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

Millcreek Newsletter
February 5, 2010

 
 
School News and Notes 

Wondering about school closing? Check the voicemail of your school’s location for any cancelations or delays.  

 Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, February 10th – Grandparent’s and Special Friends Day/Sweetheart Brunch

Thursday and Friday February 11th and 12th – Valentine’s Day Parties (See sign up sheets)

Monday February 15th – Closed completely for Staff Development and Training

Tuesday, February 16th – Parent Advisory Committee Meeting at 5pm

Friday, February 19th – Children’s Night Out
“Celebrate Diversity”

Thursday, February 25th – Staff Appreciation Day
 
 

Financial Memo:

Tell a Friend-If you refer a family that enrolls you are eligible for a free week.  You will receive a credit on your account after the referred family has been at Bright Beginnings for a month.

Thanks for your referrals!  

Need to extend your day?  Need to add a day to your schedule?  No problem!  We offer Drop in care for currently enrolled families.  See your director for these additional services.   
 
 Laura Tomaine

Executive Director/CFO 
 

Class Notes 
 
 

Sea Turtles

Welcome back! This week we got to explore about winter. We learned about snow and animals in winter. The children also sorted pasta of different sizes. We played in the water table, which was a lot of fun! For our cooking project, we made heart shaped sugar cookies! For art this week, we made string art, glitter art, Valentine hearts, we painted, and we made our own Valentine bags! Parents, please sign up for our Valentine parties on February 11^th and 12^th. The sign up sheet is on the door. Also, do not forget about Grandparent’s Day on February 10^th at 10 am. Have a great weekend!

Ms. Erin 
 

Starfish

Welcome Aaron! We are thrilled to have a new student in our class and each starfish has been welcoming and warm. Our week together was a bit short but we were productive nonetheless. Ordering pictures, sequencing, is a great exercise for the mind. Using a variety of stories, we are practicing "frist," "second," and "last." We have also been working on our counting, and with the help of elmo flashcards, we are getting really good! In ar, we made a spinning-foot painting to follow-up last month's "Art in Motion" theme. To celebrate the hard to quanitfy rich diversity in our world, we made Africa-feet flags. For Speicial Peron's Day, we made love-bugs- be sure to give one to your Grandparents or speical person. we have done lots o yoga. Thank you parents for making "Book of the Week," a success! The current book of the week is, "No, David!"

Cheers from the Starfish!

Ms. Victoria

Seals

Hello again from the Seal room! We had a lot of fun this week! The children are gearing up for grandparent’s day and special friend’s day. It will be held February 10, 2010. Please sign your child’s grandparent or special friend that is coming so we know how many presents to make for each child to give.  You may sign up outside the door. This week we learned a couple of new songs and a new rhyme. We also reviewed rules, ABC’s, and colors. The children got to do an experiment with shadows. We learned about the letter R and what makes certain colors. We did this by watching how two different colors mix together in water.  Some of the skills we practiced this week were; listening, following directions, colors, walking in a line, ABC’s, counting, and manners. In art we made groundhog puppets this helped them practice their fine motor skills and following direction skills. They also used their imagination and created a beautiful picture made out of sting and glue. The children decorated a house picture with flowers. They glued the fake flowers on the picture. We also made our invitations for the grandparent’s and special friend’s day. The children made heart people. They put eyes, mouth, arms and legs on a heart. It was great fun! For gross motor we pretended we were on an obstacle course, where the children walked on their tippy toes, jumped and crawled through it.  Since there was real snow outside, we played with pretend snow (cotton balls) inside the room. We also played follow the leader and danced the day away. Some of the days we could go outside so we did exercise to get the children’s blood pumping and spend some of the buildup energy. The children loved doing exercises. Parents I wanted to remind you we will be CLOSED for staff training on Monday February 15, 2010. We will have our valentine’s parties Thursday and Friday (Feb 11 and Feb 12). On February 12 we will also be handing out valentines. Here is a list of the children in our class: Heba, Emma, Piper, Gregory, Gabrielle, Naomi, Joshua, and, Logan. If you are going to bring valentines for your child to pass out please bring enough for every child to get one. Have a great weekend everyone! See you next week for more fun!

Ms. Cheri   
 

Dolphin

This week, the Dolphin Class was ready to learn all sorts of things! We looked at ourselves in mirrors, read our “R” book, made groundhog puppets, learned about Groundhogs Day, and had a yummy cooking project! We are looking forward to Valentine’s celebrations next week! Valentine’s week is a great time filled with parties, singing, and gift/card exchanges. Just as a reminder, we are handing out Valentine’s on Friday. I will be out of school Thursday and Friday, but I will leave detailed plans with the sub! Another party that is always fun is the Grandparents/Special Friend’s Day! The Grandparents/Special Friends will have a special snack with the kids in the room. The kids will perform songs, and hand out homemade gifts! In order to prepare for the gifts, we need to know who is coming, so please make sure you sign up your child’s sweetheart! In math/science, we went ice fishing, and counted our ice, matched mittens, talked about using natural gases to reduce carbon dioxide for Project Green, looked at ourselves and other things in a mirror, and graphed the boys and girls in our class. In letter’s time, we read books and talked about beginning letters and sounds of the first word.  We also read our Sesame Street “R” book, had speech with Ms. Stacey, and practiced our easel “R’s.” In art, we painted watercolors, made our Grandparents/Special Friend’s Day gifts, made groundhog puppets, had music class with Ms. Melissa, and decorated our mailboxes for our Valentine’s! In social studies, we talked about what happens on Groundhog’s Day, learned about the special groundhog that determines it, found out if he saw his shadow, discovered the history of Groundhog’s Day, and then reviewed. In humanities, we were not able to play freeze tag or regular tag because of the snow. However, we played with puzzles, made yum yum crackers for our cooking project, and had some free play! Overall we had a fantastic week! We cannot wait for our Valentine’s Day parties!

Ms. Kimberly 

Walrus

The Walrus Class really did some wonderful things this week. We have started back up on writing our numbers and once we get to number ten, I will make it into a book.  The students have counted to a hundred and backwards from twenty before, but this week we focused on counting by tens. The letter of the week was “r” and after we wrote up a long list of “r” words, we wrote four of them in our journals. Some of the words written were road, race, roll, rabbit, and rain.  To acknowledge Groundhog’s Day, we made puppets and they turned out so cute! We took a brown paper bag, cut out oval eyes, round ears to put on the sides, a round nose, and gave it lots of fur by cutting short and long strands of brown construction paper. We had some great pictures to look at to help us along the way.  The students did some more cutting and pasting and made pig houses! They loved their birdhouses so much; we decided to make some houses for pigs! After they put all the detail they wanted in their outdoor scene, we cut out a few pictures of pigs and placed them in their homes.  We got some new puzzles in our room, which are much harder than some of our other ones, and the students had no problem mastering them.  It was amazing to watch them put them together. We have been finding other ways to get our energy out during the day since we cannot go outside. You may find us in the Octopus room playing around with the parachute, doing some exercises to help get our hearts pumping, or stringing boards and making shapes with a partner. The Walrus team is continuing to learn new things everyday and finding new ways to challenge our selves. Thank you for all of the support!

Ms. Ryland