It was a wonderful day today! Thank you all for the very generous gifts! I truly appreciate them but they were not needed because being able to teach your children every day is the greatest gift I could ever ask for. I hope that everyone has a wonderful Holiday Season. Gil is going to hibernate until next December but he sends his love to all!

Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

Mrs. Gilberti!!!!!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! December is full of celebrations and this week in preschool we had fun learning about Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa traditions! We made Christmas trees, Kinaras and Menorahs. We compared the similarities/differences in the way we celebrate these holidays and the symbols that represent these holidays. We also took notice to the colors that are associated with these holidays and had a blast playing with dreidels! It was a great week.

Next week, we will have a half day. All children will be attending the morning session. from 8:20-11:00 a.m. We will end our last hour of class by enjoying a few snacks, that I will provide and a holiday movie. If you would like to join us for a movie, you are welcomed to join us at 10 a.m. Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Well, I'm sure by now you have all heard that GIL IS BACK!!!!!!! The kids love how he is always hiding and being fresh. We had so much fun with Gil this week. We enjoyed our Gingerbread man story. Some of our friends chose to make their own Gingerbread man books to take home. We had a great time being authers and each coming up with our own ending to the story. We made our own gingerbread men and used yarn (icing) to lace, following the numbers to help us along. We glittered glued letter G and worked on fine motor skills by picking up our sequence beads to helo our letter G gleam! Reading our story over and over was so much fun and the children did a fantastic job retelling the story with their own sequence cards. The chorus of "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man" could be heard though out the week, in every center. In our art center, the kids enjoyed making gingerbread man cookies too!

I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Oh Boy! Next week is a big week! Our friend Gil will be visiting. Gil is every child's favorite naughty gingerbread man and the kids can't wait for December to be over so they can meet him. This week, we reviewed shapes and numbers and built on identifying skills for both. We used different shapes to make our cities. The children really had their creative juices flowing and it was wonderful to see it. We also practiced number identification by snipping our scarecrows apart and putting them back together in number order. The computer center was very popular this week. Our new classroom program is a hit and every child works independently on different skills, at his/her own pace. In our art cenetr, shaving cream shapes was a great hit! We ended our week introducing opposites!

It's that time of year again! The PTA Holiday Shop is back! In your child's folder you can find an envelope to place the money that you would like your child to spend and specify how much money should be spent and for whom the gift should be purchased for. Our three year old class will not be attending the holiday shop but are welcomed to shop with and adult during the Holiday Concert on December 5th.

I hope that everyone enjoys their weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

Gobble Gobble is pretty much what I did over Thanksgiving Day! I hope your holiday was just just as filled with food, family and friends as mine was! We had so much fun getting ready for the holiday. The children really enjoyed making their turkey sticks and learning about the Native Americans and Pilgrims. On Wednesday, we all watched The Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and munched on porcorn and pretzels. I absolutely loved making the Thankful Trees. It is always so funny and sweet, at the same time, to hear what the children are thankful for. Overall, it was a great shortened week!

Mrs. Gilberti

I hope that everyone had a great weekend. We had a very busy week last week. We finished up our harvest basket. We filled it it up with yummy vegetables. Speaking of vegetables, I was so proud to see our preschoolers enjoying the vegetables that I brought in for our taste test. Some of my students were sooooo brave to try a vegetable they had never tried before! Well, I

guess having some ranch dip did help a little! We graphed our favorite vegetable and as I thought, carrots had the most votes for favorite vegetable. On Friday, we introduced the letter T. We worked on the sound of T and how to make a T using our wooden sticks. We also had some fun decorating our turkey and T with pom poms.

We only have a few more day until Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving break! Please remember that Wednesday is a half day, and P.M. session will be joining the A.M. session. The children will be let out at 11:00. Also, Stall Day is here again! We will be collecting loose change to donate towards Thanksgiving dinners and holiday cards for Oxford Families.

