BRIGHT BEGINNINGS PRESCHOOL
Experienced Quality Child Care Since 1984
www.brightbeginningsva.com

Crozet Newsletter
July 23rd, 2010

Upcoming Events:
*Friday, July 23rd, Aloha from Hawaii themed Children’s Night Out
*Monday, August 2nd we have our Open House for Prospective Families (6-7pm)
*Wet and Wild– Children’s Night Out on Friday, August 6th at 5:30-8:30
*Monday, Aug. 9th: we have an Open House for Prospective Families (6-7pm)
*Friday, August 13th we are closed for Staff Development and Training.

Weekly Financial Memo:

For weekly or bi-weekly payments, tuition is due prior to vacation absences or holidays. Payments not received when due are subject to late charges.
 
Re-registration fees are due now for the 2010-2011 school year. Automatic credit cards will be charged the re-registration fee with the August payment.

School News and Notes:

This week has been another wonderful week! We went on many space adventures this week! The Kangaroos were busy taking off in their space ships that they colored, while the Bunnies and Peacocks drew of what they thought they would see in space. The Roosters and Walrus’ enjoyed reading books about space and even completing a tricky puzzle that revealed a secret about space. Ask one of them to tell you what they saw when they put all the pieces together!

Staff Appreciation Day
We celebrated our Staff Appreciation Day this week on Wednesday! Thank you to all the parents who were so willing to bring something special in for our wonderful teachers! AND for all the families who have been with us for so long! We thank you for your support. Without our teachers we simply would not be here. I’d like to send out a thank you to our teachers for their hard work and dedication.

Construction Finally Over!
Our fence for our water park has FINALLY been installed. We thank you for your patience as we have been in construction! The children have a BLAST while running through the sprinklers. We are very fortunate to go above and beyond licensing regulations and provide a fence for our teachers and children.

Recipe Fun:
This week’s recipe will blow you out of the water or the ocean rather!
Pail of Sand Cake

This novel cake, topped with crushed cookie “sand”, will be the hit of any beach party!! After your children eat this wonderful cake, scrub the pail and let them fill it with real sand (no eating allowed)!

Ingredients:
1 baked 8-inch round cake
1 8-9 cup capacity new plastic pail
24 oz. unsweetened applesauce (or 1 3-oz. package pudding, prepared)
1 c. crushed graham crackers or cookies
Shell candies
1 plastic shovel

Instructions:
1.Cut the cake into 1-in. slices. Fit the slices into the pail, alternating layers of cake with applesauce or pudding, ending with applesauce.
2.Sprinkle on the crushed cookie sand and top with shell candies.
 Now dig in with the plastic shovel.
This snack is so quick, easy, and yummy! Try it!

Class Notes:

Pelican Class

We started the week by talking about space and rockets showing them pictures of rockets in the day and night.  Painting with cubes, potatoes and broccoli was so much fun! Jason and Brooks played the game Hand to Hand by giving each other toys and placing them in the container. Sage loves her tummy time and is getting very good at reaching for toys. We all had fun shaking the noise bottles and rattles to make different sounds and singing the ABC song.  We talked about the food we eat and looked at pictures of food.  Have a great weekend!

Ms. Sue

Kangaroo Class

This week the Kangaroos have had fun in gross motor pretending to be a ball bouncing and rolling around the room. We did a hula-hoop huddle to see how many people would fit inside the hula hoop. We quickly found out that to many meant we were all on the floor! :) In fine motor/art we had a vegetable tasting, we cleaned the vegetables in the water table, and then with what we had left over we made vegetable prints. We painted space masks, and colored a space ship.  We pretended to ride a space ship and moon-walking was so much fun. We read Goodnight Moon, and went into outer space.  Be back soon! Have a great weekend!

Ms. Jen

Peacock Class

Hello peacock families and friends! We had so much fun with Blast Off week this week.  We have been having fun learning about spaceships, planets, and the outer space! We also learned about the sun and the moon too! This week we had a great time painting a group outer space collage with finger paints! We also went on a moon rock hunt outside on our playground; in addition we loved coloring and painting pictures of our Earth with different blues and greens!

As the weather is continuing to get hot outside please feel free to send in extra water bottles or cups for your child during playtime.  I do take out a pitcher of water and cups to ensure that everyone is staying hydrated while playing! If ever any questions or concerns please feel free to ask!

Ms. Lee

Bunny Class

Ms. Whitney is out enjoying her summer vacation this week!!! We try to give all of our staff at least a week off in the summer- A well needed one! :) While Ms. Whitney was out the Bunnies and the Roosters were together in the Rooster room. Check out the Rooster blurb to see all the fun things they did!

Ms. Whitney

Rooster Class

This week the Bunnies joined our class, as Ms. Whitney had a great vacation at the beach. The Roosters and Bunnies learned all about space this week!  We did lots of fun space projects including making a space mask, drawing pictures of space, finger painting, a moon and stars craft and space chair art. We also continued to work on our numbers, letters, and imaginative play with one another. We enjoyed the summer fun of riding our bikes on bike day and sprinkler day everyday. We had a great week with our friends and we have lots of fun stories to tell Ms. Whitney when she returns on Monday.

Ms. Tracy

Walrus Class

This week the Walrus class learned all about space and the stars! We made space suit helmets using paper bags and paper plates and telescopes using paper towel rolls! We used glitter to paint stars on black paper and made “space creatures” out of paper lunch socks! We even made a Paper Mache model of the solar system in a joint project with the Rooster class! It was a great week for science in the Walrus room! We learned about the sun, moon and stars! We even learned about the constellations.  As always, we enjoyed our summertime as well. Bike and sprinkler days are a HIT! Have a great weekend and we will see you next week!

Ms. Amanda and Ms. Stephanie