Thank you all for celebrating the Virginia Festival of the Book with us! Our Mystery Readers were great! Thank you Meg Heubeck, Amy Brudin, Bonnie Marty, and Ellen Graap Loth for coming in to read to our classes!

It’s time for our Original Works Fundraiser! Today you received a catalog, order form, and price sheet. Your children are currently working on their fantastic keepsake art projects. You will be able to view your child’s artwork in his or her classroom. Order forms are due by next Thursday, March 25th! Please see the front desk with questions.

Oral Motor Exercises to Try at Home
Here is a list of effective oral motor exercises you can practice with your toddler to get the muscles in the mouth strong and ready for all of those speech sounds.  I will be doing more oral motor exercises in upcoming language groups. 
Blowing Bubbles
This is a great exercise for breath control as well as pursing the lips.

Blow a Harmonica or Kazoo
Here is another great oral motor exercise for breath control and lip pursing, but with this one you get to make some noise!

Using a Straw
Practicing with a straw will obviously work on sucking skills, however it also involves pursing those lips again.

"Thin" liquids like water or apple juice are good starters.
As you progress you might want to try a "thicker" liquid like a milk shake.

The following oral motor exercises provide tactile stimulation. Tactile Stimulation refers to stimulating or "waking up" a muscle area by sense of touch.
Brushing
Using a toothbrush, brush the upper and lower lips. You can purchase toothbrushes with different levels of stiffness. Try to use different levels ranging from very soft to stiff.

Icing
Putting ice on the lips will certainly help "wake up" those muscles. You can use a plain ice cube for this exercise, but ice pops are easier to use and add some flavor as well.

Licking Ice Cream
Who wouldn't enjoy this activity? Put some ice cream in a cone and let it melt a little. Then practice using just your tongue (no lips) to lick the dripping ice cream.

Stacy Torrence M.S. CCC-SLP

The Pelican Class

March has been a little “mad” with the weather warming up, cooling down, sun and rain! We have been able to get outside sometimes to enjoy riding in our buggy or just sitting and reading books. We have been talking about different smells and textures this week, and we’ve found a lot of them outside! Keaton’s little arms fly all the way up in the air when he hears the geese flying by. We have been playing hide-and-seek in the classroom where I hide and toy and the children try to find it, Sami and Gray had so much fun doing this, they would even try to race to see who could get to it first! Gray has also started to transition up to the toddler room with the bigger kids! He’s doing a great job! Sami will be moving up soon as well! We have been singing a lot this week! Old Mac Donald is one of our favorites; we like to play with the animals while we are singing! We are even starting to connect the animal with the noise it makes! We have some very smart children! For art, we made a rainbow with our hand prints, and a shamrock hat! It was a great week!

Ms. Sue

The Kangaroo Class

We had a great week in the Kangaroo class! In our Gross Motor unit we worked on stepping and then jumping over a rope! We also danced with a scarf to music! In our Fine Motor unit the children placed different shapes on a felt board. We also made a shape collage! For St. Patrick's Day we made special hats to wear! In our Practical Living/Self Help time we worked on our colors by singing a new song, "Where is red? Where is Red? Here I am, Here I am. Show me if you can, show me if you can. Where is red, where is red?" We really enjoyed having our Mystery Readers share stories with our class as well! Have a great weekend!

Ms. Jen

The Bunny Class

Hello Bunny families! The Bunnies had a wonderful week exploring and discovering new things! For math we continued to work on number recognition, focusing on numbers 1,2,3. We practiced writing these numbers on the white board. Once we master 1,2,3 we will be able to move on to 4 and 5! During science time we discussed animals. We discovered the things animals need to survive. Nathan and Martin enjoyed discussing their favorite animals! This week we introduced Geo-Boards to the Bunnies! We had such a great time discovering how to use these boards. Connor and Addie really enjoyed making shapes on the boards! During social awareness we continued to discover cooperation, focusing on sharing and taking turns. Makayla, Elara, and Jake did such a great job practicing sharing this week! Thank you for another great week in the Bunny room! Have a great weekend!


