Week 8

 

🎃 Pre-K Weekly Newsletter: Week 8 🦇

Dear Pre-K Families,

What a fun and exciting week we had in Pre-K! Our room was filled with pumpkins, bats, and spiders as we explored everything autumn. Here is a look at what we learned and created this week:

Have a look at many photos from our week in the photos folder. 

🌅 Morning Meeting & Skills

• Interactive Morning Greeting: We started our mornings with a special bat poem! Students practiced number recognition and active listening by standing up when their bat’s number matched the poem or ten-frame count.
• Letter & Sound Focus (U & C): We introduced the letters U and C this week! Students practiced letter formation, identified their sounds, and engaged in hands-on building activities using Play-Doh, blocks, and paint.
• Morning Literacy Practice: We worked on matching uppercase and lowercase letters, blending and segmenting sounds, and pairing pictures with their initial sounds.
• Heggerty Phonemic Awareness: We launched our new "Heggerty Hero" routine! Each day, one student gets to model our daily hand motions while holding our class puppy stuffed animal and then selects the next hero for the following day.

📖 Shared Reading & Literacy

• Shared Reading Poem: We read "What I See in Fall", deconstructed the poem line-by-line, and worked together to put it back together.
• Anchor Chart: Together as a class, we created a "What We Know About Fall" chart to record all our observations and ideas about the changing season.
• Non-Fiction & Storytime: We read many great books about pumpkins, bats, and spiders and watched non-fiction videos to build our vocabulary and learn real-world facts about bats and spiders!

🎨 Discovery & Center Time

• Sensory Table: Our new fall sensory bin was a huge hit! It was filled with "spaghetti hay," autumn leaves, acorns, and fun tactile materials.
• Dramatic Play — The Pumpkin Store: Thank you so much for all of your pumpkin donations! The pumpkin store was a favorite all week.
• Fine Motor & Hands-On Play: Students crafted spider webs and built pumpkin patches using Play-Doh.
• Fall Art Projects:
  • Spooky black construction paper spiders complete with googly eyes!
  • Hand-painted paper pumpkins cut into unique jack-o'-lantern faces.

🧸 Friday Fun!

We wrapped up our week with a super fun Stuffy Day! The students loved bringing their stuffed animals to school and enjoying a fun cozy autumn cartoon together to end the week.

🌟 Looking Ahead

We look forward to seeing all of our learners back next week for another fantastic week filled with pumpkins, leaves, bats, and spiders!
Have a wonderful weekend!

Warmly,
The Pre-K Team

Week 7

 

🌟 Pre-K Newsletter | Week 7 🌙 

 

Dear Pre-K Families, 

What an exciting, action-packed week we had! From exploring the magic of shadows to enjoying a lively puppet show and celebrating our Read-A-Thon, our classroom was full of joy, learning, and discovery. Here is a look back at everything we accomplished.

View photos from our week in Week 7 Photos Folder.

🌙 Theme of the Week: Nighttime & Shadows

Our young scientists explored how shadows are made by experimenting with light sources and light blockers.

• Shadow Tracing: We headed outside on a sunny day to trace our shadows on the pavement with chalk! We also made shadow in the nighttime cabin with magnatiles and flashlights. 

• Nocturnal Animals & Owls: We learned all about animals that stay awake at night, focusing on owls. The kids practiced their fine motor skills by tearing paper to craft their own adorable owl projects following a visual model.

• Literature: We enjoyed a wonderful mix of fiction and non-fiction books all about space, nighttime, and shadows.

📚 Literacy & Phonemic Awareness Highlights

• Starry Morning Greeting: We kicked off our mornings with a star-flipping letter game! When a letter was flipped, students checked their names. If the letter was in their name, they got to stand up!

• Rhyming & The Hidden Acorn Game: We read a shared poem called Squirrel, Squirrel and hid a paper acorn behind different words. After listening to a clue, students hunted for the acorn! It was a huge hit.

• Phonemic Awareness: We practiced identifying beginning and ending sounds in words, reviewing letter sounds and experimented with adding and taking away the suffix -ing.

• Letters of the Week (T & I): We focused on letter formations and sounds for T and I, The students built the letters using playdough, painted them, and practiced tracing them in salt trays for sensory reinforcement.

💛 Social-Emotional & Special Events

• SEB Lessons: We discussed sincere apologies, learning what it means to say "sorry" meaningfully, and practiced communicating our feelings clearly to our friends.

• Recycling Puppet Show: A special guest from St. Louis County visited us to put on an interactive puppet show about recycling. The kids learned so much and had a blast!

• Read-A-Thon Assembly: We capped off our week with an exciting assembly celebrating all of the reading and fundraising done by OB! The energy was high, and the kids truly loved the celebration.

📌 Quick Reminders 

Rest materials will only come home every four weeks. We only rest 30 minutes a day, 150 minutes a week. Therefore, they are not getting very dirty over four weeks. 

We look forward to diving into a brand-new theme next week! Have a wonderful, restful weekend!

Warmly,

Mrs. McGee, Ms. Schwer, Ms. McNutt

Your Pre-K Team

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