Welcome to the 2015-16 School Year!

Dear families,

Welcome to the 2015-16 school year in room 102! We are so excited to get to know your children and your families. We will begin this month by getting to know each other and learning the High Scope curriculum as well as our daily routine. The beauty of the High Scope curriculum is that what we do during our time together in the classroom is very much driven by the interests of the children. The more we get to know your children by observing them during our day, the more we can incorporate their interests into our planning. But first, please allow us to start by introducing ourselves:

Beth Richardson: This is my ninth year teaching at Village Preschool. I teach both the three-year-old and the four-year-old classes. I have an Early Childhood and Elementary Education degree from Michigan State University and a Masters degree in Reading. A long, long time ago I taught first and third grades in elementary school. My husband, Ralph, and I have three children – Kelly (28), Katy (22), and Conner (20).

Kate Willaredt: This is my third year of teaching at Village Preschool. I am excited to be teaching both three-year-olds and four-year-olds again this year! Before I came to Village, I taught preschool for ten years at Central Early Childhood Center in Kansas City, Mo.  I have an English Literature BA from UMKC, and a Masters degree in Early Childhood Curriculum and Instruction, also from UMKC. My husband Steve, and I have two children – Lucy (10), and Zoe (8) and we recently adopted a sweet black lab mix that we named Salvy after my favorite Kansas City Royal!

Renee Reimer: This is my second year teaching at Village Preschool. I teach the Tuesday, Thursday extended day class. I graduated from Bethel College with a Music Education degree and art minor. When I am not teaching at Village, I work with Jr. and Sr. high youth at Rainbow Mennonite Church as their Youth Program Director. This year I am also starting my Masters of Divinity in Christian Faith Formation.

Please join us on Tuesday, September 15 (for the three year old class) and Wednesday, September 16^th (for the 4 year old class) from 6:30 – 7:30pm for Back to School Night. At this parent-only meeting, you will get a closer look at exactly what your child’s day entails. You will also be able to sign up to bring snacks, volunteer to be a room parent, and sign up to bring supplies for our holiday celebrations. We look forward to seeing you!

Please be aware that we will be posting the majority of our communication on our classroom blog: www.villageroom102.blogspot.com. We feel that this is a great way to post photos, information about what we are doing in the classroom, and also general preschool information. We know we don’t always get to spend time discussing these things with you at drop off and pick up, and we’ve found that the blog is a super way to communicate outside of the classroom. If you require a paper copy of anything, please let us know and we will get that to you.

We are so excited to be sharing this year with you and your children!

Kate, Beth, and Renee

www.villageroom102.blogspot.com

The End...

Wow. We can't believe that we have made it to the end of another amazing school year.  Please know what a joy it has been this year for each of us to get to know (and love!) your children. Looking back, it seems a little like we just started, and yet, when we think about all we've done this year and all that your children have accomplished, it really does seem like a very full year.  We thank you for entrusting your most precious gifts to us. For allowing us to get to know your families. And mostly, for allowing us to read, draw, pretend, create, play, laugh, and admire your smart, funny kiddos. Enjoy a few pictures from the last few weeks, and have an amazing summer!

Henry Moore Sculpture Garden Field Trip!

Today the 4 year old class took their final field trip of the year to the Henry Moore Sculpture Garden at the Nelson Atkins Museum. A few weeks ago,  Debbie Smith came to talk with us about sculpture, and specifically about Henry Moore. We learned some art words like positive space, negative space, symmetry, and asymmetrical, just to name a few.  As we walked around the sculpture garden today, the children were asked to point out these things in the sculptures. There are pieces in the garden that Moore did not create, including four new giant head pieces that represent the four seasons. The children loved getting right up next to the pieces and trying to figure out which head represented which season. We also made our way through the glass labyrinth. If you haven't walked through the labyrinth, you should make a trip! This was one of the favorite parts of today's trip for many children - just be sure to keep your hands in front of you and be careful, as it becomes harder to tell what is glass and what is not when you're inside! Please enjoy these pictures of our day!

looking for the "negative space" in this Moore piece

we practiced reclining just like the sculpture!

this was not a Moore piece, but we enjoyed running up the big hill to see it closer

two of the four seasons represented by these amazing head sculptures

only a few bumped heads in this amazing labyrinth experience!

 

 

 

 

 

 

we came back and did some sculpting of our own!

we used different color dough and added all sorts of pieces to our creations

a few of us thought we needed MORE 3D options for our sculptures

we found pictures of flowers and cut and glued them onto this head for our own version of a season head!

we think it might be SPRING!

Springtime! Worms! Monkeys! (wait. monkeys?)

We just wanted to show you a few photos of what we've been loving in preschool in the past few weeks. The weather has finally allowed us some great time outside.

We've been digging for worms on the playground, and just today the 3 year olds found several fat worms and a "pinching centipede" (beware if you find this one at home!)

Our 4 year old class took a walk to the creek that is just behind our playground. We skipped rocks, listened for different sounds, watched for birds, and generally just enjoyed splashing around.

Finally, a good friend shared a TED talk with us today that is certainly worth passing on. It's about a kindergarten in Japan that is unlike any other kindergarten we have seen, and it is shared and narrated by the architect who designed it. It's such a lovely way to look at the importance of children being outside as well as the importance of giving children the opportunities to explore their world. Go here to enjoy this wonderful story (and maybe some monkeys): TED talk.

Yes, we're still here!

We haven't forgotten the blog! Between conferences and spring break and the turning weather, we haven't been the best at updating this site - please accept our apologies! First and foremost, let us thank each of you for coming to chat with us about your child during conferences. It's always nice to have a few quiet moments to discuss your sweet children, especially when drop off and pick up can be a little crazy! Please know that, as always, even as we wind down our year together, our door is open to you. Whether you'd like an update or you just want to sit in and observe what is happening in room 102, just ask!

