May 2011

The month of May will be very busy in Room 5. During the first few weeks of the month we will be making plans for our pretzel factory and store to benefit the Village of Hope School in Haiti. It will be open for business on Thursday, May 19th and Friday, May 20th right after school and on Sunday, May 22nd during the preschool open house. Our actual pretzel factory will be up and running on Tuesday, May 17th and Wednesday, May 18th. We will need your help in a variety of ways. We will need AT LEAST two volunteers to help each day while we are making our pretzels and we will also be asking you to donate all the supplies (pretzel rods, chocolate, decorations, ribbon, pretzel rod bags, etc.). This project is a lot of fun and we learn a lot! As a group, the children will decide on a name for the store and how many pretzels they think we should make (Last year we made over four hundred pretzel rods plus chocolate covered Oreos and we sold every one!). We will make posters to advertise our store and we will learn about money. The children will be doing the sales and taking care of the accounting and inventory for the store. In order for our store to be a success we need your help! Please be on the look-out for additional information regarding volunteers and needed supplies.

The Village of Hope School serves about 650 students. Last year our class donated $1000 to the school. The money we have collected in our change jar (a little over $50 so far!) and the money from our pretzel store will help purchase much needed supplies for the school. Please remember that we will continue to collect change for the remainder of the school year.

Now that warmer weather is here we will be spending lots of time outside. Our recess time is usually early in the day so please remember that even though the forecast may be calling for a nice warm day, it is usually still a bit cool when we go outside around 9:30am. Also, be sure that your child is wearing shoes that are appropriate for running, climbing and playing on the playground. Lastly, please update your child’s change of clothes to reflect the warmer weather.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Below you will find a calendar of our upcoming events.

Thank-you!

May
6-Last book order due
9-Share a snack day
17-18- Pretzel Factory
19-Chapel (9:30am)
-Pretzel Store
20-Pretzel Store (Day 2)
22-Preschool Open House
26-Chapel (9:30am)
31-Outdoor Day

June
1-End of Preschool Celebration (7pm in the fellowship hall)

April 2011

Thank-you so much for the beautiful flowers and delicious bread and scones you gave us for teacher appreciation day! Of course, our favorite part of the day was receiving the beautiful cards, pictures and letters from your children!

We have been talking a lot about friendship in our class and will continue those discussions throughout April. Friendship between five year olds can be very complicated. It would be helpful if you could all reinforce some of the ideas we have been discussing at home. Some of the things we have talked about are:

• Ask a classmate who is playing alone if they would like to join your game.
• Try playing with someone who you don’t normally choose to play with.
• Play dates are fun, but other friends who are not included may have their feelings hurt if you talk about them too much at school.
• In room 5 we are all friends. No one should feel so lonely that they don’t want to come to school.
• Secrets have no place at school.
• Remember that we are all different, but special in our own way.

A great way to get a conversation about friendship started is to read some books about the subject. We have been reading a variety of books about unusual animal friendships to get our classroom discussions started. Another great activity is to do some role playing. Present your child with a situation that they may encounter in the classroom or on the playground and discuss with them ways they might react.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. We want your children to have the best possible experience during their time in room 5.

April 4-No School
12-Kindergarten Readiness (7pm-8:30pm)
14-Chapel (9:30am)
15-Easter Egg Hunt
18-22-No School
28-Chapel (9:30am)

March 2011

Dear Parents,

It’s hard to believe that it is already March! Our first big event will take place on Thursday, March 3rd. We will be celebrating out 100th day of school! There are a lot of special activities planned. Please help your child compile a collection of 100 items that they can bring in to school on the day of our celebration. It can be stickers, trading cards, paperclips, rubber bands, noodles, marbles, etc. They can bring it in a box or bag or even glue it to a poster. If you have any questions, please let us know. For our snack that day we will be making a snack mix. We are asking each child to bring in 100 snack items. For example, 100 pieces of cereal, 100 raisins, 100 marshmallows, etc. PLEASE be sure that your child’s contribution is peanut-free. Your child should still bring in their individual snack. At the end of the day we will be attempting to spin 100 tops at the same time. If anyone is available to help us with this endeavor please join us at 11:30am. We can use all the help we can get. Please do not to bring younger siblings to help with this activity.

On March 8th we will be celebrating Mardi Gras! The children will be enjoying dirty rice and King Cake. According to tradition whoever finds the baby in the King Cake is supposed to bring the King Cake for next year’s party. Please join us at 11:45am for a parade.

