Friday Update September 13

It has been a wonderful week with the cuties! :-)                                                                                     

This last week we… (and wow we have done a lot!)

*learned the sound (short and long), formation, and hand motion for the letter Aa.

*added alphabet pasta to our ‘feely letter’ Aa.  Please add it to your feely letter ring and review Ss.

*glued pictures of Aa words in our alphabet journals.

*learned the Alphabet Song and compared/matched the upper case letters with the lower case letters.  Can your child remember the number of letters in the alphabet?

*learned and decorated the song Apple Bingo for our Poems and Songs folder.

*Read Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss.

*learned the story of The little Red House  (an apple) and made a riddle book to share with you.

*Read books on feelings, played feeling games and practiced different faces for different feelings.

*Painted a rainbow.  Can your child tell you the order of the colors in a rainbow?

*Made rainbow chains (to practice the word/preposition “through.”)

*Painted ourselves with details for our body parts and clothes.  We are practicing body parts that may not be the easiest like earlobe, elbow, waist, wrist, eyebrow.

* Practiced one-to-one correspondence and using a ten frame in math to count apples and then made our own.

*Made name bracelets to practice the letters in our names and other students in the class.

*Mixed colors after reading “Mouse Paint.”

NEXT WEEK

Next week we will learn the sound for Tt.  We will make applesauce to review our letter Aa. We will begin activities about families in preparation of UN Day, and we will celebrate USA day on Wednesday. The cuties get a break on Thursday and Friday as the teachers will be in professional development.

UNITED NATION’S

During the next couple of weeks we will be doing activities pertaining to UN Day and family celebrations. The following 2 days are ones for which you will need to have your child prepared.  Thanks in advance for your help.

On Wednesday, September 18^th  the Pre-K classes will celebrate a USA DAY with (indoor) camping, making  s’mores and western dancing. We invite every Pre-K student to join the spirit of the day by wearing red-white-&-blue, whether it is their school uniform, an alternate red-white-&-blue outfit, or full Americana attire with blue jeans, cowboy hats, boots, etc.

On Friday, September 27^th,  Pre-K students will join the kindergarten-to-2^nd grade for the UN Assembly in the High School Gym.  As part of this celebration, students are invited to dress in the native costume of their home country, a costume representing their heritage or even a costume of a country in which they have lived or visited.

These two days will be an alternate dress days though children may also wear their regular school uniform.

HOMEWORK

In the Friday Folder is the newest homework, a family banner.  Please read the directions that are attached to the banner and return it no later than October 1st.  Have fun…the entire family can help with this projectJ

ICE-CREAM Day

Wednesday is ice-cream/popsicle day in the cafeteria (we are never sure which one we will get).  Ice-cream comes as the desert for all school lunches on WEDNESDAY. If your child is having home lunch, you can still order ice-cream for your child by circling “ice-cream” on the school lunch form on Wednesday.  If you choose this we will deduct $1.00 from your child’s SAS card.

PHOTO DAY

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2012   will be photo day for all ECC Pre-Kindergarten students.  Students will have an individual and class photo taken in the ECC.   This day is considered an “Alternate Dress Day”. 

REMINDERS/IMPORTANT DATES

Wednesday, September 18:  USA DAY—Wear red, white and blue

Thursday/Friday September 19/20^th:  Faculty Inservice—NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS

Tuesday, September 24: ECC PHOTO DAY—Alternate Dress

Wednesday, September 25:  Alternate Dress Day

Friday, September 27:  UN DAY—wear clothes from home country

Wednesday, October 2:  Late Start to School

Friday/Monday October 11/14^:  Parent-Teacher Conferences

Tuesday, October 15: Hari Raya- NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS

*Return Friday Folder and library book on Monday

*Return Family Banners whenever they are finished but no later than Oct 1st.

*Let me know if you would like to share something about your home country for UN Week.

Thank you!!!  Have a wonderful weekend!  Lynsey and Aidah

The Sandwich

A poem to end our S week. :-)

THE SANDWICH 

Yellow butter, purple jelly,

Red jam, brown bread

Spread it thick, say it quick.

Spread it thicker, say it quicker.

Now repeat it while you eat it.

Yellow butter, purple jelly,

Red jam, brown bread

Spread it thick, say it quick.

Spread it thicker, say it quicker.

Now repeat it while you eat it.

Don’t talk with your mouth full!

