BRIGHT BEGINNINGS PRESCHOOL


Experienced Quality Child Care Since 1984


www.brightbeginningsva.com  

Millcreek Newsletter


March 19, 2010

Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 22^nd, Parent Advisory Meeting, 5:00-6:00

Tuesday, March 23rd, Kindergarten Registration! Registration will take place at the school that you will be attending. Please see the informational sheets posted on the front Bulletin Boards and Pre-K classroom for details!

Monday, March 29th, Re-registration Fee Charged to Accounts except Rising Kindergartners

Friday, April 2nd, Children’s Night Out, 5:30-8:30
“Hop into Spring”

Thursday and Friday, April 8th and 9th, Closed Completely for Spring Break

School Notes and News

I hope everyone had a great week! There will be a parent advisory meeting coming up on the 22^nd  of March. New members are more than welcome, and we look forward to seeing you!

Speech Weekly

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.

Class Notes

Penguins

It was a fantastic week here at Bright Beginnings and the Penguin Class had a lot of fun! With the great weather, we played kick ball, tag, hide and go seek, played with bubbles, and watched the birds! Because it was Virginia Festival of the Book week, we had some special guests as our mystery readers, and thanks to Quinten’s mom for being one of them. The ice cream party was a huge hit on Tuesday and thanks to everyone who brought in toppings!

For art, our shape collages came out great, with circles, squares, and triangles filling the page. Please check out our great rainbow hand prints that are hanging in the hallway! It was great ending the week with a pizza party! We were able to partner up with our sea turtle friends and create our own pizza art! Have a great weekend and we will see you on Monday!

Ms. Daneille

Seals

   Hello again from the Seals! We had another fun week! This past Monday was Joshua’s birthday! Hope you had a great day Joshua! The children made pizza for lunch on Friday for our cooking project. The children had a blast at our ice cream party on Tuesday! Thank you to all the parents who brought supplies in for it. The Book Mobile came on Tuesday too. The children got to pick out a book to have in the classroom. On Wednesday we had a guest reader come in and read to us. We also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. The children hunted for the Leprechauns and their gold. The children did their Original Works project this week. They turned out Great! I hope you enjoy them and order something with your child’s work on it.

      This week we practiced the skills of listening, walking in a line, following directions and some fine motor skills. The children learned about jungle animals. We read a story and the children had to guess what the jungle animal was. We reviewed opposites (big little, hot cold, open closed, on off, etc.). We also reviewed our ABC’s and numbers. The new letter this week was S. On Wednesday we made an S picture.

      For gross motor we danced to music and practiced coordination. The children played w/ bubbles and practiced blowing the. During this time they were also using hand eye coordination to try and catch them. They also used the gross motor skills of jumping the children really seemed to enjoy the bubbles.

Here are some upcoming dates to remember:

• We will be closed April 8, 9 (Thursday, Friday) for spring break.
• Parent advisory meeting March 22, 2010.
• Next CNO (Children’s Night Out) April 23, 2010.

Have a great weekend! See you next week!

Ms. Cheri  

Dolphin

This week, the Dolphin class has been lucky to learn so much fun stuff! We did everything from graphing who wore green to hearing books from mystery readers to making shamrock collages to talking about Vietnam. We had such a blast!

            Thank you so much for your help this past week to help Festival of the Book go so well! The kids were so excited to see all of the mystery readers that came this week. Thank you also for helping me to better serve your child by filling out the Daily Routine Chart each day! It has been so helpful in being able to judge how your child is feeling what might be upsetting him/her.

            In math, we talked about our favorite number, made shapes on our Geoboard, talked about how all of the animals need to work together to share food for Project Green, created a graph on who wore green for St. Patrick’s Day and played number games.

            In letter’s time, we had mystery readers come throughout the week to read different stories to us. Some of them were parents and some of them came from businesses in the community.

            In art, we had free art, made shamrock collages, created rainbow art, made circus hats and made circus peanuts.

            In social studies, we learned about Vietnam, found it on the map, looked at its flag, saw some of the food they eat there and saw the clothes that they wear.

            In humanities, we danced some Irish jigs, hunted for gold, had a cooking project and had an ice cream and pajama party!

            This week was full of lots of new and exciting experiences. We can’t wait to see what next week holds!

~Ms. Kimberly

Walrus

This week was so much fun; we did not want it to end! Besides the great weather, we had a great time with our mystery readers, the ice cream parties, wearing our pajamas to school, and wearing something that represented our favorite sports teams! Although we had some extra goodies this week, we were still able to learn a lot! We still worked with our numbers by playing clown lotto, making a bar graph about who was wearing green, counting my two’s, and talking about our lucky numbers. We had lucky numbers starting at 5 going up to 2,083! Some of the students picked their age, or the number they were getting ready to turn.  The letter this week was “s,” and we wrote quite a few in our journals and came up with a great list of “s” words! Some of the words written were, shadow, shape, sing, sport, stop, sun, and sandal. The animals that we discussed this week were reindeer, whales, and snakes. In art, we made shamrock hats, circus hats, and rainbow art! Everyone can see the great rainbows in the hallway. Thank you to everyone who brought in supplies for our ice cream party and to our mystery readers! Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you Monday!

Ms. Ryland