Alphabet Letter of the Week

Hi Parents,

We just wanted to give you a quick overview and get everyone on the same page as we start a "new" school year. If you have not already done so, please be sure to pick up an October calendar that is in your parent pocket on the door of our classroom. For those of you that have already seen it you probably noticed that our letter of the week starts with "B" instead of "A" and it is completely out of the traditional alphabetical order. This is intentional. The letter "A" is a very complex vowel with a couple of different sounds. Many early childhood education experts suggest teaching consonants that have single simple sounds first, reserving vowels and complex consonants for later. Also we chose to start with some letters for which the capital and lower cases look the same, such as as in "S" and "s" and "P" and "p." It is also better for the children if we can relate the letter to what we are learning in class, allowing them to see the letter written on many things and hear the sound of the letter when we are talking and brain storming in class. This week for example, Blue Room is working on transportation, so we will talking about "b"oats, hot air "b"alloons, and "b"uses. In Purple Room, they have been interested in "b"ugs, like "b"utterflies and "b"eetles. We will be setting up our "B"irthday "B"oard as well. The "P"umpkin "P"atch is also coming up the following week, so there will be a lot of talk about "p"umpkins.


My goal is to prepare a monthly newsletter and calendar so that parents will be kept up to speed on what's coming next. We are striving to keep both the Blue Room and Purple Room on the same page, so that all the teachers can collaborate to make the school a great place to learn. Please know that a lot of thought and time go into what we decide to teach and do with your children everyday, and it all is directed by the children's interests.

We are very excited and blessed to have the teaching staff that we do, and are so grateful to have such amazingly supportive parents. Above all, we consider ourselves lucky to share our days with your awesome children, who come to school every day excited to learn and explore.

Thanks again parents!

Teacher Kristina

Patterns and Autumn Colors in Preschool and Pre K

One thing we will be working on this month and throughout the year are patterns. We will be learning and making patterns that are simple and more complex. Patterns are an important building block to math, science, reading, and many other areas as well. We look at patterns and trends all throughout elementary school, middle school, high school and even later in life in our jobs and in our personal lives as well. Patterns help us to learn to make connections and predict what comes next. They also help us learn to correct and problem solve.











We made patterns using blocks, counting bears, by coloring in train wheels, and in PreK we did work sheets where we had to figure out what the next color and shape would be.


Welcome Autumn! Last Friday we talked all about warm colors (red, orange, and yellow) and cool colors (green, blue, and purple), and discussed where in our outside world we see these colors. The children came up with awesome observations like the sky, ocean, sun, grass, flowers, and tress. We went on a nature walk outside looking for warm and cool colors.





While we were making our collages many children said that we didn't find the color blue outside. But the truth was we did find the color blue but we couldn't take a piece of the sky with us. :)














In PreK Teacher Karen talked all about leaves and what type of trees they came from: oak tree, sycamore, maple, and sweet gum. Some of the children made connections between the maple leaf and maple syrup and the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. The children used eye droppers and water colors to make the vibrant fall colored leaves. We will continue to observe the weather and the leaves changing colors.

Autumn is my personal favorite time of year!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina

Happy 4th Birthday C!

Monday we celebrated C's 4th Birthday. His family came and brought us yummy pizza, juice boxes and cupcakes. This was the first birthday I got to celebrate at Creative Minds and soon we will have our birthday day board up. The children were so excited for their friend to get to be the line leader all day and wear his birthday crown. Enjoy some pictures from C's birthday party in the blue room!


Just crowned the Birthday boy, the big 4!!!


Eating pizza with style...backwards!


Soo yummy...some of us even had seconds!


Make a wish!! C blew out all of the candles first try!


Chocolate. Mmm... Nothing Bunt-cakes!


Thank you again, we are so happy we got to celebrate with C and his family!

All About Me!

This week we focused on getting to know ourselves and our friends. Our sharing this Wednesday was amazing. All the children who shared did a wonderful job! They were all very excited to share a part of them with their friends and their friends paid attention very nicely. Many of our art projects and activities were all about us.

