Mrs. Joanne Montie

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<div>  Tuesday, May 22nd We headed to the African plains today to create the natural habitat of the zebra.  We heard many interesting facts about the zebra including: what it likes to eat,  the type of animal it is and how it lives and where it gets water.  We read an interesting book, Zebras of the Plains. We learned that mother zebras identify their children by their stripes and their scent.  We talked about stripes being like fingerprints- no two zebras have identical stripes.We also recreated the zebra habitat as we painted, cut and pasted.  We practiced for our show singing songs and reciting rhymes.  We also enjoyed listening as our boys shared their Show and Tell.  We had many animal friends today including 2 monkeys, an owl, a crab, a kangaroo, a duck and a very big tiger.  We talked about the differences and similarities of tigers and zebras.  We used words like herbivore and carnivore. Isabella P. was our special person.  We enjoyed morning recess outside.   <h4> Monday, May 20</h4><h4>Today we enjoyed seeing our 2 butterflies who burst from their cocoons.  We also practiced the Butterfly song with our other PreK friends.  We watched a clip about zebras and learned that these animals are actually black with white stripes.  We made Zig Zag Zs and built a castle.</h4><h4>We read a story about Zoo animals and learned the swahili word for handsome.  Please see if your child remembers it (Hasani).  Luke was our special person and everyone agreed that he is Hasani.  </h4><h4>Please wear stripes tomorrow if possible.  Tuesday, May 15th</h4><h4 style="font-weight: normal;">Rain, Rain go AwayPreschool Children love to play outside.</h4>Luckily the sun did come out this afternoon and we were able to run and play outside.      This morning we played a letter/sound match game- matching all upper and lower case letters and identifying initial sounds.  We also reviewed numerals one through ten.  The children completed their grotto scenes of Mary.I was truly impressed with the children's ability to match the letters and to write the numbers from memory.  They are really ready for kindergarten.   I will not be in school tomorrow as I will be accompanying my son to New York for his 8th grade field trip.  Mrs. McKee will be in to sub.   Monday, May 14th  Dear Parents,  Due to the short week, we will wait until next week to cover the letter Z.  We need plenty of time as we will be creating a Zoo in our classroom.   During Show and Tell this week, we will be discussing world geography using our globe, an Atlas and the Smartboard.  Our classroom friend Isabella traveled to Brazil and it has generated much interest and discussion.  This week we are working with our butterfly unit.  Our real butterflies have entered the chrysalis stage and today we wrapped our paper caterpillars that have been crawling on our tree. Each child counted out 4 toilet paper squares and carefully crafted a cocoon for his/her caterpillar.   We will leave them to hatch as we eagerly await the butterfly stage.    We also continue to work on our classroom Yearbook/Memory Book.  The children are talking about the things that they found memorable about each other and about the year.  Their comments are funny, endearing and insightful.  Each child will receive his/her book as our closing ceremony.    It is difficult to believe that the end of this school year is in sight. Our Closing Ceremony is Tuesday evening, June 5th at 7:00 P.M.  Special activities including the Preschool Olympics and a picnic are being planned for Wednesday 6/6, Thursday 6/7 and Friday 6/8.  The last day of school for the children is Friday, June 8th.   All day Cares is available the week of June 11th.  We will have end of the year conferences on Monday, June 11th   from 7:30 A.M.  until 3:00 P.M.        As always thank you for sharing your most precious gift, your child, with me and the St. Bernadette family. Wednesday, May 9th Preschool 4 is an exciting place to be this week as there is so much happening.  Our caterpillars have entered the Chrysalis stage and it has been so exciting watching them change.  When we first received them three weeks ago, they were so tiny. Each day we have observed the changes.  On Monday of this week, there was a dramatic change in their size and on Tuesday  three of the four made their way to the lid of the container.  This morning, we noted that three of the 4 entered the chrysalis phase.  The 4th caterpillar made his way up to the top this afternoon and we can't wait to see what we will find tomorrow.  We continue to read many interesting and informative books about the butterfly. Moms are in for a treat on Friday morning as your children continue to prepare for their show.  We enjoyed singing with Ms. Serratore as we were transformed into a singing menagerie of jungle animals.  What fun!!! Ms. Serratore noted how well the children listened today and thr growth she has seen in them!!  I am very proud of them.   Tomorrow is gym, please have your child wear sneakers. Have a great evening. Tuesday, May 8th More fun Mother's Day activities as we cut, painted and pasted our way through the day.  We counted out precious jewels to create memory boxes.  We practiced our songs and made choices about the ones we wanted to share with the special women in our lives.  We talked about things that were special to our hearts and composed prayers to the Blessed Mother.  We also colored a picture of Mary.  We enjoyed playing outside with our classroom friends.  We also had fun with Simon Says.  Gianna was our special person.   MondayIt was wonderful being back in the classroom with your children.  Today we worked on many fun Mother's Day surprises for our moms.  We also reviewed our letter sounds and rhyming words.We had fun playing outside with our classroom friends even though the sun refused to shine for us.  We sang songs and danced with partners.  We listened to stories with Ms. Sheen, our librarian.  Olivia was our special person and she crowned Mary, Queen of our Hearts.   Friday Today we reviewed beginning sounds for letters A through X.  The children worked on identifying the picture, isolating the initial sound and placing the card in the corresponding alphabet pocket.  Many steps were involved and after a few tries they got the hang of it.  They are certainly getting ready for the BIG step to kindergarten.  We sang our morning songs and we painted our names as we continued  our celebration of the young child.  When I get back we will complete our books.   We also went outside and enjoyed the fresh air with Mrs. Dignam's class.  During choose time we worked with our buddies to build, paint and complete puzzles.  I will miss your children while I am away.  Have a great week. Thursday We continued our celebration of The Week of the Young Child making books that look at the strength, uniqueness and beauty of each child.  We started our books with drawing  pictures of ourselves.  We talked about the beauty within and how beautiful each of us in on the outside.  We sang the song, The World is a Rainbow.   As the children sense of others is emerging, we each picked a classroom friend and described what makes our friend special.  We illustrated pictures of ourselves playing with this friend. We worked on our calendar skills through song and counting activities.   We enjoyed the break in the weather with some outside play time.  We also had another tasty treat compliments of Home and School, Rita's Water Ice.  Thank you Home and School!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kieran was our special person today.   Tuesday and Wednesday These past two days have been fun filled and action packed.  Today we celebrated Grandparents/Special Person Day.  Your children did an outstanding job entertaining their adoring audience. We made a flower craft, sang songs, prayed and enjoyed some tasty treats.  Speaking of treats, we also had cupcakes as we celebrated Matthew's 5th birthday.  Mrs. Hyland visited with us as we sang and danced with Matthew.  Happy Birthday, Matthew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This afternoon we spent time building skyscrapers with our legos.  We also read the story, Franklin Plants a Tree and learned that a baby tree is called a sapling. On Tuesday, we kicked off The Week of the Young Child with a live performance with Makin' Music .  We sang and danced with Miss Sherry as we joined our school friends from PreK 3 through grade 2 in the gym for a wonderful, engaging performance. We also practiced our songs for Grandparents/Special Person Day.  In the afternoon we listened carefully to our safe touch lesson and danced the Hokey Pokey. I can't wait until tomorrow when the fun begins all over again.  Have a great night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Monday We started our day singing and dancing as we went through our litany of songs adding a rainbow song to the list.  The children enjoy singing so much that I often hear them singing the songs throughout the day.  It is so sweet hearing the children singing the words during activity time and snack time.  Grandparents and special people coming on Wednesday are in for a treat as the children are excited about their special performance.  Today we learned special hand motions for the Our Father prayer which we will pray at Grandparents/Special Person Day. We read the book, The Three R's: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle by Nuria Roca.  We talked about ways we can help our earth.  The children cut, pasted, colored and painted the earth and learned a rhyme about ways to recycle and reuse.   Ms. Sheen came to our classroom and read stories to us.   Tomorrow for Show and Tell(boys), please send in an item that we can reuse in our classroom. Have a great evening. April 23, 2012 Dear Parents,Reuse, Recycle and Reduce!!!  These are the words we will be talking about this week as we celebrate the EARTH and discuss ways to take care of it.  We will make crafts using some recycled items and we will brainstorm ways that each of us can take better care of our world.  On Tuesday for afternoon snack, we will make an edible globe from Rice Krispees.  For Show and Tell this week, I am asking you to send in one item that we can reuse in our classroom.  It can be an empty cereal box, water bottle…  I just ask that you please do not send anything that the children could get hurt with like a sharp edged can... We are also celebrating “The Week of the Young Child”.  Tomorrow the school is treating the children to a special show with a performer from Makin’ Music.  She will entertain the children with a live, interactive singing and dancing movement production.  Special thanks to Principal Lien for her generosity. Later this week, Home and School will treat all of our children in the early childhood program to water ice.  Thank you to the St. Bernadette’s Home and School Association for your kindness to us.  Our class will be making a special book as our friends celebrate themselves and their classroom friends.  We will be learning the meanings of our names and talking about what makes each of us unique. Wednesday at 10:00 A.M. we are celebrating Grandparents/ Special Persons Day.  If you have not responded with the number of persons attending, please do so by Tuesday so that your child has a favor for each of his/her guests. As you can see this week is full of fun so we will wait until next week to present the letter Y. During this week celebrating the young child,  I again thank you for sharing the beautiful gift of your child with me and the St. Bernadette Community.                    Thursday and Friday We made x-rays of our hands  after reading about our bones and how they help us move.  We also danced the hokey pokey as we worked our way up and down our skeletons naming body parts and bones.   We sang and danced and performed finger plays.  Please ask your child to sing or recite some of our songs.  Ones that we have been working on more recently include: B-I-N-G-O, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Skiderdink, Ten in a Bed and Good Morning to You.    We painted with watercolors over an X made with tape.  After our works of art dried we pulled off the tape and were left with the image of the letter X.  The children were quite impressed with their works of eXcellent art.   On Thursday we celebrated Kieran's birthday with delicious super hero cupcakes.  Happy birthday, Kieran!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   On Friday, for afternoon snack we enjoyed pretzel sticks.  Before eating our pretzels, we had fun playing with our food, making and identifying letters.   We have been working this week on showing our eXcellent manners.  