Traditionally, in the wee hours of the morning on March 17th a pesky leprechaun visits us in room 5. He or she tend leave a mess for us to clean up, but so far we have never been able to catch the pesky little imp! Who knows what your child may find when they arrive at school on St. Patrick’s Day!

Our collection for the Village of Hope School in Haiti has almost $55. This is fantastic! Please continue to send in your spare change. The children have really been enjoying watching the coins add up! Sometime in the next couple of months we will start making plans for our chocolate covered pretzel store which will take place in May. This is a really fun activity that will require lots of help from all of you! Last year our pretzel store made over $800 for the Village of Hope School!

As always, thank-you for your continued for support!

February 2011

Hello Room 5 Families!

February is definitely off to an interesting start! We have a lot going on this month and the snow will only make things more interesting! This month we will be celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.

Our Chinese New Year Celebration has been delayed because of the snow days, but we will be doing a number of activities in class to mark “The Year of the Rabbit” as soon as we are back in school.

On Monday, February 14th we will be exchanging Valentines. Below you will find a list of all of your child’s classmates. Please let your child write their friend’s names by themselves. We know this may take some time and patience, but it’s really good practice for them. If you feel that the names are too hard to read just write the name lightly in pencil on the back. The morning of the 14th we would love it if two or three parents could come in first thing in the morning to help the children distribute their Valentines into their friend’s bags. Please let us know if you can help.

This month we will be getting to the map activities that we ran out of time for in January. If you have any old street maps, map books or even maps from old National Geographic please send them in. The children will also continue to do a lot of different activities using the letters in their names as well as the names of their classmates.

Our collection for the Village of Hope School in Haiti is growing! Thank-you so much for you contributions to this great cause! Over the next few days please take some time to look at some of the store flyers and help your children find pictures of items they think the school children might want or need. Send them in and we will glue them in our journal. We will be collecting change through the end of our pretzel store.

Below you will find a calendar of upcoming events as well as a list of the students’ names for the Valentines. As always, if you have any questions or concerns please let us know.

February
2-In house registration begins
9-Hat Day
10-Chapel (9:30am)
14-Valentine’s Day Celebration
17-Chapel (9:30am)
24-Marshmallow Day
March 8-Mardi Gras Celebration (Parade at 11:45am)

Ava
Caleb
Caroline
Cason
Charlotte
Ellie
Henry
Ian
Jenna
Luke
Seamus
Sean
Sienna
Will

January 2011

Dear Parents,

Happy 2011! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday. Thank-you so much for the generous Christmas gift you presented to us. The Kohl’s gift cards were so thoughtful and much appreciated and we loved the spa gift certificates as well!

We have a lot of activities planned for the weeks and months ahead. We will start working on making sure that everyone knows how to write their name the “kindergarten way” which is capital letter first followed by lower case. Along with working on writing our names we will be learning to recognize each other’s names. We will do this by looking at the different letters that make up each of our names and which letters are the same and which ones are different. This will be a fun way to work on recognition of lower case and upper case letters as well as letter sounds. We will also be playing some games with our names.

Another thing we will be working on learning is our home addresses (street address and town) and our home phone number. We will do this using repetition and some fun activities such as drawing a map from the preschool to our homes. The children will also be working more with patterns. Using a variety of objects the children will be copying patterns, finishing patterns and coming up with patterns of their own. Along with patterns they will work on sorting objects by a variety of characteristics such as size, color and shape.

Be on the look-out for a conference sign-up sheet to be posted outside of the classroom. If none of the offered times fit into your schedule please let us know and we will make every effort to work with you to find a suitable time to meet. Please keep in mind that you should not bring your child to the conference and if possible it is always nice if both parents can attend.

Starting on January 10th our class will be collecting change for Village of Hope which is a school in Haiti which the church supports. We will have a large jar in the classroom which will keep track of our total (digitally). Each time change is added we will be keeping track of how much we started with, how much we added and how much we ended up with. This will be a great opportunity to work on some basic math skills such as number recognition, money, addition and subtraction. Most importantly we will be doing something to help children in need. We will keep track of our efforts in a special ledger and will continue collecting change until either the end of the school year or the jar is filled. Please do not send in paper money or checks!

Please remember that we will go outside most days unless it is very wet, excessively windy or below freezing. Please dress your children appropriately-hats, mittens (easier for the children to put on themselves), scarves, etc. Thank-you for your continued support. If you have any questions or concerns PLEASE let us know. We are here for you and your children and want them to have the best experience possible.

