Ms. Mary’s Update 11-20-19

Dear Families,

We have been working hard in room 244!  We finished up our Health and Wellness unit this week.   Here are some of the highlights that cross over multiple areas of learning (inquiry and design, writing, reading and math). We read many non-fiction books about our bodies and learned about healthy food and exercise.  We wrote about the way we like to exercise at home or at school.   We changed our gym into a grocery store this week.  The students love it!  There is lots of shopping and then sorting the food to put it back on the shelves. We looked at, touched, and talked about an orange and a lemon and wondered how we could get the juice out.  Students then drew and wrote about different methods (or a new tool he/she might design) to get the juice out. We read Caterina’s Lemonade Stand. We acted out Eric Carle’s book From Head to Toe.  To culminate the joy the students found from this book we videotaped acting out a page from the book and then watched it. Yesterday we picked from 2 different types of juicing tools and squeezed the juice from an orange or lemon and tried it!   We did a whole group sequencing about our juicing process. We then made a graph about whether or not students liked the juice. We have been practicing sorting for the last 2 weeks.  The students are enjoying these activities and we are sorting the same objects with varying rules, for example, sorting pom-poms by color and then by size.  Students love to use the tweezers to pick up the pom-poms.  These activities strengthen muscles in the hands which helps build fine motor (writing, buttoning, snapping, etc.) Next week St. Vrain Valley School are closed for Thanksgiving break.  School will be back in session on Monday, Dec. 2, 2019. If your student is eligible for Kindergarten next year, open enrollment begins Dec. 2nd.  There have been several emails sent from Paige to families about what this process looks like.  Please let me know if you have questions. It is an honor to get to see your families everyday and to help scaffold the learning process for your student!  Ms. Michelle has been our substitute for the last 2 weeks.  She has been a great addition to the classroom!   Here are the important dates for December https://sdpk.svvsd.org/updates/important-dates-december-2019 With my very best to each of you, Mary Stivison

Spark! Discovery Preschool