Mrs. Yucnik, our hot lunch mother, even told us she noticed a big difference in the number of pleases and thank yous she has been hearing.  Great job, boys and girls!  For our journal entry we drew a picture of ourselves showing good manners.   We worked on the math concept of more and fewer.  Using counters,  we compared the numbers 4 and 7.  We looked at each set of objects and explored the relationship between the numbers. Have a wonderful weekend.  Remember next Wednesday is Grandparents' Day. Wednesday, April 18th X marked the spot today as our classroom friends worked on matching upper and lower case letters A through X.  Many of our classroom friends were able to look at the lower case letter and write the matching upper case letter.  We colored pictures of x words and sequenced our numbers. We practiced our butterfly poem and worked on putting the days of the week in order.  This afternoon we went on another hunt this time to count the number of Exit signs on the first and seconds floors of our school.  After counting the number, we compared the numbers and  using counters we added the two numbers together. Tuesday, April 17th We went on a Treasure Hunt today as X marked the spot on our treasure map.  We worked on learning our left and right as we read the map looking for markers.  Our map led us through the halls, out the front doors down past the Wright Center and to the Grotto of Our Blessed Mother and St. Bernadette where our treasure box was waiting for us.  In our box was a cross and a pop- a sweet with the sweetness of the Easter message of Hope and Joy.   This is my prayer for each of you and your families this Easter season. We also read the Very Hungry Caterpillar  continue our study of caterpillars and butterflies. We watched a short clip on the letter X and practiced writing the letter X.  We named words and wrote a list of words that contain the letter X. We also worked on our calendar skills and the positional words between, after and before. Have a relaxing evening.  Please feel free to send me a schedule of your child's baseball games.  I would love to try to see each of them play during the season. Monday, April 16th Today we celebrated the feast of our patron saint, St. Bernadette.  We joined with Mrs. Dignam's class to watch a short clip about the life of St. Bernadette.  We learned that she lived with her family in Lourdes, France. She was poor but full of love and devotion.  The Blessed Mother appeared to Bernadette 18 times encouraging her to ask others to pray and through word and action show their love for others and her son, Jesus.  The children were very sweet as they listened and watched.   Kieran is already planning a trip to Lourdes!!  We colored a picture of Mary and Bernadette. We put on our detective hats to search out the letter X.  We counted all that we found and practiced writing the number- ten.  Some of us could write it from memory.  We worked on the concept of longest to shortest.  Making a xylophone we place the keys in order of longest to shortest.  We also found a pattern as we made our xylophone.   We read stories with Miss Sheen at the library and after rest time we continued our celebration of St. Bernadette with a tasty popsicle. Have a relaXing evening!!!!<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" /> Dear Parents,   Happy X week.  This week promises to be another eXciting week in PreK 4 as we practice our eXcellent manners, eXamine X-rays, play the xylophone and learn about our patron saint, St. Bernadette of Lourdes.    We will compare sizes from shortest to longest and practice counting using ordinal numbers- first through fifth.  We will play Tic Tac Toe and have fun as X marks the spot with our bean bag toss.    We will follow a Treasure Map as we work on directions of left and right and we will search for our treasure.  When we find it, we will see that our treasure is Jesus.  Of course, since we are four and five years old our symbol of Jesus will have another treasure with it.    As the days grow warmer, PLEASE have the children wear sneakers.  The sandals and flip flops are cute but not practical for outside play on the black top.   I am concerned that the children will stub their toes.  Please consider this when dressing your child for school.    For Show and Tell this week, if you are stuck for an X item, feel free to send something that has an x at the end of the word.  Please explain this to your child.   As always, thank you for sharing your child with me and all of us at St. Bernadette School.  Each is a special joy and a gift.   Attached to this paper is a butterfly poem we are learning in school to recite on Grandparents’ Day.  Please practice it with your child at home.  Remember Grandparents’ Day is on Wednesday, April 25th at 10 A.M. in O’Brien Hall.   Have a great week.           Friday, April 13th Today we talked about windmills and how they are used to generate electricity.  We even made windmills and looked at a short clip on our smartboard.  We had wind races with straws as we tried to move our white pom poms across the table.   We read and talked about whales and finished our whale craft.  We learned that whales are mammals and that baby whales are called calves.    We sequenced numbers and worked on the concepts of before, after and in the middle.  We played with our wiffle balls and worked on our eye hand coordination with our velcro wiffle ball and velcro mitt.   And if that is not enough we even went digging for worms with our mouths- no hands allowed as we licked our way through whipped cream to be the first to get a delicious gummy worm.  we also made some gummy dirt worms to bring home.  Enjoy and have a great weekend- the weather is suppose to be beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 Wednesday and Thursday Waffles, watermelons and worms were the order of business in Preschool the past two days.  We practiced writing the letter W in our copybooks.  It is exciting to see the improvement in the children's fine motor skills.   On Wednesday, we practiced songs as we prepare for Grandparents Day on Wednesday. April 25.   We also wrote our ideas about worms on our beautiful art work.  The children discussed the look and feel of worms as we read the story of a worm, in The Diary of a Worm. We played wiffle ball and crawled like worms as we exercised our large muscles.   Mr. Montie came in and made some marvelous waffles that everyone enjoyed for snack this morning.  We made weather wheels after reading about different types of weather that occurs during the four seasons.  We painted whales and discussed their length.   This afternoon we spent time graphing and after we analyzed and compared the  numbers, We saw a variety of things for Show and Tell including: a whale, a watch, Winnie the Pooh, a dolphin named Winter, a wand and a whistle.  We enjoyed watermelon for snack. Tuesday, April 10th    We started our day parading around the school and ended our day hopping on the front lawn searching for hidden eggs with wonderful treats.  It was a great way to begin the week. We also watched a walphbet clip about the letter W.  We practiced writing the letter W with our magic finger.  We looked at worms and watched their movements.  Later we tried to move like a worm wiggling our bodies.  It was great fun!  We finger painted the earth as we started our drawing to coordinate with our language story about worms.  We also created beautiful springtime crosses to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.  We were able to identify 30 words that begin with the letter w. Have a wonderful evening!!!!      April 10th, 2012    Dear Parents,   Happy Easter!!  Thank you for all of your efforts in making our Easter Parade such a wonderful, colorful event.  I am sure you will agree your children looked magnificent.    This week we will be working with the letter W.  We will be studying worms, whales and windmills.  We began our study of worms today as we have over 100 slimy crawlers in our classroom. We will be recording observations of our worms and we will write a story in our journals about the worms.  We will talk about the importance of water for all living things.    We will take a walk on the wild side as we enjoy the story of Max in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  After discussing the story, we will create our own fun monster craft.    We will continue our celebration of Easter as we enjoy our Easter Egg hunt and as we talk about Jesus and how much He loves us.    We will have boys’ Show and Tell on Wednesday and girls’ as usual on Thursday.   We will enjoy tasty cinnamon worms for afternoon snack on Thursday and on Friday we will have watermelon.  As a special treat, Mr. Montie will be making waffles for snack morning on Thursday.   Please remember to send the children to school on Thursday in sneakers for gym class.  Also, please note that Friday, April 27th there is an 11:55 dismissal for a faculty meeting and Grandparents Day is scheduled for Wednesday, April 25th at 10:00 A.M.      Wishing you the blessings of the Easter season,   Joanne Montie  Parents,Check out our volcano experiment!!!<a title="Volcano Experiment" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxjXUDyS65A&feature=youtu.be">Volcano Experiment</a><a title="Volcano Experiment 2" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXMHzrfAy-c&feature=youtu.be">Volcano Experiment 2</a> Volcano Experiment 3 April 4, 2012 Today we continued talking about family Easter traditions.  Many of our classrooms friends shared stories of dying eggs, Easter egg hunts, trip to grandma's house and we even heard funny stories about the Easter bunny. During small group time we worked on patterning.  We also were crafty bunnies as we created some Easter crafts. We played an I spy game with plastic eggs.  We sang and danced with Ms. Serratore in music class.   We played a letter game, identifying upper and lower case letters and their sounds. This afternoon we enjoyed a tasty ice cream treat and we even put some M 7 Ms on top. Remember tomorrow the children need to bring to school 2 hard boiled eggs as we will dye them together. Have a great night<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" /> April 3, 2012 Here comes Jesus, Here comes Jesus Let's praise Him, let's praise Him Wave our branches and sing Hosanna to the King Let's praise Jesus, Let's praise Jesus! Today we had our own version of Palm Sunday with the children taking turns being Jesus and the other children reciting the verse above while waving palm.  Each child portraying Jesus then told how he/she tries to be like Jesus.  The children performed beautifully.  We cut our palm branch from heavy paper and it was a bit tricky but the children persevered and our palm branches looked heavenly as we waved them.  We talked about Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem and the people honoring Him.   We colored a picture of Jesus traveling to Jerusalem and we made our own Palm Sunday scene. Matthew was our special person today.  We had fun kissing March good-bye and welcoming April.  We made Easter eggs from shaving cream and paint.  The designs look amazing.   We read the story, The Night Before Easter and started to talk about our Easter holiday traditions. April 2, 2012   Dear Parents, Happy Spring! Due to the short week we will not be presenting a new letter this week. We will be getting ready for Easter with spring/Easter crafts, activities, stories, songs and games.</div><div>On Wednesday, April 4th, we will be dying eggs with the children. Please send your child to school with two hard-boiled eggs.</div><div>We are going to have an Easter parade on Tuesday, April 10th at 9:15 A.M. We are asking for your help in creating with your child an Easter hat/bonnet. Be as creative as you and your child would like. Each child is to bring his/her hat to school on Tuesday and we will have a parade around the school at 9:15 A.M. All are invited to stay and watch as all of the children in Pre-K 4 proudly display their fancy hats. It is sure to be a Kodak moment.  </div><div>We will also have an Easter egg hunt on Tuesday, April 10th. Full-day students will have the hunt in the afternoon. Half-day students will have their hunt later in the morning. </div><div>We would like to take this opportunity to wish each of you a blessed Easter season. We thank you for sharing your child with us and with the St. Bernadette School Community. It is our prayer that along with the social, cognitive, and physical development, we are working with you to instill in your child a deep love of Jesus and our Christian faith.          Thursday, March 29th Parents, I apologize for not updating this before now.  