Ms. Whitney

The Peacock Class

Hello Peacock families and friends! What fun we have had learning this week in our classroom! This week we have learned and talked about the color green, shamrocks, rainbows, pots of gold, leprechauns, and of course St. Patrick’s Day! We have also had a very fun time having special readers come into our classroom for story time! This week in art we have discovered what two colors make green with finger-painting! We also made shamrock hats and collages, as well as glitter fun in making rainbows! In math and science we have had fun sorting flower blocks, playing with Geo-Boards, making shapes, and using our new magnet car puzzle! This week we have also been working on “teamwork” in our classroom. We have been working very hard especially when it comes to cleaning up after center time, this is definitely something we have to work on but the teamwork strategy is helping us out! Thank you all for bringing in tissues, as you know with the cold weather/allergies we go through them fairly quickly!

If you ever have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to stop by!

Thanks,

Ms. Lee

The Walrus Class

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  The Walrus class has had a busy week full of shamrocks and lots of leprechaun green!  In Math we've been focusing on shapes, number recognition and graphing.  We made a "who wore green?" graph in celebration of St. Patrick's Day for which we counted and interpreted our results.  We played one of our favorite file folder games, "Shape Shop", in order to practice shape identification and worked on number recognition by playing a game in which we had to locate a specific number given to us by Ms. Erin!  In Science we are continuing our focus on animal research by learning more about the Walrus, snakes and even ducks!  We are learning all about different methods of research including the computer and books.  We're discovering and exploring ways to find out more about our interests.  Emily See especially enjoys our animal research on Encarta for Kids!  In Language Arts we have been working on the letter Ss.  We made a list of words that begin with Ss, traced Ss and made yarn S'!  We also are continually working on our sight words.  We are able to recognize I, can, go, fast, a, an, and at!  Thomas and Lucy are doing a fantastic job with identifying sight words and using them in sentences.  In art we went "green"!  We made shamrock hats and a shamrock collage.  Our collage work allowed us to use our fine motor skills; we practiced cutting, tearing and gluing!  We also practiced learning the colors of the rainbow by doing rainbow art.  In Dramatic Play we pretended to be little leprechauns dancing an Irish jig!  In Social Awareness we continued to work on our cooperation skills.  We had more puzzle races (which are a hit!) and demonstrated cooperating within our classroom space.  In Children's Humanities we played in our nature stations!  We sorted and explored river rocks, sea shells and various types of nuts.  For our cooking project we made mini cupcakes that were each a different color of the rainbow!  We learned about color mixing and practiced saying the colors of the rainbow in order. We love cooking together and are able to practice our counting, measuring and most importantly our tasting skills!  Alan, Sam and Matthew really enjoy helping out with the cooking projects and are quite the little chefs!  We hope that everyone had as good of a week as we did!  Have a great weekend!

Reminders and Information:  Please do not send toys from home to school with your student except for on Show and Tell Friday's!  We have show and tell on every Friday of the month.  Please be sure to gather everything from your student's cubby at the end of each day as this is where you will find your student's art work as well as other important information. 

Thanks,

Ms. Erin

The Rooster Class

This week in the Rooster room we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and the color green! For art, we made a shamrock collage using different shades of green! We also used crayons to create a rainbow and then painted over the crayon with a blue wash creating a rainbow in a blue sky! On St. Patrick’s Day, we made leprechaun hats so that we could all be in the Irish spirit! Finally for our cooking project, we made green eggs and toast and red Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss! We loved beating the eggs and enjoying them for snack!

In math this week we continued our work with shapes and colors. We worked on shape recognition, shape patterning, and creating pictures using shapes! We have come really far in recognizing various shapes! In honor of St. Patrick’s Day we brainstormed “green things” and created a graph to display how many Roosters wore green on Wednesday!

In social studies and social awareness, we learned about St. Patrick’s Day: what it is and the different traditions related to it. We discussed being lucky, wearing green, and even tried to dance an Irish jig! We even hunted for gold in our sandbox outside!

This week was an extra special week for language arts because we celebrated the Virginia Festival of the Book! We were visited throughout the week by special visitors who read to us! Thank you to all the parents who participated! We also began working with a new letter of the week, “Ss.” We brainstormed words that start with “Ss” and practiced writing both the uppercase and lower case “Ss.” We also worked with several nursery rhymes this week, reading them, reciting them, and acting them out with a felt board. Children who are familiar with nursery rhymes tend to read earlier and better than children who are not familiar with the rhymes. We will continue working with these throughout the spring!

Finally, I hope everyone picked up the weekend skill building activity. It is working with “Ss,” our letter of the week!

Ms. Amanda