Tell-A-Friend- Did you know that if you refer a family to our program you will receive a free week of tuition?!?!

Bright Beginnings partners with several corporations and institutions including UVA and PRA, providing employees with a 5% discount off of tuition! We are currently working on a partnership with Sperry Marine and PVCC. Please let us know if your company would be interested as well!

Janitorial Staff: Each teacher takes primary responsibility over her room, ensuring a clean environment for the children and for them to work in! However, we do have a housekeeper who works on big projects for us, she’s our year-round “spring cleaner!” Recently, she has deep cleaned the bathrooms, kitchens, and janitor’s closets, at all of our three schools. We also have hired a company who comes in monthly to clean, strip, and buff our floors.

Chili Cook Off: Thank you Tory Selmer for the evite! We hope you all will come out and submit your chili recipes! Please respond to the evite or sign up on your child’s door!

Our next Parent Advisory meeting will be on February 16th!

Help Promote Speech and Language Skills at an Early Age

The following are ten ways you can nurture the five different areas of speech and language development in typically developing infants and toddlers.

Social Language
1) Eye contact. When communicating with your child, look at his or her face and eyes as often as possible. This helps your child learn that it is appropriate to look at people during communication. Children learn a lot about you through facial expressions and acquire articulation skills by watching the movement of your mouth.
2) Taking turns. Talk to your child and then pause to give them a moment to verbalize. This teaches them the art of turn taking.

Expressive Language
3) Give your child space. When your child is trying to communicate with you and you know what they want, give them a few seconds before you instantly meet their needs. This will give them the opportunity to vocalize (coo and babble), point, or attempt a word.
4) Give your child choices and then let them express their choice by pointing, vocalizing, or attempting words. The feelings of confidence a child gains by expressing their own choice are building blocks for further exploration of expressive language.

Receptive Language
5) Get your child to follow instructions. Start with simple requests that only involve one element, such as "smile" or "kiss." Then increase to two elements when one element becomes easy for your child (i.e. "Hand up," or "Touch your nose," and so on).
6) Read simple books to your child with one or two pictures on each page. Ask them questions that can be answered verbally or by pointing to the correct picture. Try not to put too much pressure on them. If your child does not respond after about 10 or 15 seconds, model the answer for them with a positive tone of voice.

Vocabulary Development
7) Reinforce and demonstrate. If your child produces a verbal attempt that resembles a word, praise them with a pleasant tone of voice and then model the word that you think they attempted. For example, if the child says "ba" for ball, say "You said ball. Yes, it is a ball!"

Articulation
9) Observe how often other people understand your child's speech. This will give you an idea of how clear his or her articulation really is (parents usually understand their children more than an outside listener).
10) Articulate your words clearly when you communicate with your child. Speak slowly and remember to look directly at your child's face.

Stacy Torrence M.S. CCC-SLP

In the Walrus class:
Ms. Erin: “Who can tell me something we learned about Harriet Tubman?”
Cate: “Harriet Tubman lives with me at my house!”

In the Rooster class:
On hot chocolate…
Alex: “My mommy said I need to try new food. But I don’t like new food! But I do like hot chocolate!”
Ina: “I want four marshmallows because I’m four”
Rush: “I want WAY more than four! I want 800!”

The Pelican Class
This week the Pelicans have read a lot of books! We looked at books about farm animals where we could make animal sounds. Maegan, Berkeley, and Jackson, like to count the children in the room and then try to repeat their names. Looking at picture cards has been one of Gray and Sami’s favorite things to do. 1-2-3 Down you go is a game that Ashlyn and Keaton like to play as they slide down your legs. Some of the children have been crawling and racing to one end of the room to see who can get there the fastest! It has been a lot of fun! Have an enjoyable weekend! Keep our little friends healthy and well!

Ms. Sue

The Kangaroo Class
The Kangaroos have had a wonderful week experimenting with hot and cold. We used a cold and hot water tub to play in. We made ice cubes and watched them melt on the table. Our hands got cold as we were playing with them so we rubbed them together to get warm again. In art, we made polar bears, snowmen with pom poms, and snowballs with paint. We are working on direct sentences “Beat Jen,” to instruct Ms. Jen to beat the drum. This is helping the Kangaroos communicate effectively! Have a great weekend!