Mrs. Gilberti

It was great to have everyone back this week. I'm sorry that all school festivities were cancelled but very happy to see a few of our preschoolers out trick-or treating, on Saturday! Thank you to everyone who came to our parent/teacher conferences. I enjoyed talking to you all about your children.

We continued to work on letter H this week and introduced letters V and S. We have begun to work on our Harvest baskets and talked a lot about vegetables and healthy foods.

Please remember that tomorrow is picture retake day! please return the photos that you do not want. Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

This is just a quick reminder that if there should be a delay to the start of our school day, all a.m. students should report to the cafeteria no later than 10:20. Their day will end at 12:20. The p.m. class will start their day at 1:00 and can be picked up at the front of the building, at 3:00. I hope everyone keeps warm and safe. Fingers are crossed that the storm will be kind to us all.

Mrs. Gilberti

I can't belive it is Friday already and Halloween is around the corner. Let's hope that Frankenstorm doesn't hit us too bad and that everyone has power. The last thing we all want or need is a replay of last Halloween. Speaking of Halloween, our party is still scheduled for Wednesday, as long as all is well and we have power. The a.m. class will be celebrating with light snacks and pumpkin decorating, at 10:00. You are free to take your child home with you after the festivities. Our morning class is also welcomed to join us for the school parade at 1:45. Please have your child in our classroom, for line up by 1:40. After the parade, we will bring your child back out to you, in the front lobby. For our p.m session, after the scheduled 1:45 parade, we will regroup in our classroom for light snacks and pumpkin decorating. For those of you that are bringing in snacks, please be sure to follow the school guidelines of nut free snacks and no candy. Also, Tuesday will be picture retakes. If you would like your child's photo retaken, please return the ones you don't want.

We had a wonderful Red Ribbon Week and our preschoolers enjoyed being part of the school wide activities. We met real heros, from our community, on Wednesdays. the kids even got to check out a tank and ambulance. Today, we were joined by some of our 8th graders to work on our Red Ribbon activity. Of course, the 8th graders loved being in our classroom. Why wouldn't they? We do have a lot of fun. We graphed with ghost marshmallows, we made handprint bats, tissue paper pumpkins, Halloween wood masks and dressed our paper bears as pumpkins, all in one week! It was another wonderful week. Be safe and let's hope Sandy plays nice!

Mrs. Gilberti

Aren't the colors around us so beautiful? This week, the kids and I enjoyed looking at the leaves, comparing sizes and colors. We went on a leaf hunt and made beautiful collages with the leaves and hung them in our room. What was most interesting was learning that different tress have different leaves. The kids filled my room with maples leaves that they picked up before coming to school but as their teacher, I was so proud when they identified what type of leaf it was. We learned about the letter P, practicing the sound and how to properly write the letter P. The children loved coming up with words that start with the letter P. We enjoyed painting brown paper bags orange and turning them into jack-o-lanterns using shapes. It was great to use the jack-o-laterns to indentify emotions by looking at their faces. Practicing patterning with pumpkins was fun too. In our art center we enjoyed leaf rubbing. The computer center was very popular this week. The children really are doing a great job moving the mouse around on their own. Please remember that next week is red ribbon week. Monday will will kcik off Red RIbbon Week by wearing red. On Tuesday, we will all be wearing camouflage in the fight against drugs. Also, picture retakes will be Tuesday. If you would like your child's picture retaken, please return the unwanted photos. Next week, I will send home information about our Halloween party. Thank you to those who volunteered as classroom Mom. Have a great weekend. Mrs. Gilberti

I'm sorry that this blog entry is coming to you a little late. I was having trouble getting in to blog but luckily was able to get it fixed. Last week was an awsome week. It was fire prevention week. We learned so much about our heros. We learned about the letters F/L. We had fun creating our letters in different ways. We finger painted them, we snipped and glued paper to form our letters and even used confetti leaves to create the letter L. We learned about sharing and being a kind friend while reading, The Rainbow Fish. Wait a second! Fish! That word starts with an F. The kids had so much fun idenitfying words that start with the letters F/L. Thank you to all that sent back the conference forms. This week, in your child's folder, you will find information about Pumpkins for your Pumpkin. The kids just love the surprise and they are only $1 each! Mrs. Gilberti