Calendar of Events

January
13-Chapel (9:30am)
12-Pajama Day
14-Book orders due
17-No School
26-Chapel (9:30am)
28-Shoeboxes for troops due
31-No School

February
1-No School
2-In house registration begins
3-Chinese New Year Celebration
9-Hat Day
10-Chapel (9:30am)
14-Valentine’s Day Celebration
17-Chapel (9:30am)
24-Marshmallow Day

March
8-Mardi Gras Celebration (Parade at 11:45am)

November 2010

Wow! Where did October go? It is hard to believe that it is already November. We are heading into a very busy couple of months so be sure to check out the calendar below so that you are ready for all the great things we have coming up.

It was really wonderful seeing all of you at our open house. We really enjoyed meeting you and sharing the children’s delicious pumpkin bread with all of you. They were all so proud to make such a special treat for you!

October was a very busy month. Special thanks to Mr. Jule for helping Mrs. Lawson get our big pumpkin into the classroom. We weighed it and it weighed 102 pounds! The children voted and named our big pumpkin Emma. They also guessed the weight. Their guesses ranged anywhere between 26 pounds and 65,000 pounds. The children had a wonderful time pulling out the “guts” and watching Mrs. Lawson carve the face.

In November we will continue to work on the numbers 0-10. We will also work more with patterns and sorting. The children will be working on recognizing each other’s names. Using number words and the children’s names they are introduced to a variety of letters and their sounds. Most of the books we read this month will deal with Thanksgiving and manners. This month we will also begin working on some American Sign Language.

So far we have one guest signed up to join us for our Veteran’s Day celebration on November 11th at 10am. If you are a Veteran and are able to come in and spend some time with us talking about what you do and answering some questions please let Mrs. Lawson or Mrs. Miller know.

As you can see below, our calendar is very full. We do our best to give you advance warning to plan accordingly because we know that you all have busy schedules. Please look at the upcoming events, particularly those in December, as a variety of opportunities to spend time with your child at school. We will let you know the dates for December chapel as well as the Christmas sing-a-long as soon as we know them.

Lastly, please remember to send your children with jackets. Even though it gets warmer later in the day, the fall mornings are still pretty cool when we go out around 9:30am.

We are truly enjoying having your children in our care each day.

October 2010

Dear Room 5 Families,

It’s hard to believe that October is here already! We have really been having a good time getting to know each other and learning our classroom routine. During the last few weeks we have divided the children up into groups-anteaters, platypuses, porcupines and armadillos! Four days a week the children are divided into their groups and then they rotate through a variety of activities-two are teacher guided, one is the art center and one is free centers (toys, blocks, books or the magnet board).

We’ve done a lot so far! In fifteen days of school we have read twenty books and added seven words to our word wall. The words on our word wall are words that we come across in books we read whose definitions we do not know. We look up the words in our class dictionary and then add them to our word wall. We’ve also made two class books which will be added to our book shelf very soon (they just need to be laminated and bound). One is called “Germs are not for Sharing” and the other is called “Ten Apples up on Top.” In the last few weeks we have been working on the numbers zero through five. We are counting to five and working on recognizing the number words for zero through five. We will continue working on this into October and will be going up to ten by the end of the month. Most of our activities will revolve around apples, pumpkins and Halloween this month.

Since our Halloween celebration is on a Friday this year and it is our Music and Movement day we will be having a very simple celebration on Friday, October 29th-a special snack and our parade at 11:45am. The children are welcome to wear costumes as long as they do not include masks or restrict their movement in any way. We would also appreciate it if costumes do not include any weapons. We will be doing a number of fun activities during the week leading up to Halloween.

We have a few requests. Please send in a two part snack for your child. We have about fifteen to twenty minutes to eat and the children rarely finish what you send in because they are spending most of their snack time socializing with their friends! We hate to see so much food wasted! We’d also appreciate it if you continue to check the labels on snacks to be sure they are peanut-free. Also, please try to pick your child up promptly at noon. We are the lunch bunch teachers and things can get very hectic when we have children coming and going. It is also important for you to let us dismiss your child. We want to make sure we keep track of who is leaving and with whom and to cut down on congestion at the folders.

Lastly, if anyone has some free time, we have some coloring and cutting that we could use some help with. Coloring can be great stress relief so let us know if you can help!

Below you will find a calendar of upcoming events. As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions, comments or concerns.

Thank-you,
Mrs. Lawson
Mrs. Miller

October
7-Chapel (9:30am)
11-No School (Columbus Day)
14-Chapel (9:30am)
21-Class Pictures
28-Chapel (9:30am)
29-Halloween Parade (11:45am)

A Little Bit About Our Class…

Our Class Goals-

Our goals are to build self-esteem and to instill a love of learning that will encourage the natural curiosity of each child. Teaching young fives is exciting and rewarding. We will send them off ready to face the challenge of kindergarten by developing their social, emotional, physical and cognitive abilities.

