More October Fun in Enrichment

Good afternoon families,

What a fun week at school! A couple housekeeping notes to start off:

· Book Grams are available for purchase in the middle room (through the hallway to the adult bathroom, ask a teacher to show you). They are $3 each. In November, as part of our Literacy Month celebration, these books with a special message written by you will be delivered to each child. This is also a fundraiser for our school!

· Cold season is upon us. We have had so many generous donations made to our school! If you are out shopping and would like to pick up a box of tissues or a roll of paper towels (for cleaning) we would GREATLY appreciate it. We go through a lot of paper products this time of year.

· Lastly, a reminder that at Jack and Jill we do not wear costumes to school. Please feel free to have your child wear fall colors/t-shirts to celebrate on Wednesday, the 27th.

This week at MORNING MEETING we read 10 Orange Pumpkins by Stephen Savage. The children really enjoyed this counting book. We were very impressed as they counted down the pumpkins on each page. We have some very mathematical brains in our class.

Here is what’s NEW in CENTERS!

Discover Center: This week we explored engineering with a gear play set. The children used placed plastic gears on a pegboard. They could even add pieces to build up their creations. They had to make decisions about where to place the gears to get them to move.

Art: The students practiced cutting with scissors this week. We worked on holding the scissors in the thumbs-up position to snip paper. They used glues sticks to stick the paper pieces onto pictures of ghosts, cats, or pumpkins. This was a big hit! Today we also added some stickers to the art table.

Easel: More gluing practice at the easel. Children used their pinchy fingers to put paint-sample pieces onto a paper to make a candy corn collage.

Literacy: The boys and girls practiced matching the first letter of everyone’s name. There were papers with each student’s name printed stuck to the whiteboard. Students matched leaves with corresponding letters on them to the correct name. Learning letters for preschoolers works best when the letters are meaningful to them. The letters in their first names are a great place to start.

Writing: Tracing practice this week with dry erase markers. They traced wavy and straight lines, connecting the pumpkin to the patch.

We are also LOVING our karate lessons with Sensei Michael! He is teaching them about confidence, respect, and safety. I’m sure your children have shown you some of their moves!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Brenda Daday & Christina Renoni