Welcome to our first blog post of our 2016/2017 school year! I hope all of you have had a wonderful Labor Day weekend and have been able to spend time with family having fun or just relaxing! I woke up this morning to hearing an epic battle going on outside with the family of crows that lives around my house. I go out onto my back deck to see what is going on and walked into the web of a zipper spider. The spider wasn't too happy but they are really cool to look at with all their pretty colors. It turns out the crows where very upset by a huge hawk that I am assuming was trying to disturb a nest and the hawk was sitting in the tree right off my back deck. I have never been that close to a hawk. He kept eyeballing me so I decided it was probably safer to go back inside! The crows where able to run the hawk off and our beagle had a lot of fun watching the whole show and the neighborhood is quiet again.

Please help me welcome Grandpa Jack to our classroom! I can't say enough good things about this sweet man who is our foster grandfather to our kids. He gets down on the floor and builds things in the block area, he has tea parties in the dramatic play center, he reads to them, listens to music with them, sits at the table and eats meals and talks with the kids, plays outside with them and is there to give a hug and a smile.We are very thankful to have him in our classroom and in the lives of our children!

This past week has probably been the most seamless transition with children I have encountered and I have to thank their previous teachers for getting them ready to be in the k-prep classroom! You may have noticed we do not have a calendar and other typical calendar type activities going on at the white board that you are used to seeing and that is because it has been shown, through research, that children do not understand and grasp time and day concepts until around first grade. They may be able to learn by rote the days of the week and so on but they don't learn it for meaning in their own life until later in public school. I have always had a calendar, letter and number of the week and the days of the week, however, after attending workshops and trainings over this past school year, I made the decision to take down the calendar, letter and number of the week, etc and focus instead on learning for meaning and doing engaging activities with the children that will help them learn while having fun. We will still be doing recognition of letters and numbers, patterns, phonics and phonemic awareness, estimation, writing and all things necessary for kindergarten prep but my approach is now doing them in a meaningful way and not by rote. For example the other day I got out our letter sound jar and in it was a dinosaur. The kids all passed it around, looked at it, shook the jar and guessed it was a dragon or dinosaur. They said the object started with the letter D and then we found that letter on the board (mixed in with a few other letters). We wrote upper case and lower case Dd on the board and some of the kids said my name starts with D or my name has a D in it...which is what we want the kids to be doing...knowing the letters for meaning. The told me dog, duck, door also started with the letter d so we sounded them out and wrote them on the board. We clapped out the syllables in our names which helps build phonemic awareness and counted how many children where present each day. We also do our draw and tell stories which helps the children focus on the story while also looking at the board trying to figure out what I am drawing in connection with the story. We then label the picture which again shows them print has meaning. This week I will start doing Paley Storytelling...I have not done this with any other class and after touring the Verner Early Learning Center last year I decided I really wanted to try this with the kids. This is a link as to how this type of story telling works...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkJl8dyzRQQ&list=PLDN_6TK_-dNY3-g-amMEgjMeWqGbJFNYH   I hope the children will love doing these stories!

• I would like to do a loose parts collection for our classroom for the children to use their imagination to create whatever they would like to create...here is a short list of some suggested items if you would like to bring some in for the children to use in their indoor play.

corks from bottles, film canisters (if anyone uses them anymore), scarves, wrapping paper, tin foil, hair rollers, prism, old gadgets, curtain rings, tubing, pool noodles, marbles, painters tape, empty spice containers, wooden spoons, tile and rug samples (small about 2"x2"), bangles, funnels, plastic cups, small pvc pipes and connectors, muffin tins (with 6 holes), beads, bubble wrap, keys, straws, gemstones (the kind in the pack for $1 at the dollar tree), cotton wool or any other different type of feel fabric, small card board boxes kind of like shoe box size. 




Reminders: 

Please apply sunscreen on your child before coming to school. We will reapply in the afternoon

Please have your child wear closed toe/heel shoes to protect their little feet from getting hurt or injured while playing

If your child wears earrings, please make sure they are post earrings and not the dangly kind :)

Besides post earrings, please leave any jewelry at home. The kids take it on and off, put it in their mouth and leave it laying around and we don't want them to break or lose their special jewelry.

Please make sure your child's water bottle is labeled each day with their name and date.

Please make sure your are signing your child in and out each day



This week we will start our leaders which I will post here on the blog and our weekly email newsletter. Please have your child bring one thing to show for show and tell on their leader day. They will get to sit in our special leader chair when it is their day and will pick out the blessings for snacks and lunch and be our line leader for that day.


Leaders For The Week Of September  6-9: 

Monday:       Dakota

Tuesday:       Josh

Wednesday:  Lane

Thursday:     Elijah

Friday:          Vincent



I am so excited to be with this group of sweet kids and am looking forward to a wonderful school year!

If at any time you have any questions or concerns, please email me or leave me a note at school and I will get back to you a.s.a.p!

Have a wonderful week!

Mrs. Wendy


here are some pics from last week!