February 12, 2017

Was the groundhog wrong? Is spring really here? What a beautiful morning we are having today. It almost makes me want to go outside and get started on some spring yard clean up but I think instead I will enjoy some sun and fresh air sitting on my deck reading a book this afternoon!

I forgot to bring my camera home from school on Friday so I won't be able to post any pics today, however, I will bring it home tomorrow and load them tomorrow night to share with all of you.

This week we are closed on Friday. February 17th for teacher training.

Tuesday, February 14th is our class Valentine's Day party at 9:30 in the morning. If your child does not attend school on Tuesdays you are welcome to bring your child but you must stay with them and they have to go home when the party is done.

The food sign-ups are as follows; 

Mini Cupcakes...Lane and Elijah

Potato Chips.....Claire Lees and Lauren

Cheetos.... Ava

Grapes.....Elijah and Nathan

Cheese Cubes...McKinley

Ranch Dip....Erin

Apples....Saralynn

Popcorn....Nathan

Hershey Kisses...Rylan

Juice...Isabella

The children in our classroom are as follows:

Ava
Courtney
Claire Lees
Erin
Lauren
Saralynn
Isabella
Hayden
Cayden
Elijah
Huck
Landon
Lucas
Mason
Maddox
McKinley
Nathan
Rylan
Zaine
Lane


Starting on Wednesday of this week we will begin a study of art...artists, art styles, different mediums and anything art related. We will start off our study by learning about Picasso and his different periods of art and will be creating our own Picasso portraits on paper and on cardboard masks. If you have any plain cardboard laying around, even if it's corrugated on one side, I would love to have it for the kids to cut out pieces to create eyes, noses, mouths, ears, etc. We also need plain cardboard to make a triangle mask shape a little larger than a child's face. If possible I would like to have it for the following week...February 20.

If you have any children's books that talk about colors, art, painting, etc, we would love to borrow them for a day or two if you wouldn't to share them with us!

Please continue to work on scissor skills at home. I can't emphasize enough how important it is for them to know how to hold and use scissors as well as how to hold a crayon, pencil, marker, etc. These are basic skills needed for kindergarten. We work as much as we can on these skills but I would love for them to be cutting at home as well. They really need to work on keeping their thumb up and elbows in to their body. So many of them are still holding their hand upside down and their elbows are far out from their body when cutting. When they have their hand upside down to cut, this is called a pronated grasp and is more seen in kids ages 2-3 years old. We also have many children still holding their crayons with their whole fist. We have been working hard on correcting and teaching the correct ways to  hold scissors and pencils but we need them to work on these skills at home as well. Once a child reaches approximately third grade, the window of opportunity to correct the grasps closes. The brain no longer can be trained hold a pencil or scissors the correct way. I went through this with one of my own children and he would not stop using his own way of holding a pencil and I was told this by one of the public schools occupational therapists and still to this day, at age 25, he still uses 4 fingers in an awkward looking way to write. I want for all our children to be able to enter kindergarten with the skills they need to be successful.


Leaders For The Week Of February 13-17: 

Monday:         Erin

Tuesday:        Claire Lees

Wednesday:    Hayden

Thursday:       Saralynn/Nathan

Friday:           Closed For Teacher Training


Have a great week!

Mrs. Wendy