Preschool March Newsletter

February was a fun filled month. We celebrated Valentines Day and the 100^th Day. We had an exciting visit from the dentist to celebrate dental health month. And the children had a lot of fun making zoo animals to decorate for our RHS Zoo.  We also had fun competing in our own RHS Olympics.

March is expecting to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. And on March 17 Lucky the leprechaun is sure to make a visit for St. Patrick’s Day.  The children will be hard at work in the month of March creating their own art for our art show at the beginning of April.  Each teacher will have a different artist to teach the children about and will create a masterpiece from that artist. We can not wait!!!

Birthday for March – Emma 3/1

V.I.P. for March – Nicholas 3/1, Vivien and Chloe L. 3/8, Sean and Sonya 3/15, Teddy 3/22, Thomas 3/29

The following items have been missing in the preschool classroom, please check the list and see if they went home with you by accident. Thank you!

1 LL bean blue mitten

Pair of red water proof mittens

Star Wars thermos

Black mitten with zipper and Velcro, brand –Gordini

Pair of long black gloves

Thank you very much for everything that you do for us. We are having such an exciting year with you and your children. There is more excitement to come for the end of the year!

Sincerely,
your Preschool teachers,

Miss Shealene, Miss Heather, Miss Nicole and Miss Alissa

March 2010 PRE-K AND K NEWSLETTER

          March comes in like a lion in the Upstairs Classroom!  March is Ridge Hill School’s Art Month.  We spend the month of March studying several artists and then replicating the work of each artist and we culminate the intensive study with an evening Art Show is April.  Your child will learn about each artist’s history, style and influences and how to view and converse about a piece of art.  Using authentic materials and art techniques your child will participate in projects that allow him/her to create pieces similar to that of the studied artist.  We employ different teaching methods during art this month because your child is guided to recreate another’s rendering rather than art projects being open-ended and child-centered.  We feel that this short-term, teacher-directed type of art experience enhances the overall artistic experience for your child at this stage of development.  Please ask your child who we are studying each week and what he/she created.  There is a wonderful book entitled, I Am An Artist by Pat Lowery Collins that we will read with the class that would make a lovely addition to any family library and also makes a lovely gift for your child following the Art Show experience in April….just an idea.

          February was full of teeth, groundhogs, hearts, friendship, the 100th Day and finally we were treated to a visit by Dr. Pizzi and Ms. Kim who taught the children about proper dental hygiene and the importance of brushing one’s teeth before school and at bedtime.  Author, Russell Hoban, celebrated a February birthday and we read many Frances books and listened to several fun audiobooks of his works.  A Birthday for Frances and the familiar, Bread and Jam for Frances were big hits!  In March we look forward to shamrocks, rainbows, pots of gold, lions, lambs, springtime and a celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2nd!  Dr. Seuss books are great first readers and A Wocket in My Pocket is a great vehicle for teaching rhyming words and manipulating sounds in words.  If you are not familiar with this story please check it out with your child!  As a literature connection in Art Month we will be reading many Caldecott Award winning books and we will recognize Randolph Caldecott’s birthday on March 22nd.  The 2010 Caldecott Award winner is Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse, a beautiful rendition of an old Aesop fable.   If your child has a favorite Caldecott winner please send it in to school for your child to share.

          In small group the Pre-K children continue to blossom and their Kindergarten readiness skills continue to emerge.  We focused on writing numbers the HWT way through 10 as well as letters M, N and V in February.  In March we will complete the alphabet with W, X, Y and Z.  Journal writing continues to be a favorite small group activity and the children take great pride in writing their numbers and letters correctly and neatly in their special books.  Recognizing and reading numbers through 20 (and beyond), counting by 1’s, 10’s and 2’s and ordering numbers in the teens will be reinforced this month and a study of coins and their values will begin.  Rhyming, syllabication and initial consonant sounds are constantly being reinforced as well as identifying and matching the lower case letters with their upper case partners is taking place in our small groups.  Knowledge of one’s last name, phone number, street address and town are vitally important skills for this age group and reinforcement of this skill at home is always helpful for retention and confidence.  Learning all 10 digits of the phone number in order is a daunting task - some children can rattle off Mom’s cell phone number but not the home number - certainly a sign of the times!

In Kindergarten, the children have been working very hard in their HWT journals!!  We have just about finished them – it is really nice to see how much their handwriting has progressed since September.  I am thrilled to see the confidence in writing lowercase letters in their journals as well in everyday writing.  We have been doing a lot of counting by 5’s which helped us in our introduction to time unit and will come in handy when we learn about money.  It will be helpful if you practice counting by 5’s with your child, it may be a fun game to play in the car.  Time is a tricky concept for many children to understand mainly because most clocks they see are now digital and the time is much easier for them to read.  I am very happy with the continued reading success of the children – the interest and confidence continue to grow each day, WAY TO GO FRIENDS!  It is nice to see how few words are tricky for them each week, while the list of words they were able to read is getting longer!!  March will continue with time and then will move into money, as well as more independent journal writing.  As a class we will chose a Caldecott book to read and then will write about and illustrate our favorite part of the story.

If you would like to read to the class in March, we ask that it either be at drop-off or near the end of the day.  We are very busy working on our special art projects for the show and want all of the masterpieces to be a surprise!  Thank you to all the families for sending in the delicious fruit for our Friendship Day celebrations, the children really enjoyed the delicious healthy snack!

Looking forward to a fun-filled, creative colorful month!