We had a very busy week being creative and learning about our letter B! We started our week off by introducing the letter and the sound it makes. I'm sure you all have heard that every letter makes a sound! We searched around our room looking for items that start with the B sound. We read, "Who's There Fuzzy Bear?" Wait a second, bear????!!!! There is that B sound again! We liked the book so much that we made our own Fuzzy Bears using blue, brown and black pom poms! We also had fun reading about The Little Boy Blue. The best part was using our shapes to create our own Little Boy Blue. Attached to our craft, we have our little story which everyone had fun reading while filling in the blanks, by looking at the pictures. Try this with your child at home. It's great to see them engaged in reading. Books and bears were all around us this week. Everyone loved "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" We all loved it so much that we made our own books! As a teacher, it's the most awsome feeling to see them resite and recall the story, all by themselves, using the pictures as prompts. Speaking of pictures, we worked on position words this week too, using our own pictures! I have the color copy in our room to work with but have placed a black and white copy for all of you to enjoy and practice using the words with your children. As usual, there was so much more explored and a lot of fun was had by us all! Mrs. Gilberti

September was here and is almost gone yet we welcome October with open arms. The leaves around us are starting to change colors and the sweet smell of pumpkin is in the air. Our unit on apples has also come to an end. This week, we learned about our 5 senses. We had a blast testing our sense of smell while making our air freshners. Slicing apples for our taste test was neat because we got to use our sense of hearing as we chewed the crunchy apples and our sense of taste. It's a good thing that we all used our sense of sight to idenitfy the three colors of apples: red/yellow/green. To my surprise, many of us had never tasted yellow apples. Well, it turns out, yellow apples are our classroom favorites. We know this because we all got to graph the color apple that we each liked best. Green apples were liked the least. Since it was Jonny Appleseeds birthday this week, we learned all about him and his orchards. All it takes is one litte seed, soil, water and sunshine! We enjoyed slicing an apple in half and searching for seeds in the center before we used our markers, crayons, glue and scissors to make our own apple half. If you happen to walk by our classroom, stop and take a look at our bulletin board. See how many apple seeds you can count on our paper apple halves. We ended our day today using our sense of touch and Miss Alyssa was able to guess the secret item in our box, using only her sense of touch! She guessed that it was a dolphin and was correct! Next week, we will be learning about the letter B and bears! On Monday, to kick off our week of respect, we are asking everyone to wear a blue shirt! Together, we are participating in the world day of bullying prevention. Before I sign off, I have to comment on how amazing it is to see such young children being kind and helpfull to one another. Here at OCS, we strive to be C.O.R.R.E.C.T., and our pre-k and preschoolers are fine example of it! Keep up the great work and enjoy your weekend!!!!! Mrs. Gilberti

What a great morning! The air feels crisp and my pumpkin spice coffee in hand makes reflecting back on our school week, a perfect start to my day. I want to thank all who came out to Back To School Night, especially since the weather was awful. I hope that you all enjoyed our room and that I was able to answer any questions or concerns that you may have had. This week, we explored the different colors of apples. We used our apple colors to pattern, to count and to compare. We worked on a Scholastics Weekly Reader and helped Clifford find all the hidden items in the apple orchard. Being that our week started on Constitution Day, I thought it would be fun to come up with our own classroom Constitution. The kids raised their hands with what they thought should be on the Constitution and when I was done writing, they each placed their hand print on it! There is something about painting hands that all kids love! We continued to practice snipping skills, gluing, following directions, and being kind friends. Next week, we will be exploring apples using all five senses. We will be having an apple tasting test, making apple deodorizers, playing guess the fruit, and other activities. Please remember that this Monday is picture day. We are scheduled for each class to visit the photographer as soon as the kids come in. Please remember to send your forms in. Also, Tuesday will be a half day. Both classes will be attending the morning session. There will be after care available but only at 1pm. Since preschool will end at 11 am, arrangements must be made for those students who need after care. Enjoy this beautiful day! Mrs. Gilberti

