Our school year is off to a wonderful start! We have been busy creating and following the classroom rules and routines, and learning our friend’s names. The children were very excited to begin signing in before they choose their job. We use a handwriting program called “Handwriting Without Tears”. You may have noticed that there is a smiley face on their name tag and on the sign in slip. This helps the children remember to start their name on the left-hand side of the paper. It also helps reinforce starting the letters at the top and making lines and curves down. You may hear your children using the words: “big lines”, “little lines”, “big curves”, “little curves”- these four shapes create all letters. We have also begun singing songs and playing games to help them learn left and right. Please don’t be alarmed if your child’s name doesn’t look correct yet. There are several developmentally correct stages that a child goes through before they can form their letters. Handwriting Without Tears also suggests that the children begin to write their name in all upper-case letters because these are easier to master. Once your child has mastered their name in upper-case we will then gradually introduce them to lower-case letters. We will continue to strengthen their fine motor skills by playing with clay and Floam, using tweezers and tongs and by doing finger-plays.
The past several weeks we have been learning about farms. The children have been very busy helping us transform the hallway wall into a giant farm mural. We had a lot of messy fun painting our barn! We took the paper for the barn outside and painted it on the fence. After it dried Miss Christy’s afternoon class painted craft sticks and made the doors and windows. To make the field we drove tractors through the “mud paint” and onto brown paper. In the field we “planted” corn stalks and Miss Christy’s Afternoon class made the corn. For the stalks we painted shades of green and then cut them into strips. Miss Christy’s pm class used okra to print the corncobs to go on the stalks. We practiced our fine motor skills as we traced circles, and cut and glued to create our pigs. We used hay as our paintbrushes as we made the mud for the pigs to wallow in. The children came up with several possible names for the farm, after voting, we worked together to sound spell and write the name. The sign proudly hangs on the barn- NAAA FRM (NEIGH FARM). The children have done a wonderful job of practicing their social skills as they worked together to create the farm mural. We will continue our farm theme next week by learning about apples and pumpkins. We will then visit a working farm when we take our field trip to Burnham Orchard on Tuesday, October 2nd.

Looking Ahead:

Small Group will begin on Wednesday, October 3rd
No school in honor of Columbus Day, Friday, October 12th
Journals will begin on Monday, October 15th
Halloween Pembroke Kids Trick or Treat and Desert Potluck Friday, October 26th 5pm- 7pm
Halloween Celebration, October 31st Orange and Black Day or Halloween Shirt (no costumes please)