30

Mar
2023

April 2023

Current School Year, Newsletters

IMG_4476 (1)

April

We love the spring flowers and colors!

April

  • Caterpillars & Butterflies
  • Earth Day
  • Show & Tell and School Spirit Week, April 11-15
  • Spring & Plants
  • Week of the Young Child
  • National Poetry Month

The week of  April 11-15 is Spirit Week!  Dress-up each day!

  • Monday-Backwards Day
  • Tuesday-Favorite Team (or sport),
  • Wednesday-Crazy Hair Day,
  • Thursday- Pajama Day
  • Friday-Favorite Character.

Please limit show and tell items to one per child.

Garden

We are so excited, we have our caterpillars!  We set up a habitat for them in the classroom to watch them grow bigger and change into butterflies!  During April 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

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 1st-7th, 2023!  We will be celebrating and following along with these fun activities.  Music Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Work Together Wednesday, Artsy Thursday and Family Friday.

National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month each April is the largest literary celebration in the world.  We will learn about poems, hear some new ones, and work on creating our own as a group and individually.  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. 

Special Guests

We enjoyed our special visitors this month!  In the past, before COVID, we loved our yearly visits from the students at Senzoku Jr College in Japan. This year we visited virtually!  Our students loved learning about Japan, listening to the stories and songs, and playing games with the college students. Our students had so many thoughtful questions to ask their new friends. Hopefully next year we will see them in person!

Spring Enrichments Classes

This spring we are pleased to partner with The Independent Dance Project for tap dancing, Portland Early Learning for Spanish, Northwest Children’s Theater for drama class and Soccershots for soccer!  You can sign up for theater by emailing Jennifer, otherwise contact each program to enroll!

Honey Bee Room

You may already know that we have two different circle groups, one that meets on the carpet in the classroom and one that meets in the Honey Bee room!  Some kids have circle in the Honey Bee room everyday, while others go back and forth on different days.

Here is a little bit about the Honey Bee circle time from Teacher Erica.

In the Honey Bee room, we do a lot of the same routines as the big circle. Kids will have jobs (days of the week, letter pal, weather pal).  We try and keep things consistent with jobs but we also like to build in fun!  We like to work on science experiments  that are on topic for the season or class discussions.  Some examples are making a cloud in a jar or talking about a plant life cycle.  Right now we have some peas that the kids planted and we are watching them grow.  We also have maps and we might talk about where different countries are, different states and different planets.  On Friday, we make it Fun Friday and we will do something like play a cooperative board game, guessing game or maybe a feelings discussion.  We also sometimes practice writing the letter of the week.  A no pressure do your best or tracing of letters.  For counting and numbers, we like to use dice and the “gum ball machine”.
We also embrace the kids interests.  We have friends very excited about space, maps, farm animals and science.  Teachers will find books or maps or teaching tools that play off their interests.
We read a lot!  When the kids are eating lunch, we will read books or play a story for them to listen to.
We encourage independence… Opening a lunch box, packing up their own lunch, putting on layers, etc… We meet them where they are at with those skills.

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

 

See you soon!

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Close