What a great week we had in school! This week, we practiced snipping skills, gluing skills, coloring and even got to play outside. Let's hope that this weather keeps up and winters stays away for a long while. The kids had a lot of fun creating themselves using yarn, glue and paper. I have posted a picture but if you would like to see your child's work, it will be hanging outside our room on the bulletin board. We focused on the letter A, for apple, and the color red this week too. Like I said before, it was a great week full of fun! Enjoy your weekend! Mrs. Gilberti

WELCOME!!!!!!!!

I hope everyone had as great as a summer as I did! Yes, it went too fast but we are all so excited to be back at school. I'm sure there are a few parents who are just as excited that school is back in session! Our first few days in Preschool and Pre-K were great! I was so excited that there were no tears at all from our new students! Everyone was happy to be in school and to make new friends. We spent the first few days getting to know each other, the classromm, routines and classroom rules. Everyone was assigned a cubby and given a communication folder. Please be sure to check the folder every evening for letters, notes and your child's art work. It is just as important to send your child back with the folder and I will check it every morning for notes from you. Everyone is doing a great job working on self help skills when they first come in and during snack time. Please remember that this is a NUT FREE ROOM when choosing your child's snack. If you have not already done so, please return all forms that we placed in your childs folder by Friday, September 14. Please enjoy your weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday! Mrs. Gilberti

Next week is our final week of preschool! I still can’t believe it! As you already know, Thursday and Friday are half days. This means that our afternoon friends will be joining our morning friends, at 8:20. Thursday, June 14th is Field Day with a rain date set for Friday, June 15th. Preschool will be joining field day, at 10:30 am until 11:15. We will then get ready for our regular 11:30 dismissal. Those students who take the bus will be dismissed at 12:30 in order to receive bus transportation. Aftercare will be available Thursday only. There will be no aftercare on Friday, June 15th. Please let me know as soon as possible if your child will be staying for aftercare, Thursday June 14th. If he or she will be staying for aftercare, please provide your child with a lunch. For our last day of preschool, Friday June 15th, the class voted and chose to have an ice cream party to celebrate 4/5’s moving up to Kindergarten. Parents are welcomed to join us at 10:30 and free to take their child home when ready. Enjoy your weekend! Mrs. Gilberti

I was so happy to see so many familiar faces at Ocean Night! I know you all must have loved all the creations your little ones worked so hard to make. They started coming home in their folders this week and will continue next week. Summer is just around the corner and we have been having some fun with pin wheels and learning about summer safety. Speaking of summer safety, we have been going outside to play, so please remember to put sun screen on your child and send in a water bottle, if you would like. There are only 10 more days left of school! It's amazing to me how fast this school year came and went. On Thursday, June 14th, preschoolers will be joining the rest of the school for field day. Once I have more information on this event, I will be sure to share it with our preschool families. It is unanimous! The kids would like to hold an ice cream party for the last day of school! Again, I will be sending out information about the last day of school soon. Please, enjoy your weekend. Mrs. Gilberti

Shades of greens, purples, oranges, yellows, reds and of course blues are quickly filling the hallways of OCS. It's almost Ocean Night and the kids are so excited to show off all that they have learned and worked so hard on. This week, we continued to work on a few more sea creatures. Pictures will not be posted on this blog this week because the children really want to surprise you all with their creativity! We did get a chance to visit the playground this week. The weather has been divine and the kids need to get their giggles and extra energy out! I don't blame them! That sunshine makes me want to be outside too! The PTA sponsored book fair was a great success. I hope you all enjoyed your childs' book selection. This weekend, Saturday, May 19, The PTA is sponsoring their annual KIDS TRICKY TRAY, here at OCS! It is so much fun! The doors open at 3pm. Also, Ocean Night will be held this coming Thursday, again at OCS, with doors opening at 6pm. I hope to see many familiar faces! Enjoy your weekend. Mrs. Gilberti

