Dear Families,

We completed our Health unit last week. Our design challenge to make juice was a huge success. Kids loved it:) They also really enjoyed creating a “tool” prototype to juice a fruit out of loose parts. Check out our video on Seesaw to see what your child learned about being healthy if you have not yet done so. I still need to post the pictures from the design challenge but they should be up by Friday.

This week we have focused on the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have read it everyday and practiced retelling the story by looking at the pictures. The children have really enjoyed retelling what they remember and helping fill in words from the story. 

Next week we will talk about fall and pumpkins for one week before we move on to our next STEM unit all about Pets. The children have been really interested in fall trees changing colors and pumpkins that we put in the science area. Also, now that the weather is colder, please make sure your child has his or her name on the tag inside the jacket and on hats. Children easily mix up and misplace coats and hats, and we want them to get back to you the next day if we find them in the classroom. I have also noticed a lot of students wearing flip flops and I highly recommend tennis shoes for school. We go to the playground everyday unless we have extreme weather, and flip flops and sandals are a lot easier to fall in and they get wood chips stuck inside of them. Tennis shoes are the safer option. 

This week was fire safety week and firefighters came and gave a presentation on Tuesday. It was great for kids to see them in all of their gear, because fire uniforms can appear scary to young children. This helps kids know firefighters are there to help even if they are wearing a mask. They also talked about smoke alarms and how they mean get out. 

We went to the Makerspace for the first time last week and got to explore many new toys. Yesterday we went to the Bot Spot and explored our Sphero robots which are kind of like BB-8 from Star Wars, but only one sphere shapes. The children got to drive them using the IPADs. They also got to revisit BEE BOT who we tried out last time at the Bot Spot. BEE BOT is a coding robot you can directionally program by selecting directional arrows. We will typically visit the Bot Spot or the Makerspace twice a month.

When you return monthly activity sheets please make sure you write your child’s name on the paper. I got a few back without names last month, and sometimes they get taken out of folders and I don’t know who to give prizes to. My plan is to just give out prizes at the beginning of the new month. Thanks everyone for coming to conferences to talk about your wonderful students’ progress. 

Finally, our exciting news is that we have a new paraprofessional who joined our classroom this week, so we should have three consistent people again. Ms. Wanda is our new teacher who has prior experience with young children. We are so excited to have her be a part of our classroom. 

Have a fabulous weekend!

Ms. Amy, Ms. Catalina (Cathy), and Ms. Wanda

— Amy NewsomECSE TeacherSpark Discovery Preschool