Friday, April 16, 2004

ECS Pre-K Classroom News April 16,2004

A Peek at the Week
** Please see bottom for speech news**
Well, the day the children had been waiting for arrived on Monday. The tadpoles are now in the aquarium, and the children spent the week talking about them, and learning more about the stages of their development. Be sure to ask your child about what s/he saw in the aquarium. On Wednesday, we took a trip to Mrs. Mason’s 2nd grade classroom. There we observed her frogs Kermit and Spot, as they ate their weekly meal…crickets. The kids thought it was great seeing what our tadpoles are going to grow up to look like!
Also at the science center, the bean plant we grew from seed now has full-grown green beans on it, the sunflower seeds have sprouted and are about 4 inches tall, and the potato plant is over a foot tall now! Very exciting!
During the week, the children participated activities involving clothing. At the dress up center, the children could dress up as a postal worker, a construction worker, a doctor, a firefighter, a princess, a mother, a father, and a ballet dancer, among others. The flannel board had a boy and a girl that could be dressed in summer clothes, winter clothes or rainy day clothes. We also had this activity available on the colorform board. Matching polka dotted shirts with the correct number, and “dressing” paper dolls were other centers this week, in addition to Look What I Can Do, Blocks, Shelf Toys. Also, the class continued to work on the Rainbow mural…it will be displayed in the hall when it is completed!
We continued learning the days of the week song with sign language. This is incorporated into our daily calendar routine to help learn the days of the week.

PT Group
This week in PT group the children played a good old-fashioned game of musical chairs. The children enjoyed moving to the music as they listened for the music to stop. Since the focus wasn’t on who was going to win, the children had fun laughing as they tried to sit in a chair, sat with a friend, and got to watch the game. And, they worked up a sweat while playing!

Looking Ahead
In April we will talk about nature, planting, weather/April showers, Clothing, and Self-Care. Mother’s day, Insects, Community Helpers, and Tools/Machines will be the topics in May. Parents are always welcome to volunteer in the classroom. If you have a special project you would like to share with the class related to one of these topics, you are always welcome to come in!
Feel free to email me anytime at: knagy@cromwellct.org

Reminders:
Upcoming readers: 2:30
April 29 Suzanne Lutz
April 30 Christine Julia
A sign up sheet went home this week for May/June. Please sign up and return it ASAP.

Enjoy your April Vacation!

Please see the attached information on TV turn off week

Thanks..
Thanks to Amy Pellett for reading the fables to the children on Thursday..they enjoyed the silly stories. Also thanks to Mrs. LuBogo for reading the class on Friday.

Updated website: Thanks to Mrs. LuBogo, the website has been updated. If you have misplaced newsletters, visit the website for previous newsletters. Also, links to informative websites have been added..check them out when you have a minute.
Geocities.com/ecsprekclass@sbcglobal.net
knagy@cromwellct.org

**PM Pre K Speech News** This week Matt and Molly fed the “Hungry Cat”. The children practiced making negative statements, (e.x. Cats don’t like pizza.) They are getting very good at sequencing events (4). They are also becoming pro’s at answer “wh” questions about the story. Our sound of the week was /ch/. They all did very well. We call /ch/ “ quiet fat air pushed”. We are continuing to practice counting forward and backward. The children are also singing the alphabet sound using sign language. Have a great break!




Saturday, April 10, 2004

ECS Pre-K Classroom News April 08,2004

A Peek at the Week
This week at school we talked about weather/April showers. They all worked on coloring leaves, cutting them out, gluing stems, and putting their pictures on a flower project to be hung in the hallway.

Centers this week included matching and counting plastic eggs in the sensory table, rhyming picture words on umbrellas, journals, sequencing paper eggs from smallest to biggest, observing at the science center (still waiting for the frog eggs to get here), dress up/pretend play in the veterinarian/doctors office, and starting a rainbow mural which will be worked on again next week.

We started learning the days of the week song with sign language. This will incorporated into our daily calendar routine to help learn the days of the week.

PT Group
Again this week the children pretended to be a slithering spring creature: a snake. One child rode on the scooter board on his/her belly, tagging the other children. Once a child was tagged, s/he would then be a snake riding on his/her belly on a scooter board. When everyone was a snake, the game started again with the last child tagged as the first snake. This took a lot of listening and following directions…the class did great!