We won't try to recap all that has been going on room 102, but will just mention a few things that were a big hit.  You might notice both our door and our bulletin board. We've been moving and shaking in room 102. The children continue to love our movement classes, and we thought that we would try to show you a bit of what we do there. We have been working on spatial awareness, and also working as a team. The children have played tug-of-war, pushed each other around the room in laundry baskets (or "sleds"!), we have worked on spinning, somersaults, and walking like different kinds of animals. The children LOVE movement, and even have connected the days of the week with our movement class. One child came in last week and said, "Today is Thursday! We have movement today and I love movement!" So fun to hear.

The 4 year old class spent a lot of time over the past month or so exploring games. They became very interested in games such as dominoes and memory to start with. Later, we let them try to create their own board games. It was really amazing to watch. Typically, children at this age aren't truly ready developmentally to play games with detailed rules, but it is clear that they are starting to become interested in how games work. We had such fun watching them create and then play their own games. The bulletin board in the hallway was a class collaboration where they helped us create the board, pose for "game characters" and they even helped come up with our rules.

Thursday and Friday of this week will be the times we have our Easter celebrations in the classroom. If you have questions about what you may have signed up for (wayyyyy back in September!) please just ask. We've been talking about Easter, painting eggs, planning with eggs, and each child will even get to dye their own eggs later this week.

Finally, this is a good time to remind you that in the upcoming weeks, we hope to spend time outdoors as much as we can. The playground as well as the creek behind our preschool are both amazing outdoor classrooms and we hope to be able to explore those as the weather improves. Please check to see that your child has a change of clothes in his or her bag, as we also often have the water spout turned on on the playground. We love to get messy in the spring, and it's always a good plan to have a dry set of clothes to change into if need be. Also, because we will be outside, please think about adding sunscreen to your morning routine - that sun is deceiving, even in March! Thank you, and we hope you all have a wonderful Easter!

Valentine's Day Information

Valentine's Day is always a favorite holiday in our classroom. It provides wonderful opportunities for reinforcing the development of friendships as well as early literacy development. Both are goals we continually seek to promote in our classroom.

We will celebrate the holiday during class on Thursday, February 12th, and Friday, February 13th. We will have a special snack and will "deliver" classmate valentines. Please send a valentine for each classmate (16 children) leaving the outer envelopes blank to help facilitate easier distribution. Next week in class we will be decorating sacks to hold all those wonderful greetings.

We find the preschoolers enjoy making notes and pictures for each other during the Valentine holiday. To facilitate this activity, we are adding more supplies to the writing area including Valentine cards, stickers, envelopes, and a mailbox. Let the writing (including drawing, scribble "writing", letter-like forms, inventive spelling, and perhaps identifiable words and names) begin!

January in Room 102

Where do we start? January has been packed with some amazing stuff already, and we still have one week left! Everyone came back to school after the holiday break ready to jump right in. Sometimes we have difficult transitions after a long time away from school, but that really wasn't the case, and both the three and the four-year-old classes were ready to be busy.

Our threes had several firsts this month. We met Miss Martha for our Movement is Fun class. Movement for the three year olds starts in January, when we've had a chance to become acclimated to school and new faces. In movement class, all of the children have opportunities to work on balance and coordination skills, as well as spatial awareness. One of the first things we do in each movement class is to "find our own space". The children are expected to find a place in the large room where they can sit without touching another child. You'd be surprised how hard this is! At the end of each class, the children find their own space again, and have a few minutes to "cool down" and breathe deeply. So far, movement has been a big hit! During movement, all of the children are asked to take their shoes and socks off, so that they may feel the carpet on their feet. We would ask that in the coming weeks, you encourage your children to try to get their own shoes and socks on and off at home. We are always there to help, of course, but this is one of those skills that we often do for our children (mostly for the sake of time!) and they really are able to do this for themselves.

When it was VERY cold outside, the 4s did yoga to keep moving!

At the end of Movement is Fun, the 3s find their "own space" and try to lay quietly...easier said than done!

Another first for the threes was meeting Stacey Elattar for the first time. Stacey comes to our classroom for Snacks With Stacey, where the children learn about healthy foods. Both the threes and fours love when Stacey comes to play the stop light game - ask your child what a red, yellow, or green light food might be. During SWS this month for both threes and fours, Stacey talked with the children about birthday parties. Because we are celebrating Village Preschool's 40th birthday this month, the children learned about healthy snacks to eat at parties, too!

Stacey reads Whopper Cake to the children and talks about birthday parties

Both of our classes have been busy exploring building with different materials. We brought in a marble run at the beginning of the month, and it has been really fantastic to watch what has happened with it. They first began to build without giving much thought to how the marble run actually works. Then, their play began to really take shape as they had to work together to figure out how the marble run really works. We helped to scaffold the play for the older children by adding different materials to the block area: blocks, tubes, and ramps helped further the play that was already happening with the marbles. One day, we gave the children straws and ping pong balls and asked them to figure out how to build a structure that the balls could go in - a bigger version of the marble run! When children work together to build, they are working on social skills, negotiation, cooperation, compromise, and initiative just to name a few. Building structures gives children opportunities to work on patterns, measuring, estimating, gravity, balance, and spatial awareness. This list could go on and on. And surprise! They probably didn't realize they were even working on all of those skills!

Finally, as always, we like to incorporate literacy throughout our day, and have added many books about building to our bookshelf. Be sure to look at the "what we're reading" link to your right to keep up with what we are reading in class. Whew! It seems like this post could keep on going - we really have been so very busy! Thank you, as always, for sharing your amazing children with us. It really is a joy to watch how much they've grown and changed already this year, and how each class is becoming its own little community of learners.