FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday June 17, 2011

The last full week of school is finally here and what a great week it has been! Field Day was so much fun! What a great display of team work from our preschoolers! We spent the rest of the week reviewing letters, numbers, counting and tuning our fine motor skills. We ended our week with a movie! Today was movie day at OCS. We enjoyed watching NEMO! Thank you Mrs. Gifford, Mrs. Ruskan and Mrs. Sturm for our snacks! Tuesday, June 21, will be our last day of school. Wow! I still can’t believe the last day of school is around the corner. I will be hosting an ice cream party at 10 am.
This will be my last newsletter for this school year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for making this school year a successful one. I can speak for Mrs. Ruskan, Mrs. Sturm and myself when I say that it makes a world of a difference when teachers and parents work together and communicate with each other, for the children. Thank you for the continuous donations of wipes and tissues through out the year. We have had an amazing year full of wonderful memories and we are so proud of our soon to be kindergarteners! We know you all will do great and will enjoy your kindergarten experience! We are just as proud of our friends who are moving up in preschool and can’t wait to see you back, come September!
Enjoy your summer!

Mrs. Gilberti
Mrs. Gifford
Mrs. Ruskan
Mrs. Sturm

FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Someone turn down the heat! Summer is definitely near and with the recent temperatures, I feel it’s safe to say that Mother Nature is surely excited about it! In preschool this week, we have begun discussing summer safety. We have discussed everything from wearing sunscreen to swimming with an adult.
Our unit on MARE has come to an end and Ocean Night was a great success. The children all worked so hard and learned so much! It was great to see many of you there and for those who could not attend I will post pictures of our work on my blog. On Thursday morning, all preschoolers that were present walked the OCS hallways which were lined and decorated with such great work and efforts by the students of OCS. They loved discovering so much about oceans, wetlands and polar animals!
In our classroom, we have been practicing for some of the relay races that we will participate in, at Field Day! This year Field Day will be held at OCS, on June 16th with a rain date of June 17th. Please remember to apply sunscreen onto your child before coming to school because Field Day will be held outdoors. Also, please send in a small snack for your child to enjoy and an extra bottle of water. Parents are welcomed to attend. More information on the time of the event will be sent home with your child next Monday. The last day of school is June 21st. On this day, I will be hosting an ice cream party for all preschoolers, at 10 am! All parents are welcomed to attend. Please remember, as per our school policy, photos may not be taken in the classroom. Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Friday, June 3, 2011
I hope that everyone enjoyed their three day weekend! We all enjoyed sharing what we did over the weekend. It sounds like there was a lot of swimming going on!!
We continued to work on counting and using numbers this week. We were very fortunate to have a beautiful mix of sea shells, brought in by Tyler, which we used to compare sizes and shapes. The children were amazed to hear the ocean in some of the shells. They also enjoyed exploring with their senses a conch shell and a horseshoe crab.
We continued practicing fine motor skills when making our jelly fish, sharks and whales for our MARE board. Stringing beads for tentacles made our jellyfish look whimsical. We loved getting our hands dirty with the puffy paint that we made for our sharks and snipping paper is always fun.
On Tuesday, everyone did their very best to stay quiet and listen to some very important information during a bus safety drill. Ocean Night will be held on June 9th at 6pm. Field Day will be held June 16th with a rain date of June 17th. This year preschool will be joining the others at the lake to enjoy the festivities. I will be sending out more information as the date approaches. I hope that everyone enjoys their weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Our creative juices were flowing this week! We used a few household items to help create some of our sea creatures. For example, we used a large pasta shell for our sea snail and a sock for our octopus! Red tissue paper came in handy when making our crabs.
At our sand and water center, we tried something new. We let our imagination run wild and played with toy sea creatures in a bucket of water! It was a hit!! At circle time, we discussed and passed around barnacles, a whale tooth, a shark tooth, sand dollars and sea stars! It was neat to explore the different textures and sizes!
Our visit to the book fair went well! I hope you are all enjoying the new books with your children. Thank you to everyone who purchased books for our room!
Since the weather is getting warmer we will be playing outside a bit more. Please remember to send your child in with sunscreen on and an extra bottle of water. Our room is air conditioned so you may also want to send in a little zip up jacket! Enjoy your three day weekend and have a happy and safe Memorial Day!

Mrs. Gilberti

FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday, May 20, 2011
Only a few weeks left of school! Can you believe it?! This week we all worked hard as a team, to finger paint our ocean for Ocean Night! There is nothing like the feel of paint squishing between your fingers. We continue to create beautiful sea creature in different textures. Our sea horses are adorned with gold sand and boy did we have fun making them! We did a fantastic job on our sea weed too! This special board is off to a great start. The finished product will be something to be very proud of!
We continued to work on counting this week and practiced cutting. We also enjoyed learning about the Ocean by watching Disneynature’s, Ocean! There were so many ooohs and ahhwwwwss! It was a great way to support and bring to life what we have read about different sea creatures. All of our centers have been stocked up with MARE themed activities such as the Rainbow Fish matching game, in the math center.
Please remember that next week, on Wednesday, our class will be visiting the PTA sponsored book fair. If you would like your child to purchase books, please send money in a labeled envelope. Have a great weekend.

Mrs. Gilberti

Friday Newsletter
FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011

I hope that everyone enjoyed their Mother’s Day and got some much deserved time to relax. We have started our unit on the ocean and sea creatures and are preparing our board for Ocean Night! I can’t believe I’m saying that already. Where has time gone?! The children will be working hard using cutting, gluing, painting, pinching and many other fine motor skills, to help turn our bulletin board into a beach and shore. This is when we stress team work and we all do our best to come together to create the most beautiful board that we can and feel a huge sense of pride.

We started our week off with discussions of ocean creatures and the ocean floor. We worked so hard on our touch and feel beach and ocean scenes. Please visit my blog to view a picture of our work. We also continued to work on number recognition and counting by using numbered fish to create fish bowls which are hanging on display in our room. We even worked on classifying and to my delight, everyone did a fantastic job! We continued to work on tracing words and worked on opposites, such as wet and dry. Since it’s been so beautiful out, we have even been making good use of the playground!
Saturday is the PTA sponsored Kids Tricky Tray, here at OCS at 3pm! I hope to see some of you there. Also on Wednesday, May 25th, at 9:25, the preschoolers will be visiting the library to purchase books at the PTA Book Fair! If purchasing books, please send in money with your child in a labeled envelope. Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Gilberti

Nothing can warm the heart like a hug from Mom. This week we closed up our unit on butterflies and their life cycle and focused on some pretty wonderful women. The children have all worked so hard on surprise gifts for their own Mommy. In order to keep it a secret until Sunday, I won’t mention any more about it! I will say that we did continue practicing our names remembering to use a capital letter to start, followed by lower case letters. We made great use of our white board when practicing matching capital letters to lower case letters. We focused on letters A/B/C/D. We also practiced writing and tracing numbers 1-10. In our Math center, the children practiced number recognition by using number boards, magnetic colored chips and a magnet to help sweep up the chips once their board was full. Judging by the amount of time each child spent in this center, it’s safe to say this was a pretty popular game. We also got to go to the gym this week and played basketball, squeezed in a yoga session and used our imaginations to go on a bear hunt!
Today, the whole school is kicking off MARE! Yes, it’s that time of year again. For the next couple of weeks, we will be focused on the ocean and its amazing creatures. Getting ready for ocean night is always so exciting for the children!
I hope everyone enjoys their weekend! Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Mrs. Gilberti