It seems like just a few weeks ago the school year was starting and now here we are at the end of 2019 and our Winter Break. Thank you to all of you for a wonderful beginning of the school year and the support with helping your children get accustomed to being at school for the first time. The photo album should be updated with this weeks fun activities tonight or tomorrow. The winter break journal that your child made and brought home in their folders is so they can draw and write about what they are doing over break. There are 8 pages so they can journal every few days while out of school. I hope all of you enjoy the 17 days at home with your children and the rest of your family! See you all again on January 6th, 2020!!

During the last few weeks the children have been working hard during all parts of the day to learn how to write each letter and have been practicing writing and creating the letters with different items. Here is a link that you can open and then print out at home or the library. There is a sheet for each letter that has how to write each uppercase and lowercase letter. On each sheet you will see rectangles and circles at the bottom of the page. They can practice writing the letters even more by writing the uppercase letter in the rectangles and the lowercase letters in the circles.

https://www.onebeautifulhomeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Superhero-Handwriting-Practice1.pdf

The last few weeks we have been reading the story “The Gingerbread Man” and the other variations of the book. The children are really interested in the story and love all of the different versions and endings to the different stories. It is a great book to help with retelling and also builds on their love of reading. We have read two different versions of the “The Gingerbread Man”, and also “The Gingerbread Girl”, and “The Gingerbread Baby.” Ask your child about any of the stories and I’m sure they will be able to tell you all about it and the sneaky fox in the stories!

To build on their interest in their stories we did small group lessons focusing on gingerbread men/girls. We have worked on retelling and acting out the lessons and we also worked on their fine-motor skills by having them lace yarn through a cutout gingerbread man. They were able to decorate and color it how they wanted and then laced the yarn through the holes. Lacing is a great fine-motor activity for them to use at home as well and super easy to create. We also had them do a journal entry about one of the stories that they liked the best. Next week we will be having gingerbread men cookies and graphing how the children decide to eat them.

It has been a very busy November! The photo album is updated weekly with pictures from our days here at school so please remember to check it out often. We have had fun in the leaves and then the snow! We went on a nature walk around the playgrounds and talked about leaves, acorns, squirrels, birds, and different types of trees. They collected items on the nature walk and then created a nature collage with what they had found. And then when we had our unexpected snowfall we learned a lot about weather – where snow comes from, what happens when it melts, and why it can be cold even when it is sunny out.

The students have been working hard on their literacy and math skills during work time and small group time. They have been writing letters to family members and friends in our Writing Area. They created letters with playdoh and did sensory writing on trays with cornmeal. They have been interested in measuring things so that is something else we have worked on. They created their own structures and “roads” with the wood blocks and then compared their lengths or heights using measurement terms. They also measured items around the room with unifix cubes and practiced counting using one-to-one correspondence to see how long those objects were.

They also have learned about yoga and how to calm our bodies down. They have really enjoyed trying all of the different types of yoga moves and learning how to breath slower and deeper to calm themselves down.

Please remember that next week we only have school on Monday and Tuesday due to Thanksgiving break.

I can’t believe this week was the last week of October! This school year is going by very fast. To begin our week we had Mr. Paul, “The Critter Guy” visit our classrooms with a lot of fun animals for the students to learn about and interact with. He brought “Woody” the tree frog, “Art” the gecko, “Mr. and Mrs. Dove” the male and female doves, “Puff” the bearded dragon, “Cotton” the chinchilla, and “Pretzel” the corn snake. All of our pictures from the fun day are in the google photo album that is linked on the blog and was sent through Remind.

This week we also continued our celebration of Fall by exploring and learning about pumpkins! Each child was able to clean, explore, and then paint their very own pumpkin. On Wednesday they predicted how many pumpkin seeds would be in our large classroom pumpkin and on Thursday we opened up the pumpkin and the students helped scoop out the seeds and count them. Our pumpkin had 204 seeds and Younis was the closest with a prediction of 200 seeds! You can see pictures of all these in the photo album as well. Have a great weekend and remember to look at the November Calendar as there are days off and a 1/2 day as well.

ELECTION DAY IS Tuesday, November 5th 

Please remember to Vote on Tuesday. If you can’t make it to the polls on Tuesday, November 5th new laws allow you to vote at the City Clerk’s office before Election Day. This Saturday (November 2) any registered voter can stop by the City Clerk’s Office between the hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and vote via absentee ballot. The Clerk’s office is located inside the Dearborn Administrative Center, 16901 Michigan Ave. In addition, registered voters will still be able to request absent voter ballots in person until 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 4.

As part of our preschool program we DO NOT celebrate Halloween at school. Your child is welcome to wear orange and black or a Halloween themed shirt, but NO costumes are allowed. Next year they will be able to participate and wear a costume but it is not allowed in preschool. Thank you!