Finally! The sun is shining! All the rain was making me wonder if we were still in April. I am ready for May flowers! This week, we continued to learn about different sea creatures such as the shark and sea horse. We also had fun making our own crafty sea creatures for our ocean board. It is really coming along nicely. Ocean night is May 24th, at 6pm. I hope you all make it out to Sunday is Mother's Day! We worked very hard being creative with our gifts. The children really had me chuckling at one point. I guess you will find out soon as to why I chuckled. I also talked to them and gave them a few great ideas to make your day special such as, letting you sleep in late. In my house, that's always a treat. Next week is the PTA Scholastics BOGO Book Fair. Our morning preschoolers will be attending the book fair on Monday, May 14, at 9:00 am. Only children with money will be taking down. Our afternoon clas will be attending the book fair at 12:00, when they first come in on Thursday, May 24th. Again, I hope that everyone is treated like a queen on Sunday or at the very least, you get a couple of extra hours of sleep. Happy Mother's Day! Mrs. Gilberti

Fish, Whales, and crabs oh my! It must be MARE time! Yes, it is! All last week we worked extra hard on learning about sea creatures. For the next few weeks, we will be working on different plant life and sea creatures that fill our oceans. Our board, which sits outside our room, is decorated with the most beautiful ocean you will ever see. All of your children worked so hard together to paint the ocean, using a paintbrush and dabbing paint onto paper. It was amazing to see them all come together to make such a beautiful creation. I hope that you all get a chancee to enjoy Ocean Night, here at OCS, on May 24. For the next few weeks, we will continue to work on this unit, stopping only for a few days to work on secrets gifts for our Mom's. If your child comes home with blue hands, I am apologizing now! We are exploring the ocean through blue slime (water, cornstarch and food dye). I hope that everyone enjoys their week. Mrs. Gilberti

Wow! This week flew! It must of been because we were having so much fun learning about butterflies. We started our week off by reading, The Very Hungry Butterfly. We had so much fun practicing color recognition, the days of the week, counting and the butterfly life cycle while enjoying this wonderful story. We continued the theme of butterflies by making a diagram

of the life cycle using, paper cut outs, lentil, and pasta. We also discussed symmetry and the beautiful colors of butterflies. The kids had a lot of fun using paint, on one half of a folded piece of paper. They then folded back both sides and rubbed to make their butterfly wings symmetrical. There were a lot of ohhhs and ahhhs. Coffee filters are not just for adults. In preschool we used our washable markers to color them in and then we sprayed them down with water, to creat beautiful tye-dye wings. Putting them together with a clothes pin was neat too. It's always great to see what can be made with every day objects. Tomorrow is the Tricky Tray! Thank you to all who donated and to Mrs. Sandorff for coordinating our classroom basket. I hope to see many of you there. It has sold out in the past and history has been made again. The Tricky Tray is sold out again! I want to personally thank everyone who donated and colored in Autism Awareness ribbons. We were over whlemed by the support from staff, students and the community! Please enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

I hope that everyone had a great Spring Break! All the kids came back rested and ready to go. This weather has been incredible and flowers are blooming all around us. We took advantage of this and managed to take a nature walk to discover all the new growth in our neighborhood. We noticed the grass getting greener, the leaves on the trees coming back but most importantly, all the beautiful shapes, colors and sizes of different flowers. We have been learning about the different parts of flowers and their functions. We even conducted an experiment to see how the stem of a flower works. The children loved seeing the white carnations turning colors.

We got to spend some time outside this week. Blowing bubbles never gets old for preschoolers! We even got to have fun with hoolah hoops and our Frisbees. We had to take advantage of the great weather!

