JANUARY NEWSLETTER
Dear Parents,
We hope you are having a wonderful holiday with your families and are enjoy
your time together with family and friends. By the end of next week you will
be ready to have your children return to us and have a little down time for
yourselves. We have a lot of fun activities planned for January to fill the
cold winter days. We are looking forward to seeing them again. We hope you
enjoyed our holiday program, we thought they did such a cute job singing for
you. Thanks for all the goodies you provided for us!
Visitation month begins the second week of January and I’ve posted a signup
sheet outside our door for you to schedule a time to come in to visit our
class. You may stay for an hour or for the entire morning if you’d like.
Please feel free to join in and play with the children at play time, they
always enjoy an extra hand with a project.
Here are a few questions to think about before you come in for your classroom
visit:
- How well does my child interact with others? Do they seem to get along
well with others, and do they share the toys?
-Do they play alone most of the time or seek out other children?
- Do they listen to directions that are given & how well do they follow them?
- Are they able to sit attentively at circle time and wait their turn to
answer questions?
- Do they share the toys and ask their friend if they can use the toy that
they are playing with at the moment?
-Are they independent and able to do things for themselves?
These are some of the readiness skills tht we work on at this age level.
Children all learn at different rates and we shouldn't expect them all to be
the same. They are hear to learn these skills and more importantly to have
fun and grow.
Jan 4th week is our Gingerbread Friend’s week. We will hear stories from Jan
Brett and we will learn to cut many new shapes that we will use to decorate
the Gingerbread Baby’s house. We will talk about scissor safety but please
keep your scissors safe at home. The children will be anxious to use them to
try new skills and we don’t want to see any special haircuts that they have
discovered how to do in their spare time-ha! We will also be starting to
learn how to print our first name - please help them practice at home using
the ABC sheet I sent home to you before the holiday.
Jan 11th week is “Farm Show Week”. Please dress your child on Tue. 12th in
farm clothes - hats, boots, bib overalls, blue jeans etc. and have them bring
in a stuffed “farm” animal if they have one. We will be learning about farm
animals and making crafts. On Mon 11th we will be having a “purple cow”
drink for snack and then on Tue.12th we will be eating “chicken feed”.
Jan 18th week- Farm Show week - Remember "No" School Mon 18th
Tue 19th Bear week - We will be hearing a story about Corduroy the Bear and
will make our own Corduroy. Please send in your child’s favorite stuffed
bear for our bear parade we will be having that morning. We will finish up
the week by hearing the story “Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and will learn about
the many colored animals. Tues. snack will be “Teddy Bear “ Graham Cookies.
Jan 25th week will be our Circus & Zoo animal week. We will learn about all
the animals you will find in these two places and will be making crafts to go
along with the theme. Our snack on Tue. 26th will be “animal” crackers. We
will finish up with by making a cute Valentine Bulletin Board display for our
hall showcase by Mrs. Kuhn’s office.
So as you can see we are going to be very busy this month and we can’t
wait!
Important Dates to Remember:
Mon Jan 4th - return to school
Tue Jan 12th - dress in farm clothes & bring a stuffed farm show animal to
school
Mon Jan 18th - no school Martin Luther Kings B-day
Tue Jan 19th - Bring stuffed bear in for parade today
Valerie Ahnell and Barb Stewart