Thursday was an exposive day in Pre-K  as we made our volcanoes erupt.  It was great fun and excitement as we had 4 volcanoes and all of the children were able to take part.  We conducted it as a science experiment wearing safety glasses as we were about to witness a chemical reaction.  I taped it using my iphone and should have it on my website tomorrow.  We also read about Vincent Van Gogh and after careful study of two of his masterpieces we created two of our own- Starry Night and Sunflowers.  If you are unable to catch Van Gogh at the art museum this spring, just check out St. Bernadette's hall where our work is on display.  It is breathtaking.Mrs. Wallace had an Easter egg hunt for us in gym.  Eggs can be found in your child's backpack.  Mrs. Wallace always makes it special for the children. Mr. Stratton was our mystery reader and he read The Rainbow Fish.  The children truly enjoyed our month long mystery reader program.  if you could not make it this month, please feel free to contact me and come in at a later date.  For Show and Tell, we had a Valentine Bear, a vacuum, a van, a picture of Olivia's sister, Vivian, a violet and several vegetables.  Speaking of vegetables, the winning vegetable in our class was spinach.  We had a math lesson comparing numbers.  We will graph our results on Monday as we ran out of time.  As we wind down our Lenten season, please continue to encourage your child to be mindful of his daily sacrifices for Jesus. Wednesday, March 28th There was much excitement in Pre-k 4 today as we celebrated a birthday, ran a campaign for the favorite vegetable, voted, made volcanes and we even had two mystery readers!!!!! Happy birthday, Brian Fornwalt!!  We celebrated Brian's birthday with a birthday buddy cut out and all of Brian's friends had a special greeting for him.  Brian and his grandmom made delicious chocolate cupcakes that we all enjoyed. His mom joined us in the afternoon with a fun Curious George story.  Each small group crafted a volcano after mixing flour, water, salt and oil.  The children measured out the ingredients and set about working together to mold a volcano.  Tomorrow we will watch them erupt. Each of the six groups of vegetables gave their speeches trying to convince their classroom friends to vote for them.   Each child then entered our "voting booth" and voted for their favorite vegetable.  Tomorrow we will check and graph the results. We also practiced writing the letter V and identified words that begin with V including: vine, vest, vase and venom.  Some of my classroom friends wanted to try writing the words.  They did a super job! This morning Mrs. McCullough visited and read us a great rhyming story.   She brought us a tasty treat of munchkins.  They were yummy. Tomorrow us gym, please have your child wear sneakers. Thanks and have a relaxing evening.Tuesday, March 27 We started our day reviewing our classroom rules and discussing the change in the weather.  We sang our good morning songs and danced.   The children voted not to go outside as they are not used to the cold.   We watched a clip about volcanoes to prepare for our own experiment.  We watched the eruption of a real volcano and we watched children from a preschool class conduct a similar experiment  The children were mesmerized and it led to a lively discussion about the earth and volcanoes.  We created a paper volcano to prepare for the model we will build from clay tomorrow.   Election day is scheduled for tomorrow and today we broke up into six groups of three per group:  corn, spinach, carrots, asparagus(or as Olivia calls it princess grass), broccoli, and potatoes.  The children worked in the small group and using the internet we "researched" why their group's  vegetable should win.  The children then created a poster to  show the class during their campaign speech.  It was interesting to watch them work together to create the poster.  I was proud of how so many of them worked cooperatively.   Monday, March 26, 2012 Aedan was our special person! Today we planted vegetables and tasted vegetables.  We planted peas and cucumbers and we had the opportunity to taste avocado, spinach, carrots, celery and peppers. Most of my classroom friends tried at least one vegetable although some needed heavy layers of peanut butter on top<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" /> We also read stories about different types of vehicles.  We compared  different types of  trucks and learned a short rhyme about work trucks.  . We are learning to name the months of the year through song and the children are doing a wonderful job learning the months in sequential order.    I challenged the children to come up with 20 words that start with the letter V and Olivia came up with the 20th at 2:15 with the word vampire.  All of our classroom friends contributed and kept count during the day to insured we made it to 20.  March 26, 2012   Dear Parents,   We are becoming quite the gardeners in Pre-K 4.  Last week you saw what green thumbs your children have with their impressive sunflower plants.  This week we are planting a vegetable garden.  This morning each child planted either cucumbers or peas.  Both take about 60 days to grow.  As a class, we planted peas in a very large pot.   Hopefully, we will be having a salad with peas and cucumbers in late May. We also tasted some yummy vegetables.  Today, the children had the opportunity to taste carrots, spinach, avocado, celery and peppers.  Tomorrow we will taste corn, lettuce and green beans.  Later this week, we will cast our vote for our favorite vegetable.  I will keep you posted as to the winning vegetable. Other topics to be covered this week include:  volcanoes, vehicles, Van Gogh and vacations.  We will watch a volcano eruption on our smartboard and we will each make our own volcano erupt.  While we practice our cutting, pasting and coloring skills and develop our fine motor muscles, we will re-create two of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces Starry Night and Sunflowers. We will also begin our study of the life cycle of the  butterfly. For our journal entry this week we will plan our dream vacation.  On a daily basis we continue to practice our number sense by finding the missing number, counting, matching and ordering.  Additionally, we talk about plus one and take away.   As always, thank you for sharing your child with me.   Reminder:  This Friday is a holiday and next Wednesday is a half day before                    Easter break.  Next week, we will review and continue our unit                       on the butterfly..  I will introduce the letter Ww                    the week of April 9th.  We will also have an Easter celebration                    on Tuesday, April 10th!!          Dear Parents,   We are becoming quite the gardeners in Pre-K 4.  Last week you saw what green thumbs your children have with their impressive sunflower plants.  This week we are planting a vegetable garden.  This morning each child planted either cucumbers or peas.  Both take about 60 days to grow.  As a class, we planted peas in a very large pot.   Hopefully, we will be having a salad with peas and cucumbers in late May. We also tasted some yummy vegetables.  Today, the children had the opportunity to taste carrots, spinach, avocado, celery and peppers.  Tomorrow we will taste corn, lettuce and green beans.  Later this week, we will cast our vote for our favorite vegetable.  I will keep you posted as to the winning vegetable. Other topics to be covered this week include:  volcanoes, vehicles, Van Gogh and vacations.  We will watch a volcano eruption on our smartboard and we will each make our own volcano erupt.  While we practice our cutting, pasting and coloring skills and develop our fine motor muscles, we will re-create two of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces Starry Night and Sunflowers. We will also begin our study of the life cycle of the  butterfly. For our journal entry this week we will plan our dream vacation.  On a daily basis we continue to practice our number sense by finding the missing number, counting, matching and ordering.  Additionally, we talk about plus one and take away.   As always, thank you for sharing your child with me.   Reminder:  This Friday is a holiday and next Wednesday is a half day before                    Easter break.  Next week, we will review and continue our unit                       on the butterfly..  I will introduce the letter Ww                    the week of April 9th.  We will also have an Easter celebration                    on Tuesday, April 10th!!    Thursday Today we saw UFOs flying through the preschool universe.  OK we made them but as you can see from your child's project they look real.  We also took a vote to see who believes in UFOs and 17 children believe and only one child did not.  Our journal entry was,  What I like to do under the beach Umbrella and with today's weather it seemed very appropriate. We practiced opposites using the prefix un- and we played a word guessing game in which the answer had to begin with the letter U.  As usual after a few examples the  children displayed great understanding of the concept. We practiced our throwing skills as we threw beanbags into our umbrella. I acted as umpire and we counted our hits and strike outs. Another great day in preschool.  Enjoy the holiday with your son/daughter tomorrow. Wednesday Spring has sprung.  We practiced writing the letter U today and we cut colored and pasted some of our favorite U words.  The girls and boys had a fun time  singing and going Under the bridge as we sung and danced to London Bridge is Falling Down.   We decorated umbrellas and developed our fine motor skills as we twisted and turned two pipe cleaners together to made handles for them.   We completed our Up pictures as we pasted and drew items that are up in the clouds.   We enjoyed a tasty cherry water ice treat this afternoon.  Although it was a bit overcast we were able to play outside and enjoy the warm temperature.  Ms. Serratore had a singing and dancing in music class.   It was another great day in PreK.   Tuesday We began our day putting our underpants upside down.  That is we put our paper underpants upside down each time we heard a word that started with the /u/ sound.  If the word started with a different sound we held them right side up.   The children did a nice job with this.  Using our individual white boards we also practice writing our upper and lower case letters from memory Aa through Jj.  The children showed significant growth in this area.  I was impressed.  We practiced writing the letter of the week Uu.  We sponge painted clouds as we named things that we find up in the sky. We read the story, Welcome Spring and talked about signs of spring.   We saw many unique things for Show and Tell including an angry bird umbrella, a Mickey Mouse umbrella, a batman umbrella, Up the movie, underpants, a ukelele and even a UFO.  We went outside and Aedan entertained us with his flying UFO.   Monday   U week started with a Thumbs-Up as all of the children were actively engaged in the day's unique activities.  We began our day singing and learning a new Motion Rhyme:  Dear Ones, Dear Ones.  we then danced around to our own version of She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain. During small group time, the children decorated a pair of underpants after listening to the story, Dinosaurs Love Underpants.  I purchased the book  using my Nook and the children enjoyed using the Nook also.  There were lots of giggles and smiles as we listened to this silly tale. We  made a list of things that go Up.  After making the list we rearranged the list of words so that they were in order by how high up one could go.  We ended the activity by attempting to keep a balloon up in the air using a racket.  The children counted how many times they could keep it up before it fell.  Jayda and Andrew were our experts at keeping the balloons UP.  All of our classroom friends worked diligently at this eye hand coordination activity.  The feast of St. Joseph is today and after talking about how loving and kind St. Joseph was to Jesus and Mary we colored a picture of him.  We also cut and pasted the letters of his name in correct order.  The children did this activity independently, please check your child's folder to see his/her exceptional work.   We played outside enjoying the glorious weather.  Ms. Sheen read us a story in the library.  She read Caps for Sale.   After rest time, we enjoyed a tasty snack before playing a Thumbs-Up game.  Finally, we shared special thoughts about our special person, Andrew.   Dear Parents, Happy U week and Happy St. Joseph’s Day!  