Looking Ahead
In April we will talk about nature, planting, weather/April showers, Clothing, and Self-Care. Mother’s day, Insects, Community Helpers, and Tools/Machines will be the topics in May. Parents are always welcome to volunteer in the classroom. If you have a special project you would like to share with the class related to one of these topics, you are always welcome to come in!
Feel free to email me anytime at: knagy@cromwellct.org

Reminders:
Upcoming readers: 2:30
April 15 Amy Pellet (resched.)
April 16 Nanfi LuBogo
April 29 Suzanne Lutz
April 30 Christine Julia
We look forward to seeing you!
A sign up for May/June will be coming home soon.

Happy Holidays, enjoy the long weekend. See you next week

Thanks..
A big thanks to Mrs. LuBogo for her work on the website..it’s coming together nicely!

Have you visited the class website? Please email me or write a note letting me know if you have visited the class website this year, if you find it useful, and what you would like to see added to it. With the help of Mrs. LuBogo, a parent in the PM class, we hope to have it updated soon. Thanks for your patience.
knagy@cromwellct.org



Friday, April 02, 2004

ECS Pre-K Classroom News Afternoon Class April 2, 2004

A Peek at the Week
This week we talked quite a bit about spring, including planting seeds and growing plants. The children planted their own sunflower seed, following a sequence of what to do first, next, and last. We will watch the seed sprout, and see the seedling, and then the plant and last the flower. As a project, the children cut out the pictures of the sequence, colored them, and glued them in order of steps 1-6. These are hanging in the classroom and will be sent home next week.
At the science center, we now have an aquarium with a snail and a few plants in it. The children observed the snail this week, and we talked about our future guests in the aquarium: frog eggs. We learned about the sequence of the frog egg, to tadpole, to a frog. The eggs will be arriving soon, and the children are looking forward to watching the tadpoles transform to frogs. The children colored a coffee filter using eyedroppers, and these will become flowers which we will add stems and leaves to, and hang outside the classroom with each child’s photo in the middle of the flower. Another center this week was sorting pumpkin, sunflower, and carrot seeds. The children guessed which cup contained more seeds, then counted them to find the actual number. Since the carrot seeds were the smallest, it looked as if there was the least amount in that container, when in fact it had the most. Other centers included: dramatic play doctor/veterinarian office, blocks, coloring on our bellies on the floor, and look what I can do. **Vocabulary words for this week are in italics.**
Speech and Language
This week Matt and Molly were busy trying to get the monkey out of the tree. Almost everyone is now able to sequence the 4 events in the stories. They are becoming experts and answering yes/no and “wh” questions. When we answer “wh” questions the children are now able to put their responses in the form of a sentence, with a few reminders. We have been practicing the alphabet song, in sign language and we count in sign language to 10 and then backward to 0. The children are working hard at developing their phonological awareness skills. Everyone is now able to rhyme. Keep up the great work!

PT Group
This week the children pretended to be a slithering spring creature: a snake. One child rode on the scooter board on his/her belly, tagging the other children. Once a child was tagged, s/he would then be a snake riding on his/her belly on a scooter board. When everyone was a snake, the game started again with the last child tagged as the first snake. This took a lot of listening and following directions…the class did great!

Thanks..
A big thanks to Mrs. LuBogo for reading to us on Thursday, and to Mrs. Julia for reading on Friday. The children enjoy the stories and giving familiar faces “high 5’s

Looking Ahead
In April we will talk about nature, planting, weather/April showers, Clothing, and Self-Care. Parents are always welcome to volunteer in the classroom. If you have a special project you would like to share with the class related to one of these topics, you are always welcome to come in!

Feel free to email me anytime at: knagy@cromwellct.org
Reminders:
Upcoming readers: 2:30
April 1 Nanfi LuBogo
April 2 Christine Julia
April 8 Amy Pellet
April 15 Still available
We look forward to seeing you!
A sign up for May/June will be coming home soon.

Have you visited the class website? Please email me or write a note letting me know if you have visited the class website this year, if you find it useful, and what you would like to see added to it. With the help of Mrs. LuBogo, we hope to have it updated soon. Thanks for your patience. knagy@cromwellct.org