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