Week 4 pictures (and the letter S)

Friday Update - September 6

September 6, 2013 FRIDAY UPDATE 

We have had another wonderful week in the Yellow Starfish classroom!!!! 
A point of interest…I have watched your cuties become more and more independent as the days have progressed! Really encourage your child to practice being independent at home as well. Feeding themselves, starting to help dressing themselves, doing up their bags, and also starting to practice things like using safe scissors to cut will really help them out! ☺ 

 This week we… 
*read the book Mouse Paint (along with quite a few others ☺) and learned the three primary colors. Can your child tell you what they are? 
*learned the Color Song and decorated a copy to put in our Poems and Songs folder 
*started the big task of sorting all of the colors from our homework, discussing the different shades of each color and creating color collages to decorate the room. We will finish this next week. 
*practiced writing color words with “over-writer markers” 
*learned the sound, formation, and hand motion for the letter Ss. 
*drew pictures of words that start with Ss in our alphabet journals. 
*added sparkly, silver sand to our “feely letter Ss”. 
*observed (with our sense of sight) a real snake skeleton and drew a picture of it. *played with snakes (pretend ones☺) in the sensory table 
*wrote numbers on paper snakes and dotted the correct number of dots to practice one to one correspondence *learned the poem The Sandwich and made real and paper sandwiches that are just like the ones in the poem! *spread butter and jam on bread to make sandwiches. 

 FEELY LETTER RING 
Today your child will bring home the first of the 26 feely letters, letter Ss, attached to a ring. Please keep this letter ring in a safe place (i.e. bed post, door knob, dresser handle). Each week a new letter will go home and your child should add it to the ring and review the sound, motion and formation of all the letters. 

NEXT WEEK 
Next week we will introduce the letter Aa. We will do lots of activities with the alphabet. We will revisit our colors and All About Me and My Friends 

LOOKING AHEAD TO UN DAY 
I wanted to give you advanced notice that the ECC will celebrate UN activities from Monday 16 September to Friday 27 September. On Friday, September 27th, we will join the rest of the Primary school for a UN Day assembly. On that day the children may wear an outfit from their home country or a country in which they have lived or visited. Our class would welcome any parents who would like to share information or do an activity about their home country. This would be for our class only…you don’t have to present to the entire ECC. I will send a separate e-mail for this. 

PHOTO DAY Tuesday, SEPTEMBER 24 
This will be photo day for all ECC Pre-School and Pre-Kindergarten students. That day the children will have an individual and class photo taken and will not need to wear their uniforms. (so it will be an Alternate Dress Day for us.) 

ALL ABOUT ME 
This week we practiced learned specific vocabulary for parts of the body. We played Simon Says using these names and also sang Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes using different parts of the body. We are concentrating on those parts of the body that we might not normally be familiar with: forehead, eyebrows, eyelashes, chin, earlobes, biceps, elbows, wrists, knuckles, abdomen, chest, thighs, waist, knees, ankle, and heel. Give your child a butterfly kiss with your eyelashes, just for fun (just flutter them against their cheek or arm! They will love it!) 

REMINDERS 
*Please make sure you have the lunch menus back by each Friday (we always send them out on Monday—by that next Friday have them back to us) even if your child is having home lunch every day. Also be sure to check off if your child can have ice cream on Wednesdays. Keep half at home for reference *Return Library books on Monday. 
*Free Dress on Wednesday. 
*Let me know if you would like to share something about your home country for UN Week. 
Have a wonderful weekend! Lynsey and Aidah ☺

Who Took the Cookies From the Cookie Jar?

A favorite song of ours...

Who took the cookie from the cookie jar? 
[Squirrel] took the cookie from the cookie jar!
Who me? 
Yes, you! 
Not me! 
Then who? 

We go through the animals in the book, but then turn to our class of cuties.  I don't know for sure, but I think some of them might be guilty for taking a cookie--take a look and judge for yourself!!!! :-)

Jolly Phonics--S!

SAS uses Jolly Phonics to introduce the letters and sounds for reading and writing. It uses the synthetic phonics method of teaching the letter sounds in a way that is fun and multi-sensory. Children learn how to use the letter sounds to read and write words. 

The five basic skills for reading and writing are: 1. Learning the letter sounds 2. Learning letter formation
 3. Blending
 4. Identifying sounds in words 5. Spelling the tricky words 

Each sound has an action which helps children remember the letter(s) that represent it. The letters have not been introduced in alphabetical order. The first group (s, a, t, i, p, n) has been chosen because they make more simple three-letter words than any other six letters. 

 We started with Ss this week, and the students have been involved in many fun activities including learning the song, action and story for Ss, painting wooden snakes, practicing our 5 color S’s, coming up with words that start with S, eating gummy snakes, learning a sandwich poem, and making our first feely shape S. 

 The favorite activity was looking at a REAL snake skeleton from the science lab upstairs in the high school and drawing our own! Look at our amazing snakes! I loved hearing the discussion as we observed!

We are growing!

We measured ourselves today, and recorded how many centimeters tall we are.  We are going to compare this to the end of the year, and see how much we have grown!