We are off to a great start to the school year! The students are getting used to the schedule and routines, and seem to be enjoying preschool. Hopefully you are
hearing good things at home! We have started our social-emotional curriculum, PATHS, and students loved meeting the puppets we will be using throughout the year to teach the lessons in the curriculum. We have also started having our Kid of the Day, so be looking for a compliment sheet to come home with your child within the next couple of weeks if they haven’t already come home with one. We are encouraging students to work hard each day to receive STARPOWER, and most students have already done so.
We are giving students many opportunities to identify their name in our environment, and they have practiced writing their name several times during our writing time. We have started introducing letters and the sounds they make, as well as working on letter formation. We will work on 2 letters/week and will follow the order that the writing curriculum Handwriting Without Tears follows. We have also been exploring a lot of math concepts, such as recognizing 3D shapes, counting, numeral identification, patterning, and sorting. We started our first STEM unit of study, which is pets. During this unit, we will discuss what a pet is, where pets live, how you care for pets, and how pets can help us. Thank you to all of you who have already sent in pictures of your pets. Students have loved sharing them with the class! We will end the unit with a Design Challenge where students will have to work together to design a pet carrier to get an animal home from the shelter. If you are an expert on pets, or know someone who is, we would love for them to come in and talk to our class! It would be great to have a veterinarian or a pet groomer come for a visit!
Germs, Germs, Germs!
The cold bug has hit our classroom, and we are having a lot of sneezes, sniffles, and coughs. We are also seeing a lot of fingers in mouths and noses. We are talking about this a lot at school, but we would appreciate if you could also encourage our students to not to do this at home. Thanks for your help!
Backpack Project
Thank you to all of you who have already completed your backpack project with your child! It has been really fun getting to know them better. If you haven’t had a chance to work on this yet with your child, we would appreciate you doing so within the next week or two.
Working With Your Child At Home
We will start to send literacy homework home this week. It shouldn’t take too long to do. It’s just a little more practice of what we have been doing at school, and it will help to give you an idea of what we are working on and see your child’s progress. Please encourage your child to complete the assignment on their own, and even try to get them to attempt to write their own name on their paper (you can provide a model on another sheet of paper.) A reading log will also be coming home this week. Please try to read with your child each night.
Monthly Calendar
We will send a monthly calendar home in Thursday folders that highlights the STEM unit we are studying, the letters of the week we are focusing on, positive behavior parties, spirit days, and any other important dates. Hopefully, this will be a quick resource you can use to make sure you have everything covered here at school.
Weather Changes
With Fall upon us, we will likely see the weather changing throughout the day. Please check the weather report each morning–it may be really chilly at the start of the day, but warm up considerably by the afternoon, or vice versa. We will try to get outside every day that it is not raining, so please make sure your child is dressed appropriately. When in doubt, please send a jacket. We will check the temperature before we head out and if it’s cool enough to need a jacket, we will have them put theirs on.