Hi Families,
Some reminders: If someone else is picking up your child please call the office and give the name of the person picking up the student if they aren’t on infinite campus. Please remind the person picking up the student to bring and show his/her ID. This is the procedure and it is in place to keep kids safe. Thanks for your help with this. We are practicing pouring water for ourselves and passing the water to each other during snack. If anyone could donate some dixie cups, that would be wonderful! We do not dress up for Halloween or have a party. We have will have a regular preschool day on Thursday. Important November dates: https://sdpk.svvsd.org/updates/important-dates-november-2019 It was great to get to spend time with each of your families during conferences. I enjoyed sharing and learning about your families and talking about goals for your student! I learned some great ideas I thought I would share with the group. In order to find out what your student did at school, my suggestion is to ask a specific question. Some of the families shared with me some of the specific questions that they ask:1. What did you have for snack?2. Which playground did you play on today? Oral language skills are so important for preschoolers to develop. Here is some extra information about our playgrounds to assist with your home conversations. We are lucky to have 3 playgrounds at Spark! In our classroom we refer to them as the Small Playground (this one is in the front of the school to the right of the front entrance), Bikes and Balls which is in the back of the school and has all sorts of riding opportunities with helmets, hoops and balls, and a fun little house with a loud bell 🙂 And the Slides and Swings playground which is also in the back of the school. It has slides, swings, rocks with a picnic table (where we sometimes play birthday with a rock cake and sticks as the candles and there is singing) (these same rocks are also used to mine special rocks or diamonds sometimes), and lots of running space on this playground which we use to run and skip and race. We also have a beautiful gym facility with so many different developmentally appropriate ways for 3-5 years olds to move his/her body and learn new skills. We often see and play with Ms. Amy N.’s class when we go to the gym. We have been playing a fun number cube game while we are at the bathroom waiting turns to wash hands. The students are so great at taking turns and advocating for each other if they think one of our friends didn’t get to go yet. It is incredible to see the community being built. We have also been learning to rhyme. We have rhyming puzzles that we put together while waiting and when we walk in the hall we have been putting our hands on our hips and finger on our lips (those words rhyme) as well as making our bodies “tall” and “small” while walking through the hall. During circle time we have been singing the song Who Do You See? We always start with the Student of the Day. It goes like this: “Mary, Mary, who do you see?” The student gets to pick the next friend and says:”I see Ms. Sherry looking at me.” Then we sing to Sherry and so on and so forth.The Student of the Day also holds the flag for the Pledge and counts all of the students in the morning, is the line leader and picks quiet friends to wash hands for snack. We finished up our Robotics unit and have moved on to Health and Wellness for our stem studies. We have created a gym in our classroom for dramatic play. There is an exercise bike for students that is super fun. The students are doing such a great job taking turns and being each others’ “trainer.” We had fun making pumpkins in the art area, we have been sorting shapes in small groups, students are practicing tracing and writing his/her name, we used Eric Carle’s book From Head to Toe to talk about asking and answering questions. (In the book it has the pattern “I am a penguin and I turn my head.” “Can you do it?” “I can do it.”) We used this literacy experience to answer the question, and repeat language used in the book by saying “Yes!” “I can do it” and then acting out the movement. We have also been talking about the books in terms of discriminating between pictures and text, looking for the title page and recognizing the author is the writer of the book. At the sensory table we are dumping and filling water. All of this talking, playing, communicating, turn-taking, participating and investigating are part of the Colorado Academic Standards and Teaching Strategies GOLD which guide our curricula. We have been reading non-fiction books about our bodies. We will be talking about germs and how to cover our coughs and sneezes. We will learn about bones, muscles and major organs. We have been working on various math skills in class. These include:-using strategies to count a set of objects (touch each one, line them up, learning that the last number you say is the number of objects you have)-patterns, clapping patterns, making pattern, extending patterns using manipulatives and patterning cards-identifying shapes: rectangles have two long sides and 2 short sides, squares have 4 equal sides-recognizing numerals-rote counting I look forward to seeing each of your families tomorrow! With my best,Mary Stivison