Step 1: Paint our beautiful frames.








Step 2: We became artists and drew our self portraits. We set up mirrors so that we could see what we looked like to draw ourselves. This was a lot tougher than we thought.








I quickly learned that we needed to take a step back for some of our littles and have a base for them to work from. I decided to teach the fundamentals like how to draw a circle and talk about our facial features, including our eyes, ears, eye lashes, eye brows, mouth and nose. We talked a lot about what we looked like and what we liked about ourselves and what we like to do for fun. We read the books, "I Like Me" and "The way I Act."






Drumming and Drawing with Teacher James was a hit this week. He showed us many instruments including the bongos which he showed us how to sketch.








Teacher James set us up like a band and we learned to play in a three count. One two three, one two three. Although after we did it a few times we were just so excited to play the instruments hard and loud. Watch out Branham high school marching band! The Blue Room is practicing.





But the most unique instrument was a thunder maker. It sounded so real. The looked like a paper towel holder with a long coil/spring hanging off of it. You had to shake it back and forth and the harder you shook it the launder it got. But if you shook it too hard it didn't sound like thunder. There was definitely some technique involved, but we got it!

What's happening in the afternoon preK class...





We are learning how to use scissors to cut straight and curved lines. Teacher Karen taught us to keep those thumbs up!





Vertical, horizontal and slant are three words that are new to most of our vocabularies. But these three words are very important when we start to learn how to write the letters of the alphabet. We are working on a vertical down line writing from right to left. Also we did some matching this week with shapes and letters. Some things come easy and others are at times a little more tough, but the children accept the challenge and are so proud of themselves when they finish.






And a very special Thank You to J's mom for coming to help us during centers to make our self portraits and play memory shapes with us. She read the children a funny book that got them on their feet moving and laughing.

Over all it was a great week!

Hugs,
Teacher Kristina

Teacher Kristina's First Blog :)

Hi Blue Room Family and Friends,

For those of you I have not met, I am Teacher Kristina and I am the new head teacher in the Blue Room. I am very excited to be part of the teaching staff at Creative Minds CDC! I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to get to know your children and work alongside Teacher Romina and Teacher Karen.

The highlight of our week was the soccer and baseball demo by Coach Zachary on Tuesday! Since then, we have talked a lot about sports and read a couple of books about soccer.


Coach Z asked "Who is excited?" Everyone shouted, "Meeeeee!!!!!"


We warmed up as a team and practiced jumping jacks.








We all had big kicks and scored a goal! We cheered each other on and really enjoyed playing soccer!


Learning our baseball ready stance.





We picked up our ball, put it to our ear, stepped over the cone, pointed and threw.


We all thought Coach Z was hilarious!! We laughed and had a great time learning to kick and throw a ball.

Our PreK program is off to a great start. This week Teacher Karen measured and weighed everyone so that we can see how we grow over the course of the year. They also drew self-portraits.





The children were asking questions like "What color are my eyes?," "What color am I wearing?" S. was very proud of her drawing!

It has been a very informative two weeks for me! I'm having fun learning the ropes and the children often point me in the right direction when trying to find something. ;) I have been figuring out a schedule that works well for our classroom, getting to know all of your children and helping our new students feel comfortable in their new environment as well. We are finishing up marble runs and are starting to dive into learning "all about me" and each other. It is wonderful to see your children showing their friends their family pictures and explaining who is who to them.

Once we have our ducks in a row I will be preparing a calendar for the month of October with a letter of the week, highlighted events and information for the month. We will also continue to do sharing every Wednesday. Please for September sharing have your child bring something that will help the children learn more about each other. (Not just toys)

Our friend S. brought a puzzle of the United States of America yesterday for sharing and we worked on it throughout the day. It was a difficult puzzle with 60 pieces but we worked very hard as a team and did it!














Yay! Thumbs up we finished!!! Awesome job friends!!

Thank you all for being patient with me, I really appreciate it!

Cheers to an awesome year.

Teacher Kristina