Ms. Jen

The Peacock Class
Hello Peacock families and friends! This week in the Peacock class we have had fun learning about the letter “H.” We learned some words that begin with “H,” like, house, horse, and hat! We used our flashcards to help us with this letter. This week we also learned about the weather outside. We talked about the difference between hot and cold temperatures, we made a classroom graph of places that are cold and places that are hot. We also read and sang our favorite nursery rhymes like, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and “Old MacDonald.” We also enjoyed finger painting as well as painting with paint brushes on the easel. This week was the first of our new room set up, all of the children seem to like it and have adapted well to our new classroom set up! If you ever have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to stop by!

Ms. Lee

The Bunny Class
Hello Bunny families! The Bunnies had a wonderful week exploring new things. For math this week we focused on up and down and left and right directions. To learn these new concepts the Bunnies had a lot of fun playing games and discovering the difference between the two. Nathan enjoyed playing “Simon Says” to learn his left from his right! During science time we discussed birds in the winter. We discovered how and why birds migrate, where they go, and when they come back. Addie really enjoyed reading stories about the behavior of birds during the winter. For language arts we are continuing the Discovery Quest book series. This week we read poems, and Mother Goose type fairy tales. We also read stories about winter, snow, and snowmen! Jake loves the story called Snow Friends, about a bear who builds a snowman for a friend! For social awareness we are continuing our exploration of problem solving. We worked really hard communicating, rather than screaming, crying, or hitting, to solve problems. I have already started to notice a difference from last week, and I think you will too!

Thank you for another wonderful week in the Bunny room! Have a great weekend!

Ms. Whitney

The Walrus Class
The snow is beginning to melt and the Walrus kids are keeping busy! In math, we are continuing to learn about size, measurement, and spatial concepts. In order to illustrate how measurement is used to establish the size or amount of something we measured the size of our heads! Ms. Erin showed us a tape measure, explained the numbers and demonstrated how it is used. Each of us had the opportunity to find out the size of our head, we ranged from 18.5 inches to 21 inches! We also worked on estimating size by guessing if one object would fit inside of another based on our visual perception of size and space.

In science, we discussed birds in winter! We talked about the North and South and the differences in climate between the two. We then decided that birds would rather fly to a nice warm environment rather than being stuck in the cold! We also did an experiment with magic marbles and jiggly jewels that Matthew brought in. We each put a few tiny marbles into a large bucket of water and as the day went on we watched them expand into slippery bouncy balls!

Our language arts lessons have been based around the letter “H” as well as sight words. We practiced our writing by tracing “H” and we are continually looking for “H’s” in our reading materials. We have been introduced to the sight words, “a, an, and at” and we have practiced using them in sentences as well as recognizing them each day! We also read Buzzzzz Said the Bee where we learned about words that are also sounds! In this week’s community meeting we learned “Cobbler, Cobbler, Mend My Shoes!”

In art , we made beautiful winter trees from our handprints! We sprinkled some sweet snow (sugar!) on them and they turned out to resemble an icy winter tree you’d find in a snowy field. We also made some snazzy, sparkly, top hats and snowman puppets! In social awareness, we had show and tell where we got to play with Rye’s antique truck, Sophia’s sophisticated gerbles, Matthew’s Hullabaloo, and Remmer’s Transformers! We also have been learning about African Americans who changed history. We learned all about Harriet Tubman and all of the great things she did for our nation. For our cooking project, we made delicious blueberry muffins. We measured, stirred, and read, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, as well as Jamberry, while they baked! We all enjoyed the treats but Bree and Ava Jordan especially loved the blueberry goodness! We’d like to give a special warm welcome to our new Walrus friend Natalie! She’s a super wonderful friend and loves to help out around our classroom; not to mention, she’s an awesome leader! Have a great weekend!

Reminders and Info:
Our food drive canister is still up front for donations! Please remember to bring sheets and blankets for your student each Monday and take them home to wash each Friday. Due to limited space, please limit the number of toys brought in from home on non show and tell days!

Ms. Erin

The Rooster Class
This week, the Roosters were hard at work with our theme: Winter! In art, we made our own snowflakes and painted frost on “windows.” We also made a special treat, polar bear cookies using Oreos, white icing, marshmallows and M&Ms. They were so yummy!

In science, we learned about what birds do in winter, migrate! In math, we measured ingredients and made homemade hot chocolate! We also used pattern shapes to make snowflakes! Finally, we used birthday candles to practice addition.

In language arts, we continued working with the letter “Hh.” We brainstormed words starting with “H” and wrote the letter out ourselves. Finally, we worked with new sign words: he, she, me, it.

The Roosters also continued working on problem solving. We worked with several common situations like what to do if someone cuts in line, putting on our own coats and shoes, etc. We are loving winter in the Rooster class!

Ms. Amanda