This week we will be talking about the universe, UFOs, the United States of America, things that go UP, umpires, umbrellas and under.  And just so that you know we can be pretty silly in PreK 4, we will also talk about underpants.    I am sending home a fun activity for you to complete with your child.  Attached to this sheet you will find a map of the United States of America.  Please have your child color in the state of Pennsylvania blue.  Have your child color in any state that he has visited blue.  Finally, have your child color in any state that a relative lives in yellow.  Kindly print the first name of the relative and the state where your loved one lives on the back of the paper.  We will use this information to highlight emerging math and phonics skills.      On Wednesday, the first full day of spring, we will celebrate with a special Rita’s water ice treat in the afternoon.     Please note, that Friday the children do not have school.     Reminders:  Tuesday- Boys’ Show and Tell Wednesday- Celebrate spring with water ice Thursday- RETURN COMPLETED MAP of the United States                   Girls’ Show and Tell                    GYM: please wear sneakers Friday-   No School Saturday- Applebee’s Breakfast with Bernie Bear As always, thank you for sharing your child with all of us at St. Bernadette School.  Please contact me if you have not scheduled a time to stop in and read to the children(for our Dr. Seuss celebration)  or if you have any questions or concerns.    Friday We ended T week in a totally awesome way with Mr. Crossan, Kieran's dad, reading a story to us.  He read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.  The children thoroughly enjoyed it. We also set a trap for the leprechaun.  We all placed some Lucky Charms cereal in the trap to see if he would leave us some gold.  We were not disappointed as we caught him right after lunch and he left us some gold coins filled with chocolate and some toy coins.  Mrs. Crowley, Jayda's mom, sent in some delicious munchkins.   We even enjoyed some delicious shamrock shakes in the afternoon.  More  tempting treats came in with Mrs. Highland, Nicolas's mom.  She is studying to be a dental hygienist and she gave the children a fun, informative lesson on teeth brushing.  She brought in some cute props that were child friendly.   After all of the sugar treats today, the toothbrush treat she gave to each child is sure to come in handy.  Thank you so much, Mrs. Highland.Thank you to all of our special guests today and through the month.  Your children love you to visit and I am hoping that each parent is able to come in and read this month.We did manage to complete some crafts as you will see in your child's folder.  We cut, pasted and glittered our leprechauns while reciting a short leprechaun rhyme.  We also talked about the Trinity and the 3 leaves of the shamrock.We played Tic Tac Toe and make a turtle puzzle.It was a great week.  Again, thank you for sharing your child with me.Happy St. Patrick's Day. <img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emrainbow.gif" /> Enjoy this beautiful weekend with your precious gift from God.  <img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" />Thursday We had such a tremendous T day that we had trouble fitting all of our activities into the day.  This morning we finished up our turtles and started our leprechauns.  Before our tea party we made a list of table manners.  Here is what your children came up with: 1. Use gentle words like please, thank you and your welcome; 2. Keep your elbows off the table; 3.  Do not show your chewed food; 4.  Do not talk with food in your mouth; and my personal favorite 5.  Do not spit food on your plate or at your brother or sister. After reviewing the rules we set out the table with plates, napkins and food. They placed their napkins on their laps and used their absolute best manners when requesting seconds and thirds of our food items. The children were served by a lovely waitress named  Miss Joanne.  They practiced their manners and enjoyed some tea biscuits, peanut butter crackers and blueberry tea and lemon iced tea.   We had two mystery readers again today, Mrs. McGovern this morning and Mrs. Gordon this afternoon.  The children thoroughly enjoyed these two tremendous moms. It is not to late to sign up to be a mystery reader, please feel free to let me know if you would like to sign up. We also had fun with balls and bees in gym class with Mrs. Wallace. Our sunflowers are growing!!!  The children were so excited to see their seeds sprouting.  Please remember to wear green tomorrow for our party. Have a great evening.   Wednesday We continued working on our turtles today.  We  were surprised with a visit from Mr. Turtle. One of the children in Mrs. Dignam's room brought in their pet turtle and shared it with us.   The children enjoyed the visit. It is Aedan's birthday today.<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" />  His parents came in as our mystery readers to surprise Aedan.  We enjoyed cupcakes and juice boxes to celebrate Aedan's 5th birthday.  Happy Birthday, Aedan. Jackson was our special person. We started planting our tulip garden by cutting the grass today.  The children enjoyed seeing their cutting skills displayed on the board outside of our classroom. We practiced tracing and printing the letter T.  We talked about taking care of our teeth.  We used our sense of touch and sight to describe the physical characteristics of a hard boiled egg.  We talked about how the shell of the egg and our teeth are similar in color and in the calcium they have inside.  We placed an egg in water and one in soda.  We will examine them tomorrow to what  effect the liquids had on the eggs. We had to postpone our tea party until tomorrow as there was so much to do and so little time.  Another T word we will talk about tomorrow. Tuesday Today was a busy day with terrific mystery readers, pictures, turtles and tigers. We started our day with Mr. Donohue as our mystery reader.  He read a true favorite, Fancy Nancy.  The children loved listening as Mr. Donohue read the tales of Nancy. We also enjoyed our visit with Mr. and Mrs. Pistoria. They read two books to us.   What a treat having three mystery readers on Tuesday for T week.  Mr. and Mrs. Pistoria brought a terrific and nutritious fruit salad, pizzelles and popcorn.  We feasted as if it was Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the warm temperature as we ran and played outside with our classroom friends. We made scary tigers as we cut and pasted to develop our fine motor skills.   We started our turtle craft by painting  turtle shells. We talked about St. Patrick's Day and we have decided to try and catch a leprechaun.   The boys showed off their T items including: a teddy bear, a truck, two transformer, Ninja turtles, a turtle, a tie, a tram car and three tires. We enjoyed a pretzel snack in the afternoon. Monday Today was full of triangles, a T-Rex and the number 10.   We traced upper and lower case  Tts and counted out 10 triangles.  We placed the triangles inside the letter Ts in any number combination.  When all of the children had finished, we looked at the number combinations that make up the number 10.  We learned that 2 and 8, 4 and 6, 5 and 5, 10 and 0, 9 and 1 and 8 and 2, 6 and 4, 0 and 10 and 1 and 9 all add up to 10.  Andrew noticed that 8 and 2 and 2 and 8 are the same numbers so we had an interesting discussion about the commutative property of addition.   We read a story about the T-Rex and cut, painted and pasted a very scary T-Rex with triangle teeth.   We enjoyed the bright sunshine with a nature walk looking for signs of spring.  We saw doffodils, buds on trees and children playing.  We heard birds singing, children playing.  We could feel the sunshine on our faces and the tidy bud on the trees.  After our walk we joined with other preschool friends  and ran and played.  It was great fun. This afternoon we went to the library for story time with Ms. Sheen.  After rest we had a delicious turtle snack.  We said kind words to our classroom friend and special person of the day, Isabella P. March 12, 2012   Dear Parents,   T week is a terrific time to tell you how tremendous your children are.  Thank you for sharing them with me and St. Bernadette School.   This week our preschool class will be talking about the T-Rex, turtles, and tongue twisters.  We will even be having a tea party where we will discuss our table manners.  We will talk about and practice how to set a table.    We will continue our work with shapes focusing on the triangle.  We will also continue learning about our five senses.  This week we will have a taste test using different types of toothpaste.  I will keep you posted about the winning brand. We will talk about the importance of brushing our teeth and we will look at the effect of soda (and other sugary drinks) on our teeth.   We will also put our hands into a box filled with many different types of things to touch.    Tic Tac Toe and tennis are just two of the games we will be playing.    To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, we will be having milkshakes on Friday.  I will ask the children if they would like a Shamrock shake(minty) or a vanilla shake.  I will be purchasing the shakes from McDonald’s and giving each of the children a cup.  This will be our afternoon snack.  We will also be making Irish potatoes . The best part of our Irish Day is that Mrs. Mullen has promised to teach me an Irish one, two, three, so don’t be surprised if the children are asking to take Irish dance lessons Friday afternoon.   Reminders:  Picture Day: tomorrow Tea Party: Wednesday Gym:  Thursday (please wear sneakers) St. Patrick’s Day Celebration- Friday   Again, thank you for sharing your child with me.     Friday, March 9th Silly sock day was full of some sensational surprises. We had a visit with a real live baby squirrel named Rocco.  Rocco is only two weeks old and cannot open his eyes.  He was rescued by the mom-mom of one of Mrs. Mullen's students.  Mrs. Steven is a wildlife preservationist, licensed in Pennsylvania to help abandoned animals.  She brought Rocco in a small cage and talked to the children about how she cares for him.  She feeds him suet from a small syringe and just like any baby she needs to feed him every 4 hours even through the night. The children were fascinated with Rocco and thoroughly enjoyed his visit. We also made sketches of our classroom friends.  Using our buddy sticks, the children broke into pairs and sketched their buddy in their journals.  Before doing so we talked about the shapes in a face and how they can be different.  We used our observation skills to sketch our friends.  We also counted squares on a page and wrote the number of squares on each line.  My classroom friends did a super job counting and writing numbers 1 through 10. At lunch we made salad.  Thanks to Mrs. Trapp for sending in carrots, croutons and cucumbers.  Most of the children enjoyed at least trying something.   Before rest time, we played outside although the clouds were hiding the sunshine. We enjoyed an afternoon snack of strawberries. Hope you all have a sensational weekend.  Thursday, March 8th Kaitlyn was our special person today. We decorated flower pots this morning.  We talked about seeds and how plants grow from seeds.  We shoved soil into our newly decorated flower pots and planted sunflower seeds.  We counted out the seeds and put them into the soil and covered them with more soil.  We watered our plants and put them on the window sill so that they would get sunlight.  We will be recording the growth of our plants as they begin to germinate over the next 2 to 3 weeks. We played table top soccer and recorded our score as we shot our soccer balls into the goal.   We played Don't Wake the Snake in gym class.  What fun as the children raced from the snake so as not to be snapped up. We talked about our school's patron saint, Bernadette.  I told the children a story about her and they colored in a picture of her.  We also talked about who is called to be a saint.  The children named people in their lives that they thought were saints.  They drew a picture of a saint in their lives in their journal.   For Show and Tell we saw a Spongebob, a snake, Snow White, Simba, Sleeping Beauty, a skunk, and  a shell necklace. We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine both this morning and this afternoon as we ran and played outside. Another sensational day in preschool. Tomorrow we will enjoy a silly salad and don't forget to wear your silly socks.<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/face23.gif" />  Wednesday, March 7th Bryan Manu was our special person today.Today we used our scissors to cut circular snakes.  