Newsletter - November-January

Oh Hello!  I know you have been waiting for this big post.  The last three months have been busy with the holidays and a long Christmas break, our family welcoming a new baby, etc.  So what have we been up to the last three months (or 9 weeks / 18 days / 45 hours) of preschool?

We said goodbye to Miss Carrie, our music teacher.  We miss her!  We also said goodbye to Ava Lindberg.  Jacob B moved over to the T/Th class to take her spot, and welcome Sophie Jorgensen, who snapped Jacob's spot in the W/F class.

We have new readers in the T/Th class, and congratulate them - Cannon Payne and Lucia Bowman. They are pink c-v-c box blenders and are so happy about their new skills.

We are almost done with introducing all of our sandpaper letters! The next few weeks will all be review, review, review and lots of writing practice.  We learned our ladybug fingers (finger exercise using the thumb, index and middle fingers) to help us know which ones we need to write with - while singing our Ladybug song.  We are writing our letters in the air too, along with reciting our phonograms 1-46.

Here are the group presentations that have been presented in November, December, and January.  Some children may have received other individual lessons not included in the list.

L	Beginning sound c
L	Beginning sound e
L	Beginning sound r
L	Beginning sound j
L	Beginning sound b
L	Beginning sound f
L	Beginning sound u
L	Beginning sound g
L	Beginning sound d
L	Beginning sound o
L	Beginning sound h
L	Beginning sound l
L	Sandpaper letters c-e-r-j
L	Sandpaper letters b-f-u-g
L	Sandpaper letters d-o-h-l
L	Tracing first and last name Forming letter shapes using magnetic basic letter shapes (short straight, long straight, small curve, big curve)
L	Insets - overlapping shapes
L	Insets - parallel lines
L	Insets - combining frames
L	Drawing station: simple animals
L	Phonograms - 1-26
L	Phonograms - er, ir, ur, wor, ear
L	Phonograms - sh, ee, ay, ai, aw, au, ow, ou, oy, oi
L-A	Thanksgiving and Christmas art activities Christmas Tree decorating
P	Thanksgiving transfer activity
M	Teens board - associate quantities with numerals
M	Tens board
M	Numbers and Counters
M	Ordinal Numbers - 1st - 5th
M	Writing numbers 0-9
M	Writing numbers 11-19
L	Movable alphabet
L	Beginning sound games - What starts with ___?
L	Sound games - double phonograms
M	Counting to 100
M	Counting by 10s
S	Geometric Solids - pyramid, cube, cylinder, sphere, ovoid
S	Geometric Solids - match to environment
Geo	Antarctica
Geo	Asia
Geo	South America

ART: 
Week 8 - Spider web lacing
Week 9 -  Pumpkin/jack o lantern wreaths

Week 10 - Stained glass art
Week 11 - Painting upside down (just like Michelangelo!)
Week 12 - Christmas Tree Ornament (popsicle sticks)
Week 13 - Cinnamon scented play dough making
Classroom integrated art: Grading long-short Christmas tree art, CD ornament
Week 14 -  Dinosaur eggs - making salt dough and forming eggs
Week 15 - Dinosaur eggs - sponge painting
Week 16 - Asian hats
Week 16 - Homemade shakers

Books Read in October:

Books read in November:

Books read in December:

Special books were read to the children by our parent volunteers, Cindy Andersen and Kim Pyles.  Thank you so much!!!  If you are reading this, will you write in the comments the titles of the books you read to the children?

Music Class:

Miss Carrie worked on learning some cute Christmas songs with the children and presented a short Christmas program for our parents in the T/Th class.  They did so well and were so cute!

DECEMBER PARTY:

We had a short December month but chock full of activities!  We had our annual Christmas party on December 13/14 and shared a yummy Christmas lunch, exchanged presents, made ornaments for our parents, did Christmas tree artwork, and Mrs Andersen and Pyles came to share their favorite books to the children.  Thank you for coming in and giving of your time! Pictures to follow.

And a few pictures from my phone in November/December/January: Please excuse the low quality images!

matching sound boxes

Pink words - object box

spindle boxes (Jackson), pink box (Halle)

Maddie - teens board

Lucia -building model wedgits

Jacob - Knobbed cylinders

Matching objects

transfer activity , painting

dropper work, land-air-water sorting

land-air-water sorting

grading cubes

USA puzzle

wedgits

brown stairs

And in January:

- we got new preschool tables that give us more room to work on!  Yay!

calendar work (Jackson), puzzle (zane)

thousand chain - Maddie

hammering, play dough, cutting

clock puzzle, etc

class at work

panoramic view of the class at work

busy class at work - you have to be there to admire the happy buzz of the children at work as if I am not around.  I love it!!!

Miss Kelli at art class (sponge painting the dinosaur eggs)

Teegan - land air water sorting

One day after I presented some geometric solids, the children went around the room and found objects in our classroom to match the solids: sphere, cylinder, cube, square based pyramid

modeling asian hats they made in art class

There are more pictures on my computer, from my good camera that I have yet to process.  Maybe I should stick with iphone pictures so you can see them right away!  As you can see I love taking pictures of the children at work - I love observing these littles learn!