This weekend is our 5k walk/run, at Meadow Breeze park. I hope to see you there. Also, in your child's folder you will find an Autism Awareness ribbon. For a donation on $.25, you can have your child color it in, return it to me, and all ribbons will be displayed around the school. Let's help make a difference!

I hope that everyone enjoys their weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

We had a really nice week learning about Peter Cotton-tail! Wouldn't you know it, he left us eggs! We had so much fun decorating our own eggs. We sent home with the kids, their marigolds. The children did a great job taking care of them. I hope to see some pictures of these beatufitul flowers when they are full grown. I hope that everyone enjoys the next week off and I'll see you all on the 16th!

Mrs. Gilberti

Well, looks like March did come in like a lion and out like a lamb. The children had fun charting the weather and learning about tallies. Now, it's looks like April has started off on the right foot, with April showers which should bring us May flowers! Speaking of flowers, our marigolds are growing nicely. The children are doing a great job taking care of their own flower. They will be coming home with your child this week. We also worked on our own umbrellas, in preparation for April showers. Don't they look so nice?

Soon we will all be on spring break. Please remember that there is no school on Friday. The Easter season has started and little chicks, colored eggs and bunnies are every where you turn. We ended our week with making our own chick hatching out of it's egg. We used snipped color paper to color the egg. Since we are talking eggs, please send in two hard boiled eggs with your child tomorrow. This week, we will be having fun decorating eggs and making a little basket for them. It's going to be a fun week.

Now, onto a more serious note. April is Autism Awareness month. Today, April 2nd, is World Autism Awareness Day. Please help support research for autism and Light It Up Blue! People all over the world will be lighting up their homes offices, etc with blue bulbs, including the Empire States Building! Please send your child in wearing blue and remember to join us for our 2nd annual 5k run/1 mile family walk, on April 21st, at Meadow Breeze park. Registration forms can be found on this website our you can register the morning of. I hope to see many of you there.

Mrs. Gilberti

I hope that everyone enjoyed the glorious weather that we had over the long weekend. I know I did. I even started getting things ready for my garden. Speaking of gradening, this week in preschool we all learned about flowers, their parts and what they need to grow. We even planted marigold seeds. What a great way to kick off Spring!

In class, we practiced snipping, gluing, and strengthening our hand muscles by pinching tissues, when making our flowers. The kids loved using real sunflower seeds to place in our seed pod of the sunflowers we made. Everyone got to taste the outside of the shells and giggled at the surprise of the salty taste. Many of us helped Curious George count to 20 in his garden, at the computer center and in our sand/water center we enjoyed planting seeds in the soil (wet sand). It's been a great week to fine tune our preschool skill.

Thank you so much for all of the donations for our Tricky Tray basket. We truly appreciate it and thank you again to Mrs. Sandorff for coordinating this for us. Again, please purchase your ticket ahead of time if you plan to attend. Tickets sell out quickly! Please enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb and in preschool we always like to check if things are true so we decided it would be a great idea to chart and tally lion days and lamb days. So far, it's looking like this saying is true! In lieu of March we created lions out of paper plates, using our very best snipping skills. We had a lot of fun making our soft lambs with cotton too. The month of March also brings us St. Patrick's day! We started to talk a little about those mischievous little leprechauns that watch over pots of gold, at the end of rainbows. We came up with a plan to lure a leprechaun into our room. We decided to make rainbows with paint but there was one little problem! We didn't have orange, green or purple paint for our rainbows. We put our minds together and thought it would be neat to be scientists and mix the three colors that we did have and see what we could make! Wouldn't you know it that red and yellow makes orange. Yellow and blue makes green and if you mix red and blue, you can make purple!! It's great fun being scientists! Next week, we will be planning more ways to tempt a leprechaun to visit our room!

Thank you to those who have donated to our tricky tray basket. We can use as much help as possible with this basket and it is much appreciated! I hope that this beautiful weather continues and that everyone enjoys their weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti