The month of October has flown by in our PreK class. It is hard to believe we are nearing the holidays!

We have been very busy and are moving along nicely in our academic program. As we introduce each letter, we will work on letter recognition (upper and lower case), initial sound, word patterns and letter formation.   In the month of October, we have introduced the letters C,O, A, D, G, and M.  The children are working in small groups with various mediums including, sand paper, shaving cream, markers, and pencils to help develop the fine motor skills which will strengthen handwriting.  Parents,  please remember as papers go home that writing is a developmental skill that needs time and practice to master. The children are having so much fun with our word wall words. We are up to 25 words and are now able to make a variety of sentences!

In addition, we had a wonderful culminating dinosaur party to coordinate with our “Dinosaur” theme week.  Thank you so much for all your support!  The children thoroughly enjoyed the dinosaur egg hunt, snack, and dinosaur goodie bag.

We also participated in Fire Prevention Week.  The children talked about fire prevention, fire safety and dialing 911 in emergencies.  The children watched an educational video about not playing with matches, how to “stop, drop and roll” should your clothing is on fire, get low and go, and discussing a family fire escape route and “safe place” with their family members.  We had an opportunity to practice RNS&K’s fire escape routes.  The children climbed out of our emergency exit window and met in our “safe place” by the front tree near the parking lot.

Our literature story for the month was Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion.  The children discussed the characters, setting, and conflict (problem) using context clues.  We also studied a bit of history with Christopher Columbus.  The children looked for land using their telescopes made of paper towel rolls and sang a little jingle to help them remember.

In Math, we worked on patterns, one to one correspondence, and writing numbers 0-5. We investigated how math is part of our everyday life.  The children looked for patterns in animals, clothing, and other places in our environment.

October would not have been complete if we did not talk about the season of Fall and how our environment, people, and animals change.  We had fun reading stories about apple trees, pumpkin patches, and spooky surprises.

Again, we would like to thank you for all your support, especially during the Halloween party.  Much of the success of this event was due to such great parent support in organizing the say! Have safe and fun weekend.  See you in November!

Sarah Schmid and Georgette Steckler

October was a “spooktacular” month!  We were very busy with leaves, pumpkins, bats, ghosts, scarecrows, and more pumpkins.  We were up to our elbows in the color orange!  We have had many different fun activities to introduce orange, especially with our Jack-O-Lanterns hanging on the outside bulletin board. Our shape this month was circle and again, we were able to incorporate the circle into many activities as well.  Please don’t forget to check out our Nursery Rhyme Board inside the classroom. This month is “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater”.  Ask your child to recite the nursery rhyme.

We talked about Fall and the leaves changing colors and falling.  We had a lot of fun at our circle times this month.  The children are starting to contribute, sing, and are able to sit longer and enjoy our songs. I’m sure they bring their favorite songs home to sing to you.

Coming up in November……Our color is yellow and the shape will be the triangle
Nursery Rhyme: “Hey Diddle Diddle”

We are so happy the children have all adjusted to our class.  The days are very busy and happy for the 2′s!

Ms. Miles & Mrs. Katie

October began with our class wearing the color blue for Blue Monday.  We definitely had a fun time learning and doing activities for the letter “B”.  This also included a special afternoon sitting on our beach towels playing Beach Blanket Bingo!  “M” brought us monkey puppets, mice and many other Mm phonics activities.  We are finishing the month with the letter “K”.

Columbus Day was celebrated by making a special headband with the ships the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria on it, as well as learned a song about Christopher Columbus who “sailed the ocean blue in 1492!”

We completed our five senses unit with a special tasting and smelling activity.

Fire safety and prevention has been an important part of our discussions this month.  We asked the children to talk with their families about finding a special place to meet outside of their house in case of a fire or emergency.  We will have a visit from the fire department on October 27th and look forward to learning other methods of fire safety.

In math we have been learning about positions and patterns as well as introducing subtraction in the simplest form by using our snacks to ”add to or take away from”.  When the math work comes home you may notice that one side of the paper may not been completed.  As you know, we are working in a Kindergarten math book and some of the activities may be to advanced or too complicated for the children at this time.  We do not want to frustrate them with concepts that are too difficult.  We want to challenge, not frustrate!

Our month will end with our Halloween celebration and trip to the Rockville Nursing Home (next door) with Ms. Nina.

Coming in November:

• Fall
• Celebrate the 50th day of school
• Letters Tt, Rr, Pp
• Thanksgiving
• Practice writing names and numbers 0-5 as well as practice cutting
• Math positional words/patterns
• Introduce sight words I, you, we, will, me, a, be, he, look, see, and

We are very busy in PreK!
Esther and Toni

The first days of school have flown by very quickly! Our children are enjoying the daily routines and activities. They look forward to greeting friends at the door, often with favorite toys already in hand. The familiar pattern is comforting to all the children and in these first months play groups and cooperative play have already developed in our classroom.

