wait to use them) We update it throughout the year with items we would love to have for our class. We have had parents donate items at Christmas or their child’s birthday in the past, and it was very exciting to open our “gifts” at circle time!

If you have a spice bottle with the shaker top, please save it when it’s empty and bring it to school. We’d like to make some smelling jars for our 5 Senses unit. Thanks!

We’ve had so much fun meeting everyone & seeing each precious personality begin to shine! We're looking forward to a wonderful year of fun & learning with your beautiful children.

Have a great weekend with your little Ladybugs!

Miss Sue, Miss Jenn & Miss Kelsi

Dinosaurs

It was a very exciting week! Everyone loves dinosaurs!!!! We read about the different types of dinosaurs and learned some lived on land, some in the air, and some in the water. We also learned that sharp-tooth dinos ate meat and plant-eaters had flat teeth, and dinosaurs hatch from eggs. Some of our friends are dino experts and even taught the teachers some of the dinosaur names. There were big vocabulary words being used by our Ladybugs this week, too- paleontologist, fossil, and extinct.

In one of our activities, we used paintbrushes to delicately brush the sand away to find the dinosaurs just like the paleontologists do! It took lots of patience and restraint to do it gently.

We worked on finding the letters in our names while we created a stegosaurus, and we gave him bones. Our new tiny glue bottles give us better control, but we’ve found we really need to use our hand muscles to squeeze that glue out!

It was really funny learning that a dinosaur’s footprint was SO big that we could ALL stand in it together!!!

Because there is so much to learn about dinosaurs and everyone loves them so much, we are going to continue our dinosaur unit next week. We will be doing some fun science experiments and adding some math dinosaur games.

Don’t forget you can sign up for a conference by using the following link:

MWF Class: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0a4eaaa928a4fb6-march2#/

T/Th Class: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0a4eaaa928a4fb6-march3#/

We will be closed on those days (March 13 & 14) so that we have time to speak to you about your marvelous children. We prefer that your child not be present during this time as it can be hard to have a productive conversation with them present. You may want to plan with another parent to watch each others’ children on our playground while one parent goes in for a conference. Thank you for your understanding.

And one last reminder- Please try to be prompt for dropoff & pickup! Some days we have very little time to have our morning greetings meeting before we head out of the room for another activity & we hate to start without all of our friends present. At the end of the day, the teachers have to clean up the classroom & sometimes have meetings when school ends. Our class schedules are currently:

MWF class- 9:10-12:10 Monday & Friday and 9:10-1:00pm on Wednesday

T/Th class- 9:10-12:10 on Tuesday and 9:10-1:00pm on Thursday

Thank you so much for your cooperation :)

We wish you a sunny & happy weekend!!

Miss Sue, Miss Jennifer & Miss Beth