Book Club Orders-

We will send book club orders home once a month with your child. Each book you order helps us earn free books for our classroom. If you wish to order, please follow the directions for on-line ordering. The books will arrive in about two weeks and we will put them in your child’s tote bag. Let us know if they are meant to be a special gift that you do not want your child to see.

Snack-

We are asking that each child bring their own snack daily. Our classroom will be peanut -free. Please make sure the snacks you send in do not contain peanuts or peanut products. The container (lunch box or bag) must be clearly dated and labeled in such a way that will identify the owner. Do not send in a drink—we will provide water. Snacks are required by the Virginia Department of Social Services standards to be two parts. From the list below choose two categories for each day and please send in a snack with one item from each of your chosen categories.

Grains
Snack cracker
Bread, muffin, or roll
Dry cereal

Protein
Cheese
Egg
yogurt

Fruit or vegetable
Fresh fruit (we can cut)
Carrots or celery
Canned fruit
Applesauce

Please do not send in candy, cookies, or popcorn for snack.

We strive for independence during snack time and ask that the snack be in containers that the children can open or can be taught to open.

Special treats for birthdays are welcome but will be served in addition to the children’s regular snacks.

Groups-

After the first week of school the children will be divided into groups. During a portion of each day the groups will rotate through different centers. Two of these centers will be teacher guided activities, one will be at the art table and the fourth center will be the child’s choice.

Show and Tell-

Please refer to the monthly calendar to determine what day your child will have show and tell. Please be sure that your child brings only one item on their show and tell day. Also, please make sure that your child’s show and tell requires no special set-up. We only have about five minutes each day for show and tell. No weapons please!

Sign-In

Each day when your child arrives they will find a sign-in sheet on the desk closest to the door. This sign-in sheet is for your child to sign his or her name by themselves. Do not worry if it is not legible! It is meant to be practice.

American Sign Language-

Throughout the school year your child will be exposed to American Sign Language (ASL). They will be learning signs for the letters of the alphabet, colors, animals, family members and many others. Learning ASL will help your child to refine their fine motor skills as well as build their self-esteem. It is a huge boost for them to be able to teach others a new skill so be sure to ask them to show you the signs they have learned!

Lou and Ray-

Every Friday a different child will be bringing home Lou and Ray, along with their sleeping bag, pillow, books and journal. Lou is a stuffed monkey and Ray is his teddy bear. Please take the time to write a short entry in the journal about their stay at your home. We will read the journal entry to all of the children on Monday morning during circle time.

Photographs-

We take a lot of pictures of the children during the school year. These pictures are made available at Walmart.com. They are downloaded to a private account where they can only be viewed by people who are invited. You may also purchase copies of the pictures for a nominal fee. You will receive a form at the beginning of the school year asking for permission to post your child’s pictures.

Last but not least….

PLEASE READ TO YOUR CHILD EVERYDAY!

We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with your children this year. We are always available to discuss any concerns or answer any questions you may have.

Mrs. Kareen Lawson
Mrs. Lorna Miller

Room 5 Themes
2010-11

September

• Getting to Know Each Other
• Germs
• Apples

October

• Fall
• Squirrels
• Halloween

November

• Manners
• Thanksgiving

December

• Music
• Christmas

January

• Friends
• Winter

February

• Chinese New Year
• Valentine’s Day
• Feelings

March

• Colors and Rainbows
• St. Patrick’s Day

April

• Easter
• Spring
• Earth Day

May/June

• Insects
• Going to Kindergarten

ROOM 5 DAILY SCHEDULE

MONDAY/WEDNESDAY
9:00-9:30 Free Play
9:30-10:00 Recess
10:00-10:20 Snack
10:20-10:30 Circle Time/Show and Tell
10:30-11:45 Groups
11:45-12:00 Group Music

TUESDAY/THURSDAY
9:00-9:30 Free Play
9:30-10:00 Recess
10:00-10:20 Snack
10:20-10:30 Circle Time/Show and Tell
10:30-11:45 Cooking/Group Project
11:45-12:00 Second Circle Time

FRIDAY
9:00-9:30 Free Play
9:30-10:00 Recess
10:00-10:20 Music and Movement w/ Mrs. Wilcox
10:20-10:45 Big Room
10:45-11:05 Snack
11:05-11:15 Circle Time/Show and Tell
11:15-12:00 Group Activity