Our themes for the first few weeks have been school and friends, apple season, and, of course, Halloween. We have also introduced numbers and the alphabet. Our alphabet unit will be ongoing throughout the school year concentrating on teaching the alphabet through literature. We are preparing an alphabet book that will go home at the end of the year. A real keepsake!

Our art activities have included painting, drawing, and dip dots. These art activities will continue through the school year. Another theme on which we are focusing is “classroom manners,” encouraging sharing and communication in play. We are also starting to assign jobs to the children which is something they all look forward to.

As November approaches, our theme will be Thanksgiving and the season of fall. We will continue with varied art projects, and introduce new toys as the children’s interests broaden. We look forward to seeing the playgroups expand and hearing the children share their ideas with friends.

Happy Halloween from the 3D3′s teachers, Coral Bell, Dawn Gladstone, and Evelyn Mendoza

WOW, October was a busy month for us!  During October we focused on the color orange, shape-the circle, and our nursery rhyme was “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater”.  We had lots of fun talking about Halloween and Autumn as well.  We finished the month with a fun Halloween gathering upstairs.  This was the first time we held a celebration in this manner.

November also promises to bring lots of fun as we focus on the color yellow, our shape is  triangle, and the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”.  We will also continue to talk about autumn and Thanksgiving.  We will talk about what we are thankful for, or as we explain it to the children-”things that we are happy for”.

We look forward to another exciting month with our 2′s!
Jenn Auroux and Brenda Rodriguez

October has been a very busy and fun month!  We introduced our “Alphabet through Literature “Unit.  As we introduce each letter, we will be reading a story using that letter in the Title.  We will coordinate art activities, games, activities and additional stories to introduce the letter.  The children are really enjoying the stories and activities.  We played with beans and bean bags for the letter B, as well as made edible black cats.  We ate cookies and cucumbers for the letter C.  There will be more fun and food to follow!

The children loved our mini pumpkin patch with real straw.  We made lots of “orange” and Halloween projects.  Our classroom is just awesome with all of our creations!  We will continue with our alphabet, shape, and color units in November.  We will also start a Thanksgiving unit complete with Pilgrims, Indians, and turkeys.  We will make corn muffins with the children and have a little feast.

The children love music with Miss Nina and Hip Hop with Miss Janice!  It is a highlight of the week when they come to our class!

We continue working on developing and strengthening our fine motor skills each day.  This month we laced pumpkins and tore paper to decorate our large black cat.

Thank you to one of our students for bringing in traditional Indian candy for the celebration of Diwali.

We are very thankful for our wonderful children and parents.  Thank you for our yummy treats and special drinks provided by the teacher appreciation committee of the Parents Association.

In December we will have both a Chanukah and Christmas party.  Please let us know if you can help.  We also welcome other traditions and holidays.  Again, we are very grateful for all of you!

Until November….
Chris, Linda, Julie and Kim

We are already in November and our days are comfortable, predictable in schedule, filled with fun, interesting and varied projects for the children.  We will have our two new poem pages finished soon. Look for them on our respective in-room bulletin boards.  Our new color is yellow and our shape for the month is the triangle.  We will use both the equilateral triangle as well as the isosceles triangle.  Sorting and matching games are fun to do with the triangles with both three dimensional items and art project paper shapes.

We will read stories and work on finger plays having to do with Thanksgiving, but we will try to focus on what being “thankful” means when you are just “two turning three.”  Read our daily note to find out some of the things we talk about in regards to being thankful. Always fun comments!  We will send some of the children’s thoughts home integrated with their art projects.

We will also continue with seasonal changes and animals.  Have you seen our “tree” housing a bear, a raccoon and a bunny on a bed of shredded newspaper? We painted the box brown. We learned to tear paper which we used for the bedding.  Everything has a purpose and everything relates to our themes!

Some reminders:

• Please label outerwear clothes with a permanent marker
• Jackets, hats and mittens are needed now
• Check your diaper supply
• Try to read our notes so that you are familiar with your child’s day which can lead to fun conversations about school
• Remember not to send any candy with lunch

For the holidays coming up this month and in December, again we would like to stress that we have our own snack celebration, not a party.

We will have our first three year old birthday this month.  We request that you send in cookies, doughnut holes or other simple snacks which we will give to the children at snack time. Please make sure that whatever you bring in that morning for snack contains at least 8 of the same kind, shape, flavor, color, etc.    Every child is given a crown to wear and take home, we sing Happy Birthday, and we will take a picture if you would like to leave a camera with us.

This is just a class event.  Thank you for understanding.

We always have an Un-Birthday party in June for non-school birthdays.

Remember, feel free to call school if you have any questions or concerns, leave a message, and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

For now,
Dana