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

Crozet Newsletter
June 25th, 2010

Upcoming Events:

*Monday, July 5th, We are closed in observance of Fourth of July!
*Friday July 9th, USA Night themed Children’s Night Out!
*Wednesday, July 21st, Staff Appreciation Day
*Friday, July 23rd, Aloha from Hawaii themed Children’s Night Out

Weekly Financial Memo:

July tuition is due. Pay by June 30th to avoid late fees.

Children’s Night Out is a great way to extend your hours on a Friday evening to go out for a nice quiet dinner, grocery shopping, etc….it’s not every Friday that you get three hours to get caught up on YOU! We provide yummy nutritious meals, take part in seasonal arts and crafts, and watch movies. The fee is $15.00 per child ($5.00 more for each sibling). Mark it on your calendars!
Laura Tomaine
Executive Director/CFO

School News and Notes:
We have had another wonderful week filled with fun! The children from our Forest Lakes Location came over on Friday and used our water park! They had a blast! Instead of Sprinkler Day on Friday, we had a field day! We played with water balloons, soccer balls, bubbles and so much more! We had a blast!! Thank you to all the parents who brought in special Popsicle treats! The children love them on these hot summer days!

Summer is a fun time to try new things! Here are some recipes that you can try with your child at home!

No-Cook Play Dough:
1 cup white flour
½ cup salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon alum
food coloring
½ cup water

Mix first four ingredients. Add food coloring to the water. Gradually add small amounts of water until mixture attains the consistency of bread dough. You may not use the entire ½ cup of water. You can make colors not commercially available, such as purple, by creatively mixing colors. Store in an airtight container or a plastic bag. It lasts a long time. (If you can’t find alum at the grocery store, look in the drugstore.)

Don’t forget about Bright Beginnings going GREEN!! We have just begun our recycling unit! We have tubs set up for paper and for plastic. Our children will be encouraged to recycle during the day- at snack, lunch, and after art projects! They are doing a great job recycling!

 We are fortunate to have time disposal pick up our trash. They have Van Der Linde Recycling go through their trash and recycle what they can.  We help them by sorting it for them and teach your children the importance of recycling!

We also are slowly changing our menu to be more organic. Check out our new menu, as it is displayed on our front bulletin board.

Class Notes:

The Pelican Class

The week started off with a lot of smiling faces. We enjoyed tickling the little babies all over to make them laugh. We sang a song “where are the babies”. The older ones would say Sage and Finn’s name. We made sounds like baa, ma and moo. They all watched and smiled. They enjoyed reaching for toy animals and trying to touch them. Rolling to music and tummy time wasn’t their favorite but shaking a rattle helped out. Have a great weekend.
-Ms. Sue

The Kangaroo Class

This week in gross motor/movement, we danced to music with scarves. We played in the ball pit. In the gross motor room, we enjoyed doing flips on the mat and crawling thru the tent. In fine motor, art and sensory, we made birthday cakes with playdough, played with small puzzles and made fireworks with a nice clean toilet brush. For sensory, we played fill and spill in the sandbox. We sorted color noodles. In practical living, we had a birthday party for our baby dolls and built them a house, too. We continue to work on our sign language. Have a great weekend.
-Ms. Jen

The Peacock Class
 Hello Peacock families and friends! This week our class had fun learning about and playing sports. We learned about several different types of sports, for example, football, soccer, basketball and baseball. During outside time, we were able to play kickball games. This week we also practiced our letters of the alphabet as well as our shapes. We are still working very hard on using our words instead of actions in our class. Thus far I have seen improvement, hopefully with working on it at school and working on it at home, we will be well on our way to using our words. We are having a great time being able to play in our water park. Congratulations to Willa for over coming her fear of the sprinkler! If you have not yet signed a sunscreen permission form, please do so in order for me to apply sunscreen in the afternoon. As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns please feel free to stop by! Hope everyone had a great Father’s Day!
-Ms. Lee

The Bunny Class

Hello Bunny families! What a great week we’ve had officially welcoming summer! We’ve enjoyed being outside soaking up the warm weather. The Bunnies helped Bright Beginnings plant a jam garden. We planted strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. We’ve been helping to take care of our pizza garden by making sure it has plenty of water. For math this week, we did a lot of practicing with our counting. We are working really hard on counting to ten in English and we’ve done a great job counting in Spanish. During science time, we had so much fun conducting color experiments. Each day we would pick two different colors. We would guess what we thought it might turn into, mix the colors and watch. It was a lot of fun guessing and seeing who was right. For language arts this week, we continued to study birds. We read all about different types of stories that helped us discover what birds eat, where they live and so forth.  Lastly, for Children’s Humanities we wrapped up our unit on nursery rhymes. Studying these nursery rhymes has helped the Bunnies have great ears for rhyming words!

Reminders: Sprinkler Day is everyday, so please have your child dressed in bathing suit with sunscreen on! Bike Day is every Tuesday! Have a great weekend!
-Ms. Whitney

The Walrus Class

Hello Walrus Families!
This week the Walrus class was busy learning about and playing sports with our week’s theme, “Adventure Sports”.  We learned about baseball, basketball, football and soccer and tried out our passing, throwing and kicking skills! We made three- dimensional footballs and a collage soccer ball.  We especially enjoyed having a sports drink and a sports bar taste test—we loved Gatorade! Of course we spent a lot of time outside this week enjoying the playground, sprinklers and bike day.  Please remember to bring in your child’s bike and helmet Tuesdays and every day their swimsuits and towel!
Next week, we will be having a cooking project! We will be making “Frogs on a log”.  Please sign up on our door to bring supplies.  Your help is most appreciated! Our class will also be going to the Discovery Museum on July 6th! Please bring in the money for your child to come with us! Thank you! Have a great weekend!
-Ms. Amanda and Ms. Stephanie

The Rooster Class

The Rooster class officially welcomed summer this week! Our theme for the week is sports.  We continue to review letters and their sound.  The Roosters enjoyed making up a class story about sports. We worked hard with different shapes to create patterns.  We brainstormed different types of sports. We discussed how playing a sport can keep you healthy. We voted for your favorite sport and graphed the results.  The Roosters had fun with a sports matching game.  We laced a ball, made tissue paper footballs and sponge painted a soccer ball.  We observed a mother bird feeding her babies outside. We talked about the warmer weather and other signs of summer.  Have a great weekend!
-Ms. Tracy