This month's newsletter topics

April- Themes This Month –  Caterpillars & Butterflies-Earth Day-Spring & Plants-Week of the Young Child-National Poetry Month- Picasso Pig & Family-  Tax Time  –

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April

Themes this Month

• Caterpillars & Butterflies
• Earth Day
• Spring & Plants
• Week of the Young Child
• National Poetry Month
• Picasso Pig & Family

We are so excited to get our caterpillars in the mail!  They will be coming soon and we will set up a habitat for them in the classroom to watch them grow bigger and change into butterflies!  This month we will work on cleaning up our garden beds and do some planting.  We will plant a pizza garden, with tomatoes, basil and other herbs and a strawberry patch.  We will also plant some sunflowers and pumpkins along the parking lot garden area.  We will be talking about Earth Day and how we can help our planet.

The Week of the Young Child™ is an annual celebration hosted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, and families. This year’s event is April 16–20, 2018!  We will be celebrating and following along with these fun activities.  Music Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Work Together Wednesday, Artsy Thursday and Family Friday.  Stay tuned to see how you can help and be part of our celebration.
National Poetry Month each April is the largest literary celebration in the world.  We will learn about poems and hear some new ones and work on creating our own.  Each child will work on writing their own poem called “I Am From” to help us learn that poems have an important  place in our culture and our lives.
Picasso Pig and his friend live in our circle time, and the kids will be surprised to see that they have welcomed some piglets over spring vacation.  Now there are more pigs and the children will help name them.  Each day one child will be picked to bring home a pig for a sleepover.  As you can imagine, this is very exciting and causes many emotions.  Everyone will have a turn but not everyone can bring the pig on the same day.  It is a great lesson in sharing, patience and taking care of something.  The kids are always so excited and proud to look after them.  The pigs will be sent to the sleepover with their sleeping bag, teddy bear, toothbrush and a little book for you to write down your adventures of the evening.  You can even include photos.  And they are stuffed animals….not real pigs, so it isn’t too hard to look after them!
 

Tax Time

To help you with your taxes here is our official name and tax ID number:
Hands On Art & Play Inc.
EIN # is 20-5503578

We Were Busy Last Month!

March went by so fast and we were busy!  Our students loved they day we spent with the Japanese students from the Senzok Junior College of Childhood Education.  What a fun day we had together singing and playing!  It is a real treat to have this group visit Hands On each year.  We also enjoyed our music classes from Chuck Cheesman, and Tallulah’s Daddy! Our students love to sing and dance and remember so many of the their songs. Teacher Rachael’s dance class held two recitals and all of the students did an amazing job! It was great to see how much they have learned.

We learned about different kinds of weather and experimented with wind by using straws and our own wind to paint and push cotton balls across the classroom. We also tried to keep a sheet of paper on our tummies with only wind, no hands, while we ran.  We realized we needed to run fast to get the paper to stay in place.  We also worked on making kites.  Our class also created rain clouds in a jar and taking turns making it rain.
 
Our class learned about primary and secondary colors and had fun creating our own. We also colored Easter eggs and cut some of  them open to investigate what was inside! Some kids were disappointed because they thought there would be chocolate inside but found only yolks!  We even kept one egg in some  coffee so that it turned brown and we used toothpaste and a toothbrush to clean it. It really showed us how important it is to take care of our teeth!

We created art inspired by Eric Carle stories. Our students enjoyed making their own Hungry Caterpillars, Grouchy Ladybugs and Butterflies.  In March we were singing some silly songs bugs, like “The ants go marching 1 by 1”, “I am bringing home a baby bumble bee” and “Itsy bitsy spider.”  I bet your kids can sing them to you.

We investigated some insects and noticed some had wings, some could fly and others did not.  Some had 8 legs and other 6 legs. We used the bugs for our number pal job last month.  Counting bees in a hive, or seeing how many insects in the group had wings? How many insects did we have all together?  We will continue to learn more about insects and plants in April.

 
Looking ahead..
May 25th is our carnival and last day of school.  The celebration begins at 11:30 AM.  We have 20 children graduating this year!  In early May there will be a sign up sheet on the door for families that would like to help.
If your child will be 5 years old by September 1st, don’t forget to register for kindergarten by June 1st!