BABBLE

April 16, 2010

Sunscreen Reminder:

Understand that Bright Beginnings does not provide or apply sunscreen. It is recommended that sunscreen is applied liberally in the morning before arrival.  If you would like to have sunscreen added after nap, before going out to play please sign the sunscreen permission form.  Make sure the sunscreen has a current expiration date that is visible.

Some classroom reminders:

·       All children need top and bottom sheet for nap time.

·       If your child is under the age of 3 please be sure that when packing lunch that apples, grapes, and hotdogs are pre-sliced.

·       Items must be labeled with your child’s name.  If the items are not labeled staff members will do it for you.

What’s happening at Preschool (lots of fun)

We had a special guest reader today.  Do you remember Madeline?  I bet your child can tell lots about her!  She came by today and read several books to the children.  They loved it! 

We are working on our Pizza Garden.  The soil is ready for planting.  We’ve started some tomatoes in the classroom. We are looking for more donations of green peppers, onions, mixed flowers, oregano, basil and tomatoes. 

Come join in the fun April 23 Children’s Night Out with Ms. Ashley and Ms. Kristin T.  They will be Singing in the Rain!

Weekly Financial Reminders

Spring cleaning? Children’s Night Out is a great way to have some extra hours to yourself to get things done around the house. Check out the yearly calendar for upcoming dates and sign up at the front desk!

Simply your life with Automatic Credit Card payments for tuition.  Complete an authorization form and we'll take care of the rest!

Monkey

This week in the Monkey Room, we are very excited for the nature walks that we are going to be taking! We will be going out to the playground to look for bugs, birds, sticks, leaves, and anything else we can find! For art this week we will be making tissue butterflies, beehives, ants, coffee filter butterflies and bees! We are practicing our flashcards daily and everyone is improving! We are also going to be using the sensory table and doing some water play!

Giraffe

I hope everyone enjoyed Spring Break. This week the Giraffes will be learning about butterflies. They will study what they eat, colors, and where to find them. We will also continue to talk about the Spring Season. Observing plants and insects outdoors and enjoying watching our windmills spin in the wind. We will also have a cooking project on Friday. Yum Yum!

Lion

This week the Lions having been talking about spring. We have been talking about the insects we see outdoors. Our Art this week included a beehive, tissue paper butterflies, squish art, umbrellas and an ant hill. We have also enjoyed observing our vegetable sprouts and can’t wait until we can plant them outdoors in our pizza garden. We have been working on writing the letter E in our journals, practicing letter recognition, and shape recognition. For Math this week we have been using flowers with numbers to count the butterflies and bumblebees.

Elephant

This week is all about butterflies, bees, and other insects that fly. We talked about how they can fly and how they are different from crawling bugs. We are still working on writing our names and cutting with scissors, writing our letters, and some math skills. The letter of the week is E and we have came up with lots of E words, and are recognizing more letters!

Tigers

This week the Tigers read books about butterflies and honey bees. We are starting to see a few of our creepy crawly friends now that spring is in the air. Math we used our number flash cards to review numbers 1-10. We played the quick number game, 1-2-3 Bingo. The seeds we planted a few days ago are now turning into green plants, can’t wait for the flower to bloom.  We have been talking about recycling and how important it is to our environment. It has been fun looking out our window and sees the many changes all around us. Hope you enjoyed our butterfly and honey bee art. Ask your child who Cookie is in the Tiger class.

Zebra

Our theme for the week was centered around The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. On Monday we read the book and laughed at all the silly food he ate – do caterpillars really eat salami and chocolate cake?! On Tuesday, we discussed the life cycle of a butterfly and learned caterpillars eat leaves. Some of our other circle activities included extending the book’s story by talking about where the butterfly may have flown off to. We also categorized reality/fantasy which encouraged some critical thinking skills and answering open-ended questions. During Math, we graphed whether or not we’d let a caterpillar crawl on our hands. We calculated the data and used simple addition to tally up the votes. We sorted butterfly cards (starting with one and going all the way to twenty five!). We also made patterns and one-to-one correspondence with a file folder game. For Science, we discovered the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis and tried to figure out how a sponge holds water at the sensory tub. Art was super fun! We made art inspired by Eric Carle’s illustrations. Projects included tissue paper butterflies, coffee filter butterflies in a chrysalis, painting the hungry caterpillar, and drawing the food we’d eat if we were hungry caterpillars. We’ve been working extra hard with our writing skills – some of us are beginning to write our full names and a lot of us are identifying sight words!

Chameleon

For the month of April, the Chameleons will be talking about bugs, and we will focus on Eric Carle books each week dealing with bugs. This week, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. With this story, we discussed the repetitive language found in the book. We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly, and we practiced our days of the week. We also worked on our math skills by graphing our favorite healthy foods and whether or not we would let a caterpillar crawl on our hand – most Chameleons said they would. We also retold the story using a felt board to practice our sequencing skills. For art, we made tissue butterflies, coffee filter butterflies, beehive collages, and ant art. Don’t forget to ask a Chameleon the difference between spiders, worms, and insects. I bet you’ll be surprised! We also worked on the letter of the week, which is Ee in our journals this week. We also practiced phonemic awareness by writing how we thought the word butterfly is spelled with inventive spelling. We also were the authors and illustrators of our own bug book this week. We were also busy in the kitchen this week. We made Very Hungry Caterpillar fruit pizza, yum! With Earth Day coming up this month, we also discussed recycling, caring for the environment, and protecting nature for Project Green. For Humanities, we played cooperative games outside and indoors and acted out The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We also celebrated Ryan Delp’s birthday and April as Poetry Month by reading poems from “Where the Sidewalk Ends”. We are also going to work on writing and remembering some poems of our own.