April is flying by, and it’s hard to believe that there are only seven more weeks left of school! As the weather gets warmer, we will be enjoying many of our daily activities outdoors.

Every morning when we begin circle time and get started for the day, we always do a greeting to say good morning to our friends and teachers. Sometimes we pass a handshake or a high five around the circle to our neighbor. Sometimes we match objects together by color, shape, etc. and find the friend with the same object as us and say good morning to them that way. There are many ways we say good morning, and there are many reasons this is an important part of our day. Participating in morning greeting is a great activity to become aware of who is in our classroom, and helps us all learn names. By greeting one another, the children are practicing talking in front of peers, which has helped develop socialization skills. For those who are still a little bit shy, this activity is less overwhelming for them and is a great way to start the day!

The first week back from spring break has been a very busy one! We have been working hard on our invitations for our Donuts with Dad celebration coming up on April 28th and 29th. The children are very excited for this upcoming event! Our theme this week has also been fun for everyone. We have been talking about frogs and have learned many facts about frogs. Together as a class, we read a wonderful book filled with interesting frog facts. We also discussed what characteristics are contained in a fact; a fact is something that we can prove to be true. This is an important concept because the children are able to recognize and differentiate things that are true and why they are known to be true, compared to things that are false. As we read the story of facts, the children were asked to listen carefully to the facts that were shared. After the story, we worked on filling in facts together as a class recording our findings on chart paper. As an example, the following statement was from the book: “Frogs are many ________ and _________.”

The children had to recall the answers from the story and help sound out and write the word. The missing words were (sizes) and (colors). This activity encouraged them to use phonetic spelling to write out their answers. It also helped with the important skill of being able to recall information from something that was read, which is something they will be asked to do for the rest of their life.

Next week, we will be exploring pond life! Don’t forget about the field trip on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at, The Lake Erie Nature and Science Center! See you all there!

Have you found a summer camp for your child yet? We have a wonderful eight- week summer program at Pembroke Kids, and are still currently taking enrollment. We’ve got wonderful themes each week that will be so much fun for your child!