Ms. Stacey, Ms. Jill, Ms. Dianne, Ms. Karen, Miss Jenny & Miss Maura

To Ridge Hill Parents,

Here is the email that most families received but because a server went down last week .
Dear Families,
During the month of February we have many classroom events that will be happening. Our much anticipated 100th day celebration is February 11th. All children are welcome to attend the fun activities from 10am – 11am on that day. This will be the only day and time to celebrate the 100th day.

For (Valentines Day) this year we have decided to call it “Friendship Day”. Each class will celebrate the meaning of friendship on Monday February 8th and Tuesday February 9th. The time for the festivities will be 9:30-10:30 for the preschool class and 10:30-11:30 for the pre-k/k class. The afternoon session time will be 2:00-3:00 for the preschool and 3:00-4:00 for the pre-k/k. For the Friendship Day Celebration (aka Valentines Day), each class will be making a Friendship Fruit Salad. Please have your child bring in pre-cut fruit to add to the salad. All children are welcome to bring in Valentines. Only have your child sign their name on the card. If you can keep the cards the same for boys and girls it makes the distribution so much easier. The total number of cards to bring in is 45. Please mark these dates and times down on your calendar. If you have any questions please let Miss Vicki know.
We hope you all can appreciate our need to encourage the simple meaning of friendship, kindness, sharing and spending quality time together. We will be having a busy week at RHS and know that your child will enjoy all the fun activities we have planned for them.
Thank you very much,
Vicki DeFreitas

Please remember to bring your appropriate outdoor clothing to RHS everyday. Jacket, hats and mittens are extremely important for outdoor play. In the case of snow, please make sure your child has boots everyday as well. We will go outside if the temperature is 29-30 degrees or higher. Thank you all for your help.
Much appreciation,
The Ridge Hill School Teachers

JANUARY 2010 PRE-K AND K NEWSLETTER

                Happy New Year from the Upstairs Teachers!  Winter is in full swing and the new year has brought a great deal of fun, learning and many new experiences to all of our Ridge Hill friends.  Your children have worked on creating birdhouses and feeders, snowflakes, snowpeople and many other open ended artistic creations at the art table as well as explored patterns with numbers, pictures and letters.  They studied penguins extensively and took care of their eggs and learned to walk like a penguin!  They watched and timed snow melting and freezing again and used magnifiers to examine individual snow crystals.  The students wrote about their hopes for the new year and their dreams following a study of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  The playground has been a winter wonderland and being outside with friends is great fun.  We are truly amazed at how independent the children have become with the ‘getting ready for outdoor fun’ procedure…snowpants, hat, coat, mittens, boots….etc…  Thank you for always supplying your children with the necessary gear each day so we can get outside when the weather allows!

                In the Pre-Kindergarten the students have returned to their familiar groups; Alligators, Bumblebees and Caterpillars and new material is being introduced daily while a review of previously taught skills continues.  Reading lowercase letters and matching them with their uppercase partners, reading and writing numbers into the teens and rhyming word families have been areas of focus during group time.  Pre-reading and phonemic awareness activities continue daily as well as counting to the 100th day of school.  In our HWT journals we worked on letters R, K, and A and finished up January with a review of number writing.  Reversals of 2 and 5 are common at this stage and correct practice is important so please continue to work on these tricky numbers at home to support this emerging skill.  Many of Pre-K children enjoy bringing a sight-word reader book home to practice and then returning the book to school and reading the book to their classmates.  Many children memorize the book and call this “reading.”  This is a great step towards ‘real reading’ and should be encouraged.  Ask your child to point to each word as he/she reads to support left to right reading and text awareness.  “Reading” the pictures is another wonderful way to interpret and understand a story and is also very appropriate for four and five year olds at the pre-reading stage of development.

The Kindergarten class enjoyed learning about electricity in January.  It was a lot of fun making a clock work using a potato!  In February, we will conclude electricity by making our own lights, the children are very excited about this activity.  It was amazing to see how well each child read to the class in January – thank you so much for working on their books each week at home.  Please be sure to help your child jot down the words that were tricky and easy, this is helping when identifying sounds and letter combinations that are difficult.  I am very pleased to see how well the children are doing in their sight word recognition, they are so proud of themselves.  Our number scrolls have been a lot of fun, we have several children already on their way to 200 and beyond!!  The excitement as they write the higher numbers is wonderful – they look forward to writing in them each week.  During February, we will be focusing a lot more on independent writing, this is a skill we have been doing orally but not so much on paper.  I am excited to see how much they are able to do all on their own – I am sure they will amaze me!!  The children have also been working very hard in their HWT journals - we are very close to finishing!  They all have been working very hard on writing the HWT way - it shows in their work!

                Throughout February we will be learning about career choices and important community members.  If you would like to come and share a story or activity with the children about what you do each day while they are busy at school it would greatly enhance our study.  Please schedule a time to come in to the classroom at any time during the month.  No idea is too simple.  Our 100th day celebration is coming soon and information about the exact day of the celebration will be distributed shortly.  On the day of the celebration we would like each child to bring something that represents the number 100 - it could be a bag filled with 100 pompoms or a poster with 100 stickers on it.  Your child will share these representations of 100 with the class so please engage your child in the counting and creation of the visual so that he/she is able to articulate how/why he/she chose to make 100 in that way.  A Valentine’s Day celebration will take place on Monday, February 8^th and Tuesday, February 9th.  We ask that if your child will be distributing Valentine cards that day he/she brings in 45 cards (this number represents all am/pm children in both K and Pre-K) and signs only his/her name and not address them individually to friends to make distribution easier for your child.  Please be reminded that many children suffer from allergies so please do not send in food items that contain allergens for distribution.  It is our shortest month but is already full of fun learning and activities!