Week 6

 

Pre-K Week 6 Newsletter: 

✨Shining Bright in the Night! 🌙

This Week's Learning & Exploration 📙

Our theme this week was Nighttime! We kicked things off by accessing our background knowledge and creating a whole-group chart comparing day and night.

• Literacy & Phonics: We explored the letters E and H. Students practiced letter formations in writing books, traced them in salt trays, and built them using blocks, tangrams, pipe cleaners, and playdough! We also practiced producing rhyming words during morning meetings. Every day we also practice our phonemic awareness and started a Heggerty Hero who gets to hold Puppy the stuffy and pick the next's days helper. 
• Books & Art: We read wonderful stories about the moon, our eight planets, and stars. Students got creative by making their own custom constellations and foil moon art.
• Morning Meeting & SEL: We enjoyed a fun nighttime greeting where we flipped over stars with friends' names to greet each other in playful ways. 
• Counselor Visit: We also welcomed our school counselors, who helped us create sensory bottles to use when we have big feelings, and practiced our Second Steps social emotional learning lesson on asking a teacher for what we need or want. 

Centers & Hands-On Learning 🌟

Our classroom centers were buzzing with cosmic imagination this week. Here are some highlights!

• Marshmallow Constellations: Students engineered their own star patterns using toothpicks and mini-marshmallows.
• Playdough Stars: Children molded playdough stars and placed them onto a starry night sky.
• Nighttime Cabin Dramatic Play: The house center transformed into a cozy nighttime cabin.
• Stellar Stamping: Young artists painted using star-shaped cookie cutters and moon sponges.
• Next Week: We are continuing our nighttime adventure next week, with a special focus on shadows and nocturnal animals.

Important Reminders & Thank Yous 🎃

• Sunday Pumpkin Trip: We hope you can join us at Theis Farm this Sunday! Remember that one child and one parent get a free ticket. Let's cross our fingers for some perfect fall weather!
• Read-A-Thon Thank You: A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the Read-A-Thon! This fundraiser directly supports our school and helps fund the amazing events our OBPTO puts on all year long. Thanks for your generous donations!

📸 Visit our Photos Folder to see photos from this week. 


Have a wonderful weekend!
Caroline, Jayonna, and Rachel

Week 4

 

🍎 Pre-K Weekly Newsletter: Week 4 

Dear Pre-K Families,

We have had another amazing week in Pre-K! Thank you so much for all of the wonderful apple donations that helped make our apple-themed unit so special. We are loving working with your children and getting to know them better every day. Please know they are loved, and we always look forward to next week together!

​​Click here to see many ​photos from the week!​

📚 Learning & Exploring Our Apple Theme

• Apple Literacy & Math: We read many apple-themed books, created an apple life cycle diagram, and read 10 Apples Up on Top,  gluing paper apples onto crowns on our heads!
• Tasting & Graphing: Students tasted different types of apples and graphed our favorite color apples.
• Applesauce Day: Today, we chopped up apples, added sugar and cinnamon, and waited patiently all day until the end of the day when we finally got to try our homemade applesauce! Mmm...
• Creative Art: Students created vibrant tissue paper apples now hanging in our classroom and stamped real apples with paint during center time if they wanted.
• Scavenger Hunt & Counting: We went on a classroom apple scavenger hunt to count apples and write numbers or draw circles for the amounts found.
• Fine Motor Practice: Students stacked apples in numbered baskets using stickers, practicing both counting and fine motor skills by peeling the stickers. Students also continued to work on their pencil grip, preparing to start learning letter formations next week!
• Imaginative Play: The children loved exploring our new sensory bin and playing in the Apple Orchard dramatic play house.

💛 Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

• CARE Time: We met with our OB counselors to learn more about identifying different types of feelings.
• Positive Self-Talk: Our Second Step lesson focused on positive mindsets, teaching students kind ways to encourage themselves.
• Sharing Strategies: We discussed how to share kindly, practicing modeling and discussing how a timer is a great tool for sharing toys when conflict arises.

💡 A Note From the Teachers

It has been a busy, joyful, and delicious week watching your little learners grow. Thank you for your continued support at home! Ask your child what their favorite part of our apple unit this week was?

Sincerely, 
Mrs. McGee, Ms. Schwer, and Ms. McNutt

Week 3

 

Week 3 Newletter

What another wonderful week of Pre-K! I am really loving teaching Pre-K and getting to know all of our sweet kiddos. Thank you for being such a supportive group of parents.

