FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday, March 25, 2011

Mother Nature must not be in a good mood because we were on a roll with charting lamb days then, “poof!!!” she gave us some lion days! Who would have thought we would get snow days in the middle of March! Well, at least the snow days didn’t fall on our assembly day. Everyone had so much fun at the Piccarillo Science assembly! We learned so much and giggles could be heard everywhere. We continued to talk about insects this week and practiced our coloring, painting, cutting and gluing skills. Because we had a 2 hour delay on Thursday, some of our friends missed art class so Mrs. Nemeth was so kind, that she brought art to all of us in our own classroom! We finished our insect books and everyone did a great job reading the color words! We really are all enjoying books and reading! Thank you to everyone who has donated to our Tricky Tray basket. It is coming along. Tickets are on sale now. It’s such a fun night out! Please enjoy your weekend and let’s hope for some sunshine and warm weather soon.

Mrs. Gilberti

FRIDAY NEWLSETTER
Friday, March 18, 2011

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!! Our little leprechaun came and left us green donuts yesterday to enjoy! It was a great way to start our day. This week we continued to practice snipping skills! We used our snipping skills to snip colored paper and glue it in rainbow order. Our room looks so colorful. Speaking of colors, this week we learned about primary and secondary colors. We were scientists again and wanted to find out if it was true that if we mixed primary colors we could get secondary colors. We used our finger paints and found out that yes, it is true! We continued to practice our tracing skills and started to trace number words.

We had a really nice visit this week. Elvira Woodruff came to talk to us about being an author and an illustrator. It was really nice to see our preschoolers so interested in what she had to say and enjoy the assembly. Some of our preschoolers were so inspired that they came back to the room and wrote their own story. Being that we journal almost once a week, when asked by Elvira if anyone kept a journal, 10 little hands with great big smiles went up into the air! It was a proud moment for all of us!

Being that the sun has finally come out, we have been enjoying the “lamb” days by spending some time outside on the black top. Hopefully the playground will dry up and we will get to play on it soon. We are still charting lion and lamb days and it’s been very exciting for us to start seeing more yellow boxes than green. On our lion days, we have been playing Limbo and making our bodies shorter and longer as the Limbo bar moves. In art class this week, Mrs. Nemeth helped us make clowns. As usual, it has been a busy yet fun week. Next week, we all get to enjoy another assembly. It will be the Picarello Science, “Bugs of Blackwood.” It should be a lot of fun!

I wanted to thank Mrs. Sandorff for making us the St. Patrick’s Day BINGO! We used in a center and enjoyed playing it together as a whole group activity. Thank you to all who continue to send in items for our Tricky Tray basket! The weekend weather is supposed to be really nice so please get out and enjoy the “lamb” days!!

Mrs. Gilberti

FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday, March 11, 2011

The old saying says, “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out as a lamb.” Here in preschool we have been charting the weather every morning, just to see if this old saying is true. We all can’t wait for spring to get here. We continued to work on fine motor, cutting, coloring and gluing skills. Our fingerprint lambs are hanging in our classroom and look adorable. We also continued to work on counting, numbers and of course rhyming. We practiced writing our names and some of us can do this without using a name card to copy from.
This week, we learned the different parts of a plant and how flowers and plants grow. We performed an experiment with white carnations, which we placed in either red water or blue water, to answer the question, “Does the stem of a flower work as a straw?” We collected data and drew pictures to enter in our journal of what we thought would happen and what did actually happen. We always love being Scientists and I always stress to the children to ask why and to check if it’s true!
We got to be outside just one day this week because of the weather but we still had some good fun indoors. Everyone enjoyed playing Limbo and London Bridge. We did a bit of dancing and singing too! Thank you for the Tricky Tray donations. Our basket is coming along and we will continue accepting donations. I hope you all enjoy your weekend.


Mrs. Gilberti

FRIDAY NEWSLETTER
Friday, March 4, 2011


Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! Dr. Seuss’ books have been a favorite for so many of us for years. It was very nice to share with the preschoolers some of his writings and to discuss the words he chose. This week, we all worked on recognizing and identifying ending sounds of words and rhyming! We had a lot of fun practicing cutting skills and patterns when we made our red and white hats. Everyone thought that painting our feet to make foot prints, in honor of The Foot Book, was so silly and giggles could be heard in the hallways! We also learned never to play with people who call themselves Thing 1 and Thing 2! Letting strangers in to play when Mom is away, is NOT a good idea, nor safe. Although, we did enjoy making our own Thing 1 and Thing 2 using blue feathers as hair. Color identification and counting was made fun by using rainbow goldfish and adding them to our fish bowl cut outs! Everyone had so much fun this week and in celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, we enjoyed a small snack and a movie, Horton Hears a Who. Nothing says Happy Birthday like brownies! Speaking of birthdays, Happy Birthday to Katie and Karlee who will be turning 4 on Saturday!!!!!

So many wonderful things happen in the month of March. We are all looking forward to spring and discussed how March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. We can’t wait to see what that crazy leprechaun will do to our room this St. Patrick’s Day! The weather is starting to warm up which means that soon we will be able to enjoy the playground again!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend. This is just a gentle reminder that our class is collecting donations for our Tricky-Tray classroom basket. Our theme is coffee and our classroom basket coordinator is Mrs. Parks. Please send in donations with your child and I will be sure to give them to Mrs. Parks. Thank you again for all the tissue, wipes and hand sanitizer supplies. It’s helping us to keep germ levels low and everyone smiling! We really do appreciate it!

Mrs. Gilberti

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011
FRIDAY NEWSLETTER

This week, we continued to discuss the five senses and focused more on the sense of smell and taste. We started our week off with a taste test using jelly beans. With our eyes closed and our hands in our laps, we were still able to figure out what flavor jelly belly we were given using our sense of taste! We water color painted with Kool-aid but before we added water, we closed our eyes and smelled each cup to help us figure out which flavor Kool-aid we were using! Our paintings smelled very yummy!

Zoo animals are always fun to talk about and pretending to be one is more fun! We roared like tigers and galloped like zebras! Our animal crafts were fun to make too. We used a marble, black paint and a box to help us make stripes on our Zebras. A number line helped us to put together a snake and we had to use our very best coloring skills to make our tiger masks. Using our snipping and gluing skills, we turned an empty paper towel roll into a giraffe! Crafts are always fun to make. On Tuesday, we went to the gym and played freeze tag. It was nice to burn off some energy! We can’t wait for Spring so we can get some play time outside again. We continued to practice our writing skills and focused on the letter Z. We graphed animal stripes and spots and worked on classifying.

Thank you to all who helped us raise money for Patients for Pennies! It’s always nice for all of us to get together and do what we can to help others. Enjoy your weekend!

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