We watched a clip on National geographic for kids and saw different types of snakes.  The children admired the patterns on the skins of the different snakes.  They enjoyed creating their own patterns on their snakes.  We also worked on our fine motor skills as we attached our shamrocks to our rainbows.  The children punched three holes into their rainbows and  threaded string through the holes.  They then punched one hole into each of their three shamrocks.  I helped as we tied a knot through each sting.  They were very impressed with their beautiful Irish Rainbows.We were so inspired with the radiant sunshine that in our imaginations we took a stroll on the beach.  Using sandpaper, macaroni shells, star fish and flags with stars and stripes we created our own summer scenes complete with a sand castle and a shining sun.  We are wanted to jump into our sensational scenes when they were completed.This afternoon we had fun in the sun as we enjoyed playing with our classroom friends.  We also talked about the results from our taste test yesterday.  We compared the numbers.  Seventeen classroom friends liked the taste of salty and sweet.  Twelve liked the sour taste.  One classroom friend like sour the best.  Nine liked the sweet taste the best and seven liked the salty taste the best.  Overall, we decided sweet things were the winner.  We celebrated our hard work  by sucking on something sweet.Please remember we will be in the gym tomorrow, so have the children wear sneakers.Have a sweet evening with your little sweetie!!! Tuesday, March 6th. Today we watched a short clip on the Letter S with Sally the Sock who loves strawberrysoup.  We practiced writing the letter S on our whiteboards. We tasted something sweet(one smarty), something salty(piece of pretzel) and something sour (piece of a lemon).  We voted yes or no as to whether we liked the taste or not.  Tomorrow we will graph our results. We played soccer with a silly twist as we threw the soccer ball to our classroom friends and each person named an S word before passing it on to another  friend.  We tried to name a new word and not one already named by a friend. We drew a picture of something that makes a smile.  Please look for your child's beautiful illustration in  his/her folder.   We sequenced numbers 1 through 15 and we identified numbers that come before, after, and between numerals 0 through 20. we enjoyed playing in the beautiful sunshine both this morning and this afternoon.  Mr. Wilkins was our Mystery Reader and we enjoyed listening to Green Eggs and Ham. Parents, please read my letter sent home in your child's folder and also please note that Friday is silly sock day. March 5, 2012    We began our day with the rhyme Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.   We talked about stars, when we see them shine, what they are made of and why we do not see them during the day.  We counted the sides of a star and the points of a star. We followed up with  an interesting geometry lesson as we looked at a pentagon and 5 triangles.  I asked each child to make a star from these shapes.   After making the stars the children continued manipulating the pieces  to make other shapes.  Nicolas was the first to make a rocket, ready to blast off into space.   We also decorated stars with glitter to make our own twinkling stars.  We used our fingers to trace the letter S.   We used our scissors to cut out shamrocks.  Each child cut three shamrocks to add to their rainbows. with all of the twists and turns it proved to be a challenge but each child worked and they look beautiful. This afternoon we enjoyed story time with Ms. Sheen.  After rest time we played Simon Says and the Shoe Game.March 4, 2012 Dear Parents, S week holds many Special things in store. We will explore space and talk about stars. We will learn about some saints including St. Joseph and St. Patrick. We will plant seeds and play I spy.  On Friday, we will wear silly socks and eat salad. We will use our imaginations and go sailing in the sea with our homemade sailboats. We will talk about our sense of taste and compare foods that are sour, sweet and salty. We will play soccer and sing songs. We will use our scissors to cut shamrocks and add them to the rainbows that we painted last week. We will use our new smartboard to illustrate several of these topics. We will also talk about how special each of us has been created by our loving God. We will talk about what makes us special and unique.  This lends itself to a family project I am sending home.  Attached to this letter is a piece of oak tag. I ask you to paste a picture of your child approximately 2” by 3” in the center of the oak tag. Then I ask you to print a message to your child about what makes him/her special to you. I invite you to ask older brothers, sisters, grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles or anyone who has a special relationship with your child to also print a message. The message should just be a line or two but enough to express the unique bond that exists between your child and the writer of the message. Please return the completed oak tag by Friday, March 16th. Let me know if you have any questions. Reminders:Friday, March 9th –wear silly socksFriday, March 16th- return completed oak tag;  St. Patrick’s Day CelebrationAs always, thank you for sharing your child with me. Each child in this class is truly a special gift from God.   Joanne Montie   Friday,  March 2nd Dr. Seuss ruled the day as we ended R week.  We enjoyed reading many Dr. Seuss books and additional books of rhyme.  Mrs. Repino read a story in the morning and the children had fun guessing who our mystery reader was.We completed our rainbows and used rice to make it rain.  We wore red and ate red snacks including: grapes, strawberries and apples.  Mrs. Hyland, Matthew's mom, came in the afternoon and read more stories to us. We made a Cat in the Hat craft and played rhyming games throughout this day of play.        Thursday, March 1st</div><div> We had some robust fun with Mrs. Wallace in gym class as we started our day with movement and motion. We had an early morning fire drill that I prepared the children for explaining the importance of quiet and quickness.  They did a wonderful job.  We enjoyed a You Tube video of the Polka Dots performing a robot song and dance.  We danced like robots and had some fun until our charge ran out.    We created rainbows and made R books.   We worked on our fine motor skills as we pasted, our rectangles in the arcs of the rainbow.  This afternoon we played outside before rest time and snack.  We had a special visitor for Show and Tell as Kieran showed off his little sister, Riley.  She stole the show with her beautiful smile.  Thanks, Mrs. Crossan for the rice krispy treats!! Matthew was our special person. Wednesday, February 29th  I am a little robot short and strong, Here are my handles, just turn me on When I get all warmed up, watch me go Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. We continued our robot theme with each child saying the rhyme and role playing being a robot.   Great fun was had by all.  After committing the rhyme to memory the children had the opportunity to make the rhyme their own.  Their creativity was a joy to see.  Olivia led the way with her own version and Matthew added a fun robotic vocabulary word: gears.  This led to an interesting discussion on the inner workings of robots.  Each child participated and had a chance to "ham" it up. We also practiced writing upper and lower case Rs in our letter copybooks.  After saying and performing the motions to Row, Row Row Your Boat, the children were given a worksheet with the rhyme and found all of the Rs on the page.  We counted them and then wrote the number on our page.   We saw a video clip with Rodney Race Car who raced a rat, a raccoon, a rhinoceros on roller skates and a rabbit.   Poor Rodney was sad because not only did he lose the race but it started to rain.  His spirits were soon lifted when a bright rainbow appeared in the sky.  We used our chart paper to write down all of the R words we could remember from the short clip.  After we counted them, we had 12.  Then we made another list of R words.  Again we counted them and we had added 12 additional words.  Andrew wanted to know how many we had altogether.  We guessed what 12 and 12 would be.  Again, your children amazed me as their guesses were so close-21, 25, 22 18, 30.  We counted them together and saw how close we were.    For Show and Tell our boys brought in a rabbit, a home made race car, a robot, an antique race car, a recycling truck, a rocket ship and a rubik's cube.   Bryan shared some of his vacation story with us as he just returned for a week in Florida!!  Welcome back, Bryan, we missed you. Olivia was our special person today.  We also  enjoyed  Music class with Ms. Serratore on this rainy day.  Remember tomorrow is gym class.  Have a great evening. Tuesday, February 28th</div><div> </div><div>We had a really great day making robots today. After reading a rhyming book about shapes we created rectangular robots.  The children had roaring fun with this project.   Brian had us all laughing as he entertained us making robotic sounds.  He is quite the comedian.   Maddison was our special person and the children had two minutes to say something nice to their classroom friend.  As we went around our circle it was so nice to hear how they have grown from saying things like, " I like your shoes" to  Nicolas' comment to Maddison, "I care about you, you are a nice friend".    </div><div>We raced cars on a really big letter R.  We also raced our cars on the cafeteria tables to see which car would go the fastest.  We continued with our rhyming games, our upper and lower case letter match and  our initial sound identification. </div><div>We enjoyed the bright sunshine as we went outside and played with Mrs. Dignam's class.</div><div> </div><div>Monday, February 27, 2012  R week promises to be a week of raccoons, rhymes, rabbits, rainbows , robots and reading. We started the day reading a story about a friendly raccoon and followed up with some cutting, pasting and coloring a rascally raccoon.  The children used some alliteration as they named their new friend.  He/She will come home later this week. We played several rhyming games today.  In one, the children worked in small groups and tried to match picture cards to the game board.  After finding the picture, they had to  find something on the game board that rhymed with the original picture.  It was a bit difficult at the beginning, however the children quickly caught on to the concept.  We also worked in pairs and played a letter match game.  The children matched the upper case letters with the lower case and found a picture on the back of the match.  The picture started with the matching letter sound.  Some of the children were able to arrange the letters in ABC order.  Great job, boys and girls!! We played outside this morning, enjoying the beautiful sunshine with our classroom friends. We visited Ms. Sheen in the library this afternoon and she entertained us with some Dr. Seuss.  We also read a rhyming poem about a dog with fleas.  The children did a great job listening and could pick out the rhyming words.   Please read the letter I sent home today as it has some information about Friday.  Due to Confirmation tomorrow is a half day with dismissal at 11:55. Have a relaxing evening. Thursday, February 23, 2012 This week has been a week of questions, quails, quilts and even queens.  To recap, on Tuesday while I was in Washington the children talked about the difference between asking things and telling things.  They looked at books with asking sentences and telling sentences.  The marks of punctuation were pointed out to the children.   They were introduced to the letter Q and practiced writing the letter on their white boards.  They also saw pictures of Quail.  They learned that the quail is bird that would rather walk than fly.  Using Q-tips we painted our quails brown, red and yellow. On Wednesday, the girls were queens for a day and the boys were knights of the queen.  We had fun as we cut, pasted and made magnificent queen with beautiful jewels.  We also practiced developing questions and making question marks.  We stretched our imaginations to answer our journal entry, If I were queen for the day I would.....   We also practiced the queen's wave.  We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine.  We ate delicious pizza as we celebrated our 100th day of school.  We played several counting games and we enjoyed some races which we did quickly and quietly.  We shared our 100 celebration with the oreo cookie.  Oreo is celebrating 100 years so, of course, the children munched down a few.   As Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, Father Kelly visited to distribute Ashes.  I explained to the children that the ashes remind us of how much Jesus loves us.  I also sent home a calendar with daily suggestions that the children could do to show their love for you and Jesus.  We will be talking each day about this.  We started today with Mrs. Wallace in gym class.  The children played two games with Mrs. Wallace.  They played a game called, "Don't wake the Snake".  They thoroughly enjoy their time with Mrs. Wallace.  Please ask them to explain the game to you. Today we started making our Preschool Friendship Quilt.  Each child received a square to decorate.  We will put our squares together to create a beautiful work of art.  Please look for it outside our classroom in the weeks ahead.   We also found Qs on a worksheet.  They were hiding inside words.  The children were great Q detectives as they tracked them down.    We also decorated crosses and made them into magnets to hang on our refrigerators.  They will remind us to check our Lenten calendar to see what we are going to do for Jesus. For Show and Tell we saw several sets of quarters.  We counted each set and identified which set had the most and the least  as we compared the numbers.  We also saw a queen of spades, a quill and a some Fisher Price queens.  We enjoyed the beautiful weather and at calendar time we talked about the weather being more spring like than winter. Have a relaxing, quiet evening. Friday, February 17th We ended our P week with a punch pop, popcorn, prayers of praise and plump pears. We started our day talking about polar bears and penguins.  We played some fun motion games with our cold weather animal friends.  We talked about the Polar Bear Plunge and had our own plunge into the center of our pool of blue ocean rug.    We read the story, A Rainbow of Friends  and talked about the beauty of friendship. We played outside and later in the morning we thought of special words that show God praise.  In computer class we chose items that we like and put them into a heart.  Mrs. Gellar always does fun things with us. After lunch, we listened to Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald as we played play dough.  Using a pear stencil and some chalk we created some colorful plump pears.  The children used there senses to feel the soft, silky feeling of the chalk as they rubbed it on the paper.  They were quite impressed with themselves when they saw their perfect pears.   We ate our punch pops after rest time and even munched on some delicious popcorn that Maddison brought in for Show and Tell.   We had a wonderful week of p. Thursday, February 16th, 2012 We started our pajama day with Mrs. Wallace and some parachute fun..  Mrs. Wallace had the children jumping and playing as they performed with the parachute. We started some polar bear activities.  First, we read about the Polar bears, talking about their eating habits and what they look like.  We examined the way Polar bears are like and unlike Grizzly bears.  We made a polar bear craft.  We also talked about Polar bear habitats.  We also made punch pops that we will freeze overnight and enjoy tomorrow. In order to encourage good listening skills, during small group time we worked on an auditory memory worksheet.  The children were given directions and asked to complete the sheet.  At first, it was a challenge for some of our friends but everyone worked hard to focus and complete the task.   We took pictures in pairs of our pajama clad friends.  During girls' show and tell we saw several ponies, princesses, a pillow  and a panda.  We also had a purse and  a Phillies Phanatic doll.   Mrs. Pedano , our kindergarten teacher, came in to read a special book, Dinner at the Panda Palace to celebrate our perfect pajama day. Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 Our day began with some prayer filled praise as we began our day talking about the goodness of God who gives us many precious gifts most especially our parents.  We continued our day with a fun game of motion with our parachute.   We were entertained with some animal antics as we joined our other preschool classes to watch some clips of penguins and polar bears.  We watched as the mommy penguin passed her chick to the daddy.  We saw them swim and enjoy a dinner of fish. We also viewed a clip from Mary Poppins and had some fun watching the animated penguins from this classic film.  Of course, while watching we munched on some delicious popcorn.   We practiced writing the letter P and named some P words.  We drew pictures in our journals of what we do when we want to be peaceful  and the children  began writing some of the initial sounds of the words.  I was very impressed with their ability.  Some of the children wrote the words.  Very impressive!!! We also colored in some P pictures and put puzzle pieces together.   We read a National Geographic Kid's Magazine about Penguins highlighting the facts that Penguins are birds that do not fly but rather swim.  Vocabulary words we talked about include: colony, blubber and webbed.  We also worked on our fine motor skills playing a game of Jolly Octopus.  To cooperate with P week our octopus's head  has pink polka dots.</div><div>Our boys  continued showing off some P items including: a pocket watch, a purple key chain, a bay blade named Pegasus, and Play Dough.  </div><div>We enjoyed the mild weather by running and playing outside  with our classroom friends.</div><div>Remember tomorrow is gym so please have your child wear sneakers.  Also, it is pajama day!!!  Wear your favorite PJs!!   </div><div>   Tuesday, February 14th, 2012</div><div> </div><div>Happy Valentine's Day!!  We had an exciting day today as we spent the day preparing for our Valentine celebration.  We started the day talking about how today is a day set aside to show our love to special people in a special way.  During group time, we completed our Valentine cards for our parents.  Hopefully, you have received them by now and have seen the beautiful stained glass heart the children pasted and cut last week.  Today we added a POEM on the inside.  We talked about poetry and read some funny Valentine rhymes.  The children selected which poem they wanted to put in their card to you.  They copied words from the board and worked diligently to give you a work of love<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emlove.gif" />.  I am sure you will agree that they did a super job!!!  The children also decorated their Valentine  bags so that their classroom friends could deliver valentines to them.</div><div>We had a pen-pal activity with our 4th grade buddies.  The children cut and pasted hearts and kisses for their pen-pal.  They also received one  from their buddies.  I think forming these connections gives the children a sense of security and belonging when they see the older children in the school.  The 4th graders make such a fuss over the children when they see them in the hall as Mrs.  Herron and I have had the children meet on a few occasions.</div><div>Thank you to Mrs. Trapp for sending in some delicious cupcakes and to Mrs. Manu for sending in a fruit salad.  Special thanks to all of the parents for sending in Valentines for all of the children and for me and Mrs. DiMemmo.  The children thoroughly enjoyed reading the names on their Valentines and giving them to their classroom friends.  In took some time, but the children were up to the task.  It was a beautiful sight seeing them look so proud.   </div><div> </div><div>Tomorrow we will make fruit punch pops to enjoy on Thursday.  </div><div>Wishing you a wonderful Valentine's evening with your special little <img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emlove.gif" />.</div><div> </div><div>   </div><div> </div><div>Monday, February 13th, 2012</div><div> </div><div>What a pleasant day we had as we started P week!   Lindsay Stratton was our special person.After our morning routine, we shared a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.  We worked with a partner to piece puzzles together.  I am very impressed with the growth I have seen in the children's ability to work together to complete our puzzles. We cut and pasted penguin parts to create some perfect Valentine penguins. <div style="display: inline-block;" id="pastingspan1"></div>We practiced reciting a penguin poem, please see if your child remembers any of the words.  We also practiced our waddle as we moved from group to group.  We danced in pairs as we moved to the song, Popcorn.    We talked about different types of prayers: asking, thanking and praising as we began a special P project, creating a book of prayer.   </div><div> </div><div>Continuing our celebration of Black History Month, we listened to an African lullaby CD at rest time.  We also read the story, He's got the Whole World in His Hands.  </div><div> </div><div>We enjoyed a story with Ms. Sheen at library time.  </div><div> </div><div>We painted our Valentine box using two different colors of pink, pale pink and hot pink.  We enjoyed Princess fruit snacks (at least the girls did).   We even braved the cold air and went outside to play.  </div><div> </div><div>Please send in Valentines with your child tomorrow,  if you wish.  Mrs. Trapp, our homeroom mom, will be sending in a Valentine treat for the children.   </div><div> </div><div>Thursday, February 9th</div><div> </div><div>One more day until the Big <img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emlove.gif" /> Ball.  We were busy putting the finishing touches on our activities for tomorrow.  I don't want to ruin the surprise but I am sure the daddies will feel very special after spending this fun time with there precious little one.  Isabella P. was our special person.</div><div> </div><div>We continued working on our ocean mural and we even made individual smaller scale oceans.  The children enjoyed  drawing fish and choosing fish stickers to decorate their ocean.</div><div> </div><div>We started creating beautiful stained glass Valentine cards for our parents today.  It was a great craft for exercising our fine motor muscles.  The children needed to pick up tissue paper squares and glue them to a pre-cut heart.  They used fine bristled paint brushes to glue the squares to the heart.  There was much thinking going on as they had to determine how many squares to use and where to place them.  Matthew added a new dimension to the design and put little balls on it.  Many of our "little designers"  liked his style and copied it.  I love to see how the children take an idea presented to them and make it their own.  Way to go, Matthew!!</div><div> </div><div>We used our clay to make the letter o and we even labeled our ocean with letters made of  clay.  Children shaped each of the letters and I place them on our bulletin board.  </div><div> </div><div>Our girls did a great job with Show and Tell.  We enjoyed seeing oreo cookies, several oranges, an owl, and an Olivia book.    Before going home we feasted on some vanilla oreo cookies.  It was another great day in pre-school.<img border="0" alt="" align="absmiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/face1.gif" /></div><div> </div><div>Wednesday, February 8th We started our day day with a dance and a prayer as we chose partners to move to the music.  Speaking of music we conducted our own orchestra today as we looked at pictures of a violin, a cello, a clarinet and a tuba.  Tomorrow we hope to get to  listen to the sound of the instuments using a smart board.  We also used our sticks to tap out the beats to words and names.  With Ms. Serrator we made animal puppets and danced to the animal zoo. We continue to work on our surprises for our Valentine Ball.  We were cutting and coloring today as we got ready for the Big day. We made owls today as we cut and pasted our shapes to make an outstanding owl.   We continued making our  mural of the ocean and we also started making our own ocean to bring home.  Using the smart board ,we viewed a 3 minute clip of ocean life. life.  After reading Commotion in the Ocean, it was fun seeing all the ocean life that the  children could identify.  We started writing our book, Ollie Owl Discovers Opposites,  as the children acted out opposites with oour fine feathered friend, Ollie. Tuesday, February 7th The boys were O V E R the top with their Show and Tells today.  We had an orange, an Optimus prime transformer, an owl, 2 octopuses, an owl story book, and colorful gushy okies.    Any boy who forgot may bring in something for Thursday.         We practiced writing the letter O today after playing a fun alphabet   game that allowed us to show off our knowledge of the sounds of letters A through O.  