Please access photos from the week here!

Look What We Learned This Week!

• Classroom Expectations & Routines: Students are doing a wonderful job learning the PreK way and settling into our daily schedule!
• All About Me Unit: We read stories highlighting how we are all unique, celebrating our similarities and differences, and learning to feel comfortable with who we are while accepting others.
• Daily Survey: Our class had fun answering daily questions like summer vs. winter, chocolate vs. vanilla, and cat vs. dog to learn more about each other's preferences.
• Concepts of Print & Phonemic Awareness: Through our weekly poem, we practiced reading left-to-right directionality, return sweep, and identified letters, words, and sentences. We also worked on listening for rhyming words, blending and segmenting compound words, identifying beginning and ending sounds, and counting words in spoken sentences.
• Name Activities: Students practiced recognizing and spelling their names. We counted the number of letters in everyone's name and built a class graph—5 letters was our most common length!
• Rest Time & Center Exploration: Rest time was a big success this week, with students lying quietly to relax for 30 minutes. Afterward, they dove into center time exploring dramatic play, blocks, drawing, sensory play, writing, library books, fine motor tasks, and STEM building.
• Pencil Grip Practice: We worked hard on mastering our pencil grip in our writing books! Ask your child to demonstrate the "pinch, pick up, flip, and tuck" technique: pinch with thumb and pointer, flip the pencil back to rest on the middle finger, and hide the ring and pinkie fingers in the palm.
• Specials: Students enjoyed music with Mrs. Li, art with Ms. Tara, library book checkout, and gym activities during PE with our teacher assistants.

Looking Ahead to Next Week

• Fall Apples Unit: We begin our new unit next week!
• Apple Donations Needed: Please send 2 to 4 apples with your child on Monday for painting, making applesauce, taste tests, and learning activities.
• Apple Toys Needed: If you have any unused toy or play apples at home, we would love to have them for our dramatic play center.

Thank you so much for your support and donations!

Sincerely, 
Caroline McGee

Week 2

We have had such a wonderful week together in Pre-K at OB! Thank you all so much for your support and partnership—we are off to an amazing start, and our Pre-K family is truly thriving!

Please ​check out ​Week 2 photos here!

🎒 All About Me Unit & Special Visits

We continued our All About Me unit this week! A big thank you to everyone for sending in the All About Me bags. The students loved sharing their special items and getting to know one another better!
We also had a very exciting visitor this week. Dr. Simon stopped by our classroom to read us a wonderful story!

☀️ Morning Routines & Outdoor Play

The children have done a fantastic job settling into our morning routines. Each day, we jump right into our morning greeting, calendar time, dressing our weather bear, sharing our families and head outside for some morning "warm" air and outdoor play.

📚 Literacy & Learning

We kicked off our daily read-alouds and introduced a shared reading poem to help students start exploring key concepts of print. We also began our Heggerty phonemic awareness practice! Be sure to check your child's folder today! We spent time doing lots of fun activities focused on the first letter of our names, and their creations are coming home!

🧸 Center Time, Quiet Time & Problem Solving

Quiet time was a great success this week—the students did an incredible job resting and recharging!
During Center Time, the classroom was full of energy and exploration. Students moved around the room to build with blocks, play house, create art, dig in the sensory bin, read on the couch, use their imaginative play skills, solve puzzles, create books, and use play-dough to strengthen those fine motor skills! They are doing a wonderful job playing together and talking through conflicts. We’ve been using lots of timers to help transition as well as practicing how to politely ask to take turns with toys.

🛡️ Character Building & SOAR

After centers, we enjoy our snack and water, followed by our daily character-building lesson. This week, we focused on Safety (the "S" in SOAR!) and talked about what a strong listener looks like.
Our school counselors also visited us for a fun lesson where students met Jag, our service dog! They introduced the Mood Meter and talked with the class about understanding and expressing different feelings.

🎨 Specials

The kids love winding down the afternoon at 2:40 PM with our daily Specials! This week, they enjoyed Art, Music, Library, and two energetic days of Gym! 🎨 🎶 📚 🏃‍♂️

💙 A Big Thank You!

Thank you again for all the magnetic cubes and for supporting our Pre-K classroom family. We appreciate you so much and can't wait for another great week ahead! Enjoy Labor Day weekend!

Sincerely, 
Mrs. McGee

First Day of School

 

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