Welcome! The first few weeks have been wonderful! We have been learning new routines, school vocabulary (pencil, paper, crayon, marker, etc), and colors with Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Our specialists have begun working with the students as well. Miss Ruth (Speech/Language) and Mr. Ty (Occupational Therapy) are holding small group time providing students with an opportunity to access both services daily. Miss Jannine (Physical Therapy) will be coming on Tuesdays for the AM class and Wednesdays for the PM class. VOLUNTEER TRAINING: We welcome parent, guardian, and grandparent volunteers and want you to be involved. For preschool, it is required by licensing that volunteer training be offered and attended to volunteer in classrooms or the school. This is a session where children over the age of 6 months should not be present. The next session for training, offered by two teachers, will be on Friday, September 21st from 9:00 am to 10:30 am. After that, there will be a training in October, January, February, and March offered at various times. Speaking of volunteering, we are looking for an office squad of volunteers this school year to better assist our teachers in clerical ways (copying, laminating, stapling, sorting, etc). Sometimes, children have a difficult time at this age having a family member volunteer in the classroom, as it can be difficult with separation, anxiety, or behaviors. If you’d like to volunteer but know the classroom will be a difficult space, we are looking for a volunteer in the office for each session of preschool in the AM and PM Monday through Thursday, for a total of eight dependable, reliable volunteers each week. This will help teachers across the school make the best use of their planning time during the week and on Fridays. We already have a volunteer on Monday and Wednesday mornings! Please consider assisting our staff in this manner if the idea of being in the classroom doesn’t appeal to you. The above training is required. If you are interested, please email me at [email protected]. Important Dates• Parenting Class: September 6th & 20th from 6:00-7:30 pm• Pajama Day: September 13 Bring $1.00 to donate to PTO• PTO Meeting: September 13 6:00-7:30 pm• Miner’s Day Parade: Saturday, September 15th 8-11 pm. Join our school andride on our float or walk and hand out candy in the parade.• Parent Volunteer Training: September 21st 9:00-10:30 am• Believe PTO Fundraiser: September 21nd• McDonald’s PTO Fundraiser: September 25th 5:00-8:00 pmNo School September 3th• Individual Picture Day September 25th & 26th *more information to come Curriculum*Our first STEM unit of the year will be Life Cycles.*Our Math focus for the month of September is Sets. Our focus will be on sorting collections into sets based on attributes such as color, shape, and size.*We will also begin our work with number identification focusing on numbers 1-4.*This year our class will be using a new curriculum for letter and sound identification. This curriculum is called Fundations. Be watching for more information once we spend some time working with this curriculum.