This month's newsletter topics
October Fun – What’s New in November – Community Building Tours – Help Us Collect Canned Food! – Outside Play
This month's newsletter topics
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October Fun
October has gone by so fast. Thank you to everyone for helping us celebrate Halloween, our pajama party and breakfast for lunch. It was a very festive week for all the children. Be sure to look at all the pictures on Facebook or Instagram, and if you have some photos, send them to us.
What’s New in November
Themes this month
- Families
- Thanksgiving
- Community
This month we are excited to learn about our students, their families and the community we live in. We will be talking to the class about being thankful, the importance of good friends, and family and community. We will visit the many other programs that share our building as well as learn more out our city and state. We will have several guided tours through our building and visit the music and art studios, the history room, and more during our tours.
During November we are looking forward to a few new musical guests as well as some regulars. We will enjoy seeing Tallulah’s Daddy, Chuck Cheesman and enjoy a nature walk with Talk About Trees.
School pictures will be on Wednesday and Thursday, November 14th and 15th. All children will get their photos taken both in class pictures and individually. You do not have to purchase photos. All children will be included in our yearbook even if you miss photo day and do not purchase photos. Siblings can also have their photos taken just let us know if you are planning to bring them.
No School Veteran’s Day
Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 14th and 15th-
School Photos starting at 9:15 AM. Both morning and afternoon classes will have photos.
Monday-Friday, Nov. 19-23 –
NO SCHOOL – Thanksgiving vacation
Monday-Friday, Dec. 15-Jan. 2 –
NO SCHOOL – Winter vacation
Community Building Tours
Hands On is happy to share our building with the St. David’s community. There are so many interesting things that are going on in this building. During the next few weeks as we talk about community, we will also be taking tours and learning about the different groups that share our building. Here are just a few of the other programs in the building:
Help us collect items for our community!
Each November and December our school works together with St. David’s, and other building partners, to collect food or products that can help our community. This year St.David’s is collecting items for their Little Red Wagon to help the homeless in our community. Please bring in your items during the last week of November and first week of December. It will be really nice for our students to see that even a small contribution, added to other small contributions, can turn into a great big contribution. It is also a great way for our students to help our local community.
Items for the Red Wagon:
Toothbrushes and toothpaste
Socks and hats for the winter
Individually wrapped food items
Or
Non-perishable food for food bank
Circle Time News
Every day in school we have several circle times. The first circle is our whole class gathering together in the morning to sing our seasonal songs and talk about our day. From there we break up into 2 groups. The older group starts off by going to snack and the younger group stays and has their own learning circle. Then we switch and the younger group has snack and the older group does circle time. We split the groups so they can work at an age appropriate level. Some kids that are 3.5 or 4 years old may go back and forth between the two groups on different days. At the end of our day we also have another circle with a story or music right before lunch time.
Here is what we have been doing in our learning time circle recently, for the younger group as reported by Teacher Jillian:
Hi Parents!
I have been having so much fun here at Hands On Art and Play getting to teach your wonderful children! They are all so full of love and sweetness, I am so lucky to call this my job!
I have begun leading our little ones in their circle time and it’s been really great! Our circle starts off by singing a Hello song to everybody which leads into our calendar. Teacher Jennifer made two really nice boards that include our calendar and weather report. We start off by counting up to what the date is that day and one friend marks it with a sticker. Next one or two friends, depending on if the date is a one or two digit number, finds for us the correct numbers to stick up on our board so everyone can have a better view of the date.
One friend gets to be our weather watcher and sticks up on our board a picture of what the weather looked like when they arrived at school that morning.
One aspect of our circle time that I really enjoy are singing felt board story songs! I’ve found these songs are a really fun way to incorporate math and numbers into our circle. This month we have done the felt board stories for 5 green and speckled frogs, 5 little monsters jumping on the bed (instead of monkeys for Halloween) 5 little pumpkins, and Brown Bear by Eric Carle. Just the other day we did a fun song in which we all “took a trip” to the ice cream shop to for our letter I week. During our songs, I call up volunteers to stick or take off items on our felt board while the other children patiently wait and observe.
Something else we all as teachers have incorporated into our circles are “dot spots”. These are small brown laminated paper circles that the children sit on during our entire circle. If they stay sitting on their spot for all of circle they get a sticker. Every day since we’ve started everyone has gotten a sticker! These kiddos are so bright and smart, it is such a joy to teach them!
And our older group as reported by Teacher Jennifer:
Out cirlce time is off to a great start! Most of our students in this group have been in school before and are all pros at their jobs. We get through all of our calendar work quickly since they seem to already know most of the letters, numbers and take turns easily writing them on the chalkboard. This gives us extra time to reinforce all of our learning. We have been doing this by playing games, reading and working in our notebooks. Our group enjoys playing both alphabet and number bingo as well as memory games. We have several counting games too, one is a basket full of bees and hives labeled 1-10 and the other is squirrels on cups, also labeled 1-10 and a container of acorns. The children have to identify the numbers and then gather the correct amount of bees or nuts. They are pretty good at this so then we take two hives, say 7 and 3, and ask them to figure out how many there are all together.
Each child also has a notebook and we spend a day or two each week writing in our notebooks. The kids really like this and when they complete their task each day they get a sticker to decorate their notebook. We also have many of the same beginning reader books that each child can hold and we read them together. This way the kids can start to see and sound out simple words as well as recognize kindergarten sight words as the teacher reads the book and they follow along.
Beginning in late November we will start a unit on coins and the value of each coin for our math section. This is always very exciting! These kids are so smart and it is a great joy to see them learning and being so proud of their work.
Outside Play
We love to play outside every day. Even when it is cold, it is nice to go outside to play. Please send a coat to school with your child each day. You can bring hats and mittens to leave for your child at school too. Please add your children’s names so we can help them find their things. It is also a great idea to leave extra clothes in your child’s cubby just in case they need to change clothes during the day.
Please feel free to call us at 503-239-8521 or email us with any questions you have, as always.