We cut, pasted and glued today to create octopuses.  We will be hanging them in our blue ocean. Speaking of oceans, we sponged painted a beautiful ocean today on one of our bulletin boards.  Tomorrow we will glue sand and add some colorful fish and sea life to our display.  We also added some ocean words to our display including: fish, water, sand, salt and swim. As a follow up to our nose activity from last week where we identified certain odors and voted YES(I like it) or NO( I do not like it), the children looked at a graph.  The graph showed how many children liked each scent and how many did not like each scent.  For each of the four scents, we compared the numbers and talked about which was larger and which was smaller.  We also drew conclusions from these numbers.  We then put our conclusion in a sentence.  This activity was done in small groups.  I was very impressed with the children's ability to compare numbers and draw conclusions.  It was definitely a higher level thinking skill and the children were up for the challenge.  Way to go, preK!!! Shh-Shh Don't tell the dads but we are working on lots of things for  <img border="0" alt="" align="absMiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emlove.gif" />Friday<img border="0" alt="" align="absMiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emlove.gif" />. Please check your child's folder, I sent home several things today.  Have a super evening with your wonderful family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Monday, February 6th O week started as we opened our mouths in song to sing, Good Morning, Good Morning to You.  It is a great way to start each day.  We talked about O words and the sound of O in words like ostrich, owl, oven, ox, and orange.  We also talked about words like open, ocean, and overalls.  We started working on our Valentine Ball celebration and we have several surprises in store.  The children are sharing their thoughts about their dads.  It is very sweet.  We are preparing two songs and making decorations.   We traced the letter O and colored, cut and traced an Owl today.  We continued our countdown to 100 days of school.  We are almost there with 92 days completed.    It is hard to believe our school year is more than half way over. Have a great night!  Friday, February 3rd</div>
<div>What a busy Friday we enjoyed as we closed our Catholic Schools' Week celebration.  Gianna was our special person.  Using an egg timer to race around our circle our classroom friends each had an opportunity to say a kind word to Gianna.  It is a great way to practice our friendship building skills.  </div>
<div>We had fun in computer class with Mrs. Gellar as we learned more keyboarding skills.  We also listened to a story about Noah and his family.  We talked about what a flood is and we talked about the importance of being safe when there is heavy rain.  We made an arc and filled it with animal crackers.  </div>
<div>We made Noodle snowflakes as we followed a pattern to create a beautiful snowflake.  We used our fine motor skills as we chose different sized noodles to match, sort and create our design.  </div>
<div>We played outside in the afternoon enjoying the beautiful sunshine and brisk cool air.  The Preschool Newspaper will be sent home on Tuesday.  If you have not sent in your article, please do so by Monday.  Thanks!!!<img border="0" alt="" align="absMiddle" src="/Controls/DHtmlEditor/Images/emsmile.gif" /></div>
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<div>Thursday, February 2nd Today, continuing with our celebration of Catholic School Week we attended a prayer service for our priests, Father Lucas and Father Kelly. The boys and girls felt very grown-up sitting in the gym with all of the "big kids" in the school.   The children made cards and gave presents of candy and cookies to the priests.  We also made predictions today as we talked about the ground hog.  In our journals, we predicted whether or not the ground hog saw his shadow.  Some of the children  were hoping he did as they love winter and want 6 more weeks of it.  They want lots of snow to go sledding and they also want to build snow people.  Some of my friends are hoping for an early spring.  They predicted that the groundhog would not see his shadow. They are ready to go to the beach and play outside without a coat. We will see what the official word is from Punxsutwney. We also made our own burrows and groundhogs that the children are bringing home today. We continue talking about the sense of smell.  Today we read a story about animals' sense of smell and how most animals sense of smell is better than humans.  Please ask your child about the animals we read about today. ope to see you at McDonald's tonight.  I will be thdere at 5:45. Wednesday,February 1st We started our Wednesday making sandwiches for the residents of the life center.  The children put on latex gloves and made some delicious turkey and cheese sandwiches.  After we put them in plastic bags, the children added a dessert to the beautifully decorated brown lunch bags we prepared yesterday.  I was so proud of them.  They particiapted in a great service project coordinated by Mrs. McGeever. It is a great example of how we are never to young to help others in need.    Working on our fine motor skills, we made bird's nests.  The children each took a lunch bag and carefully rolled down the sides.  At first, some of the children thought it was to difficult but with perserverence, everyone was able to create a beautiful nest.  We added some grass and we left our nests on our tables.  We opened a window and made a wish that a bird would fly in and leave an egg behind.  We went to music class with Mrs. serratore and when we returned all of our nests had a colorful egg inside.  Each egg has pictures of our N items that we colored this morning.  What a treat!! We also read a story about noses , We Need our Nose.  We used our sense of smell to vote on whether we liked certain odors including: moth balls, cinnamon, coffee and vanilla.  After smelling each scent, each child voted yes or no on his/her sheet.  It was interesting to see their responses.  We will chart our results tomorrow.  We talked about the new month and all of the fun things in store for February. Gym is tomorrow as is Girls' Show and Tell. Parents, please send back the Valentine Ball RSVP as it is very important that I make sure each child has someone present for him/her. Have a great evening. Tuesday, January 31st Today was another nice day in preschool 4. We started our day with each of us making Yes and No signs for a classroom game.  We will add these words to our new word wall.  We read the story Nests, Nests, Nests  as we prepared to build a net for our feathered friends. To celebrate Catholic Schools Week we had Teacher Switch Day.  Mrs. Pedano, our kindergarten teacher, came into our class and taught a lesson.  The children enjoyed Mrs. Pedano very much.   We enjoyed the unusually warm last day of January by going outside this morning and again this afternoon.  We decorated bags for sandwiches that we will make tomorrow for the residents of the homeless shelter at 63rd and Market Streets.  We completed our January calendars.  Our boys brought in many interesting items for Show and Tell including; 2 notebooks, 2 ninjas, a net, a neat car and a nerf football.  Great job, boys!!!!  Monday, January 30th We started our Catholic Schools Week celebation with a special thank you to our policemen, firefighters and community leaders.  The children performed two rhymes, I am a Police Officer and Five Firefighters.  They did a wonderful job.  You can be very proud of them.  We talked about the sound of N and we named some N words.  We looked at the newspaper and talked about different parts pof the paper.  in your child's folder you will find a paper to ill out about our preschool news.   We also played a name guessing game.  The children listened to clues and had to guess the classroom friend being described.  We listened to a story at library time with ms. Sheen. We had lots of fun as we enjoyed the sunshine running and playing outside. Friday, January 27th On Friday we munched on muffins, marched around the alphabet and moved ourselves into a monstrous mitten.    We had fun in computer class coloring in a penguin and playing a penguin race game. We enjoyed our hibernation party. Thursday, January 26th</div>
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<div>Today we made fuzzy mittens as we prepared for our Catholic Schools' Week display.  We have been creating a Gingerbread Snow Village for several weeks.  We decorated our gingerbread house with our painted candy wrappers and personalized hearts.  Yesterday we began  building our rectangular snow person.   We carefully crafted his face using shapes.  We went outside to collect sticks for his hands and we added some  finishing touches on our snow person with some clever ideas suggested by our pre-schoolers.  Lindsay wanted us to add a flower to the hat.  Isabella wanted us to add some feet.  Andrew wanted us to add ears and we are still working on its clothing.</div>
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<div>We started our day with Mrs. Wallace in gym class.  We had great fun with the parachute as we jumped in and around it.  We had fun with a variation of Five Little Monkeys as we performed 18 Little Monkeys.</div>
<div>We practiced for our show on Monday reciting 2 finger plays to honor our community helpers.  </div>
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<div>We also enjoyed many M Show and Tells including: 3 Minnie Mouse, 1 Mickey Mouse, a medal for cheerleading, marshmallows, and a matchbox car.  We talked about how the Minnies were like and how they were different.  Your children are very observant.</div>
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<div>Wednesday, January 25th Parents, I hope to see you tonight at the open Forum in O'Brien Hall at 7:00 P.M. Also, please note the change in date for the  Early Childhood Information Night. It is now scheduled for Thursday, February 8th.  Jayda was our special person.  We monkeyed around in preschool 4 today as we read about the antics of Curious George and made some magnificent monkeys.  We played around with alliteration as we named our monkeys M names.  We had Maria Monkey, Mia Monkey, Mark Monkey, Mallon Monkey, Mickey Monkey and many more. We practiced writing our Mm and put our m books in numerical order. We said our M words in a microphone.  Our boys showed their Show and Tells and we had fun with a motorcycle and another microphone.  The boys who forgot are welcome to bring their Show and Tell tomorrow.  We had music class with Ms. Serratore and performed motions to the music.  At Activity Time the children were able to choose between the sandbox, painting, building, coloring, drawing and/or playing in the kitchen area. During God's time we talked about our mother, Mary.  We discussed how we can talk to her through our prayers. We finished our invitations to our dads for the Valentine Ball.  Please look for them in your child's folder and return the RSVP as soon as possible. Monday, January 23, 2012 Kieran Crossan was our special person today.  Our merry Monday, started with some marshmellow counting fun!  We each counted out 12 marshmellows and glued them to our letter M.  We started monkeying around with a letter M craft that when finished will look like a furry, climbing monkey.  We celebrated Zaria's birthday and each of our classroom friends said something kind to Zaria that we printed on our birthday buddy cut-out.  Your children are developing marvelous social skills as each child is able to say a specific compliment to his/her friend. During friendship builders, we used our buddy sticks and some of our friends played a memory game while other played a number match game.  We had library and the children listened to a story about a gorilla ending up in a classroom and the teacher ending up in the zoo.  The children enjoyed the story very much.  We practiced alternating our feet on the steps as we walked down the steps from the library. Thursday and Friday, January 19th and 20th We have certainly been on the move the past two days.  On Thursday we were in London.  We talked about what we would pack in our luggage for such an exciting trip!   We looked at our classroom globe to find London, England.  We saw the Atlantic Ocean and we talked about how some of us play in the ocean when we go to the beach.  Each child packed five things he/she  thought that he would need the most.  Please check out your child's folder to see his most prized possessions.  Nicolas was special person on Thursday.  We also had fun with Mrs. Wallace on Thursday.  We went outside to play and enjoyed the cold weather. On Friday, we practiced writing the letter Ll and colored, cut and pasted some lovely Ll pictures.  Andrew was our special person.  We also read a story about a llama who missed his parents while he was at school.   We created a llama out of the letter Ll. We also flew to the West Coast to enjoy a luau.  We enjoyed a coconut toss, a limbo dance and an ocean wave toss.  What fun!  Wednesday, January 18th Zaria was our special person today. We practiced writing the letter Ll today and we drew something that started with the L sound.  Your children are quite the artists.  I saw pictures of Luke, Lindsay, quite a few lions, some logs, a lizard and a leg.  The children enjoy our morning circle when we use our dry erase boards to practice our letter formation.  I hope they have been singing our new favorite song, Where Do You Start Your Letter.  We played a beginning sound game that had the children moving and shaking as we identified the beginning sounds of words beginning with letters A through L.  In music class, Miss Serraore had us singing and moving to the music as we praced and  danced the moves of our favorite animal friends.    We read a story about lions as we practiced our listening skills.  We estimated the number of lolipops in a box and Olivia's guess was the closest.  Great job, Olivia! Tomorrow we head across the ocean to London with some interesting items in our luggage.  We also have gym tomorrow, please have your child wear sneakers.  It is also girls' show and tell. Tuesday, January 17th Jackson was our special person today. We started Ll week with some lip smackin' lemonade.  It was a tasty way to start the day. We also learned a lion rhyme, I'm a Little Lion On the plain. Here is my tail and Here is my mane. When I get excited You will see Just how loud My roar can be! We had fun pretending to be lions as each child was able to act like a lion and prace, dance, hop, roar or run around our circle.  We made a lion craft practicing out cutting skills and our coloring.  We learned vocabulary words associted with the lion including: Africa, cub, pride, lioness, mane and plain.  We reviwed beginning sounds of letters B, D, H, J and K.  Using clay we continue to exercise the fine motor muscles in our hands.  We also made the number 10 out of clay today. During God's time we read another story about Martin Luther King Jr., "Celebrating the Dream".  We talked about ways each of us brings peace to the world.  We looked an many lovely L items today including: two lego guys, a ladder truck, lollipops(the sweetest show and tell), buzz Lightyear  and a  lizard.  If your son did not brings his, he is welcomed to bring one on Thursday. Thursday and Friday, January 12th and 13th</div>
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<div>On Thursday Isabella P. was our special person and on Friday Lindsay was our special person.  On Thursday we made kites.  Our kites were shaped like migrating birds.  Weather did not permit us to fly them, but we will hopefully get a chance next week before they go home.  We talked about birds that migrate and the reasons that they do.  Please ask your child about this.  We also continued talking about opposites and during our "friendship builder" time the children chose a buddy to play an opposite game.  They did a super job.   </div>
<div>On Friday we read the story, " God's Dream" and talked about the works of Martin Luther King.  We made Freedom Bells and discussed the work that Martin Luther King, Jr. started to bring about peace and an end to segregation.  We iced cupcakes.  We iced half with chocolate icing and half with vanilla.  It was a delicious treat. </div>
<div>Hopefully, my new computer will arrive shortly and my updates will be more timely.</div>
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<div>Wednesday, January 11 Luke was our special person today.  We practiced writing  our upper and lower case Ks today.  We also played a letter/sound game as we matched upper and lower case letters Aa through Kk.   We sang our welcome song to our new circle time friend, Kippy.   We ordered numbers as we practiced our fine motor skills.  We continue working on social skills with our friendship builders program and our buddy sticks.  I am again having computer problems, parents, so my updates may be late and a bit shorter than usual. Tuesday, January 19th Kaitlyn was our special person today.  Parents please make sure you look in your child's folder for the time of our conference on Tuesday, January 24th. Kippy visited us again  and was overjoyed to hear all of the K words we could name.  She was one jumping kangaroo.  We also practiced our kind words. We read a story, Animals in Winter, and we continued our discussion about hibernating animals.  We talked about why animals hibernate and what they do to prepare for hibernation.  We also talked about what happens to their bodies when they hibernate.   I introduced the word migrate to the children.  We talked about bluebirds, bats and butterflies that migrate south for the winter.  Tomorrow we will make a kite in the shape of a bird and hopefully one day this week we can take them outside to send them south for the winter. For boys' Show and Tell we enjoyed hearing about a Power Ranger named Kevin, a key, 2 koalas, Kieran, a knife and a book about Knights and Kings.  Thursday will be girls' Show and Tell.  Boys who forgot are welcome to show a special k item on that day. January 9th We started K week kicking up our heels with our new friend, Kippy the Kangaroo.  We had fun naming K words and we practiced writing the letter K.  For every K word we could name Kippy hopped her way into our hearts.  We also talked about kangaroos, how they carry their young(pouches) where they are from- Austrailia and how B-I-G a kangaroo's feet are.   Tomorrow we have Kippy in, out, up, down and all around as we begin a week long theme on positional words.  We continued our discussion of winter and drew a blizzard scene using different colored pieces of chalk.  We talked about the different types of writing/drawing utencils that we use at school.  We named Kind words that Jesus wants us to use everyday when interacting with our classroom friends and our families.  We tried to incorporate these words in our conversation during the day.  We also talked about unkind words and how they are the opposite of kind words.  We named words that are opposites like: wet and dry, hot and cold, old and young, tall and short, opened and closed. We painted, glued and cut as we worked on strenthening our fine motor skills. As always we continue to work on time orientation as we identify the day, date, month and season.  We also talk daily about weather words and the importance of drssing for the weather.   Friday, January 6th As we celebrate the feast of the Magi, we have much to be thankful for at St. Bernadette School.  Our school is such a gift to each of us and the spirit of your children is such a gift to me and all of us at St. Bernadette's School. Today the children started the day with our usual routine of putting their things away, putting up their stars, tracing their names and saying their prayers and reciting the pledge.  We talked aout the day and I explained to them the activites we would engage in together. Each day we work on patterning and today the children combined their cutting, pasting and patterning skills together to complete a task. We also clapped out  sound patterning.  They did an amazing job!!  After listening to our new favorite tune, Where Do You Start Your Letters, we made snow people using the letters in our names.  Each child counted the numbers of letters in his/her name and counted out that number of snowballs.  Then he/she wrote one letter of his/her name on a snowball.  Each child then put the letters of his/her name in order to spell out his/her name.  The children then took another snowball to make a face and using chalk created blizzard conditions on their papers.  That, of course, was the best part!  Please ask your child to sing the song to you, it is a fun song and they are enjoying it.  We had fun creating our computer generated snow people with Mrs. Gellar in computer class.  The children love going up to the third floor for class and it is a great way for us to work on alternating feet on the steps. We finished up our Christmas Show and Tell with many fun items including: a LaLa Loopsey, Eagle football pads, a princess computer, a brownie, a wooden doll and a watch.  Have a fun filled weekend with your child.  I am very thankful for them and to you for all of your support. Thursday, January 5th</div>
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<div>Olivia Highland was our special person today. </div>
<div>We reviewed beginning sounds using our alphabet chart.  We also reviewed one to one correspondence with numbers one through ten.  We practiced counting 1 through 50 and worked on our calendar skills and time orientation.  </div>
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<div>We enjoyed going to the gym today and we played hockey .  We had fun taking turns being goalie as we tried to block shots made by our classroom friends.  We named things that we like to do in winter.  One of the things is to drink hot chocolate.  We will do this in school tomorrow.  We also talked about freezing temperatures.  We put our water bottles outside to see what happens to them when the temperature drops at night.</div>
<div>We will check them first thing tomorrow!!</div>
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<div>Wednesday, January 4th</div>
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<div>Matthew Hyland was our special person today.  </div>
<div>We continued our discussion about winter today.  We examined two similar scenes, one winter and one from summer.  We looked for similarities and differences in the pictures and used our words to describe them.  We drew pictures of ourselves in a winter scene.  </div>
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<div>We also practiced sequencing numbers 1 through 10.  We were introduced to the number words one through ten and played a match game. </div>
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<div>Using clay, we worked on our exercising and strengthening our fine motor muscles.  The children shaped letters, numbers, and  snow people.  We read the story Flip and Flop and discussed ways to deal with hurt feelings.</div>
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<div> We had fun doing a freeze dance with Ms. Serratore in music class.  Your children are quite the dancers.  </div>
<div>Tomorrow I will be leaving the building at 8:15 and returning by 9:15 to attend a viewing of Ms. Sheen(the librarian) mother.  Mrs. D. will be in the classroom from 9 until 9:15.  </div>
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<div>January 3, 2012 Happy New Year!!  I hope everyone enjoyed a joy-filled and happy Christmas.  I apologize for the lack of communication on my website the week before Christmas  .  I have been having problems with my computer at school and I was in need of a new hard drive.  Hopefully, things will be OK with this one.  The bit of snow and the bitter temperatures lent themselves nicely to a discussion about winter.  We dressed our frog for the weather discussing the importance of hats, gloves and warm coats.  Parents, whenever possible I like to take the children outside(even for 5 minutes) please make sure they have appropriate clothing from top to bottom.  Today, we made New Year's resolutions.  We discussed what a resolution is and the children were quick to come up with ways they want to grow.  You can look for their ideas in their folders.  We also practiced writing letters Aa through Jj as we are using this as a review week.  The children enjoyed sharing their holiday activities with their classroom friends and a highlight for many of the children was seeing one of the many Christmas movies in theaters.  For Show and Tell this week, the boys may bring a favorite Christmas gift on Wednesday and the girls may bring one on Thursday. We also started our discussion on Hibernation.  We will continue our discussion, read books and do some games and activities surrounding this theme.  We will end with a hibernating party later in the month.   Our monthly calendar will come home tomorrow.  Please note conferences are scheduled all day on Tuesday, January 24th.  They will be scheduled on a first come basis, so if you need a particular time, please return the form early.  I will send them home on Thursday, January 5th.  please note the children have off this day. </div>

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