FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday, February 18, 2011

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and that you all enjoyed the gifts your children worked so hard to make. I think that the hardest part for them was keeping it a secret! In our classroom we celebrated with cupcakes and valentines. Everyone thought the cupcake hearts were really neat. Thank you so much for the cards and gifts!
This week we explored our 5 senses via jungle animals. We mainly focused on the senses of touch, hearing and sight. Next week, we will continue to use our jungle animals to help us learn about our 5 senses and focus more on taste and smell. We used the lion masks that we made to go on a lion hunt. It’s amazing what sounds you can hear in the jungle. Our elephant paper bag elephant helped us to balance on a tight rope (balance beam). Our toy elephants’ wrinkled skin was a dead giveaway, when I asked each child to close his/her eyes and guess which toy he/she felt was the elephant or a bear. Monkey finger puppets are always fun when counting those five monkeys who insist on jumping on the bed! It was fun to sing along and watch the monkeys fall. This week, we did get to enjoy some yoga too and guess what?! Some of the poses are jungle animals. You should hear the kids roaring during the lion pose!
I thank you all again for supporting Pennies for Patients! We reached our first goal of $10!! We are all excited about that. Also, if you have any donations for our annual Trick Tray classroom basket, please feel free to send it into school with your child and I will be sure to get it to our classroom basket coordinator. I hope to see you all there that evening. It’s always a lot of fun and great prizes too! Please remember that school is closed on Monday, February 21, 2011. Enjoy your three day weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

Congratulations to our preschool class for being one of the winners of Spirit Day!!! We are so excited!! We talked about what our next Spirit Day should be and have come up with some great ideas. Since Valentine’s Day is around the corner, we took this opportunity to talk about symbols, making new colors by mixing, identifying different and same heart shapes, and talking about fiction and non-fiction books. We made our own non-fiction book and worked hard on making the illustrations look great, by trying really hard to stay in the lines when we colored. We continued to practice our fine motor skills when creating some beautiful Valentine’s Day crafts, one of which I can’t mention, but you will all get to see on Monday! On Tuesday, we went to the gym and enjoyed a great game of Red Rover! It’s nice to get some time to run and what a fun way to practice our listening skills. On Thursday, we enjoyed a little yoga. What a great way to stretch and balance!

We continue to collect coins for Pennies for Patients. We will continue this until the end of February. We have almost reached our first goal of $10. I thank you for sending in money and appreciate the opportunity to help your children gain a sense of pride for doing good for other. Monday is Valentine’s Day! I will be bringing in a small treat for all of us to share. Please feel free to send in Valentine’s with your child, for their friends, if you would like. Also, the second report card will be coming home with your child on Monday. Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Looks like Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow! Yeah!!!!!!!! Hopefully he is correct and spring is near. This week, we all discussed Groundhog Day and in honor of Punxsutawney Phil, we made shadow art self portraits, which are hanging on display, in the hallway for all to see. We even made a paper groundhog. This helped us with coloring, pasting and cutting skills. The month of February is Dental Health Month. Throughout this month, we will be discussing teeth, visiting the Dentist and good oral hygiene. We practice brushing our teeth by using a toothbrush and white paint to brush a yellow paper cut out tooth. We used up and down and side to side strokes. We even practiced writing our names on our paper toothbrushes. It’s been a short week, but fun one.
The K-Kids sweet rose sale will continue into next week, due to the snow days. If you would like to send your Valentine a sweet rose, please send in a $1 by Wednesday, February 9. Also, our classroom, as well as the rest of the school, is participating in The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society School & Youth Program, Pennies for Patients. We are collecting money and donating in honor of children who have been diagnosed with Leukemia. We will help to raise funds for cancer research and services for patients. This is a great way to teach our children to do what we can to help one another and those who are sick. Your help will be greatly appreciated. We will be discussing this fundraiser in class and have named our team, Team Preschool. Thank you to all who have continuously donated hand sanitizers and tissues to our classroom. Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

Well, another week and another snow day! I must say that even though we have had a few interruptions to our school weeks for the month of January, everyone still have been coming in ready to get back to work! This week we have been discussing penguins and ice. We used our shapes to create paper penguins. We pretended to be daddy penguins protecting a penguin egg (bean bag) on our feet and under our bellies too! We continue to practice our numbers and counting and are doing a great job with letter recognition. We practiced writing and tracing the letter I for icicles. Speaking of icicles, we thought it would be a great idea to be scientists and perform an experiment to see what happens to a liquid when the temperature changes. Our liquid of choice was orange juice and the end product was delicious! We always enjoy any experiment where we get to eat the end results! Please remember that on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, it will be Spirit Day. Please either have your child bring in a stuffed animal or wear school colors. Also, it’s that time of year for chocolates, roses and hearts! The K-Kids will deliver a Sweet Rose Valentine to your little valentine, for just $1. Please have your orders and money in by February 3rd and they will be delivered on February 14th. Thank you for the classroom donations of wipes and tissues! Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed their three day weekend and had some fun in the snow. I have to be honest by saying I have had my fill of snow this year! Last week was a very short week. In the two days that we were in school, we made sure to cover as much as we could. We continued our unit on polar animals and had fun making our walrus puppets. We all have been practicing writing our names and we are all getting so good at it! This week we will keep our fingers crossed that we will NOT have a snow day and begin our unit on penguins. Please try to stay warm and safe on the roads.

Mrs. Gilberti

Newsletter January 14, 2011

I hope you all enjoyed the snow day! Winter is definitely in full force. This week in class we continued to talk about snow and introduced Polar animals. We practiced fine motor skills by gluing sequence beads to snowflakes and lacing our snowmen. We worked on position words while creating our own snowman portraits which are displayed on our bulletin board, outside our room.

On Tuesday, we had a special treat. We had an author visit our room and share her paintings and story. It was so exciting for all of us to meet Sharon Debowski. If you or your child is interested in purchasing her book, you will find an order form in your childs' folder. Please have all orders in by January 18th.

We continue to work on letters. This week, we worked on letter O and enjoyed a great game of over and under. We have been working extremely hard to write our names independently and forming our letters correctly. Everyone is doing an excellent job! Please remember that this Monday, January 17th, we will not have school. Enjoy your three day weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

SNOW DAY!

I hope everyone enjoyed some play time in the snow on Friday and did your best to stay warm! Last week, we learned all about how we get snow and the water cycle! We talked about how water changes form with a change of temperature too. I think everyones favorite topic, last week, was igloos. Especially when it came time to making one out of icing and marshmallows! We continued to work on fine motor skills and identifying letters. We are working hard on writing our names and using numbers to count. It was nice to get some time for yoga this week too. I want to thank those of you who continue to donate wipes and tissues to our room. We all appreciate it so much. I hope that everyone enjoyed a great holiday season and look forward to continuing growing with your children in this new year! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Mrs. Gilberti