Good afternoon!

I hope you have had a great week!  Hard to believe Thanksgiving is two weeks from today!!  On that note please make sure you have checked with your child’s teacher or by the sign in sheets for the feast sign up needs for next week.  This is not a classroom party but instead an event that the children share with the teachers and their classmates and talk about what the first Thanksgiving was like.  Parents provide the food for the event.  This is very special each year and the children always have so much fun.  Look for pictures next week from your child’s teacher after the feasts have taken place.

The month of November brings the bible verse “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.” Psalms 106:1 Our chapel time this month is the bible story of Jesus feeding 5,000.  What a great story to share with the children in light of Thanksgiving.  We talked about miracles and how thankful we are for all the things in our lives.  The children will also be doing activities in their classes that involve the holiday and the season as well as celebrating our families.  The color of the month is brown and circle is the shape we are studying.  We will be working with the letters G, H and I and reviewing all letters the last week of this month. 

Specials classes update from Natalie, Mary Lee & Cammie:

Music: All classes are currently learning all the songs they will perform in our annual Christmas Program on December 10th.  The children have also enjoyed learning and signing the Turkey Tango.  Ask your child to sing it for you J  So cute!!

Centers:

Now that we are done helping everyone in the community, we are ready to begin to grow our harvest. We will enjoy planting pretend seeds, making sure our fields are taken care of in our John Deere and most of all sending all our products to the farmers market. We will be working with feed corn and learning what animals will be on the farm or the ranch. We love the blocks that we use to build pens for our animals and the fact that we are using real nuts and bolts in the block center to fix things.

Computers:

You know we love our time in computers….and now that we are able to move around the system we are ready for more. We have started to work on “clicking and dragging” our work on the computer so that we can move our answers where they need to go. At this point we have worked on all three programs and have really become great at driving our mouse. Parents, PLEASE allow your kids (even the 3’s) to work on the mouse at home. If you have an OLD PC you can just set up for them with out internet so they can see the movement of the mouse on the screen it would be great. With all our touch screens we are seeing that the kids are not used to the mouse. It is important that they still know the basic function of the mouse to get around on the computer. Thanks for your help with this.

Spanish:

The kids LOVE Pablo….there is no other way to put it! This past month we worked on the parts of the face and head, saying hello and goodbye, and the colors yellow, black, and orange. We have also stated to count 1-5 with them. You might hear them sing a few songs at home that we are using in class. We ended the month of October with a “party of orange and black.” In November we are going to beginning the basic understand of going in/out, open and close, and hard/soft. They are a joy to see when the connection is made….I love it!

Reminders:

  • Tuition is now due
  • Wednesday – Class Feast for Rainbow, Orange and Green classes
  • Thursday – All other class feasts
  • No school Nov. 19th-Nov. 22nd – Thanksgiving Break
  • Family chapel – Week of Nov. 26th

Progress reports: Teachers have been observing and recording the progress of each of the children in the program in the past few weeks with the exception of the children in Rainbow Room (we do theirs in the spring).  By the end of the month you will get the report sent home for you to see and sign it and return to the teacher to use again in the spring.  The children in the three Pre K classrooms will have parent teacher conferences next week to go over their child’s progress.  We do not have scheduled conferences for the other classes but parents are always encouraged to schedule conferences with the teacher if they ever have questions or concerns about their child.

Food Drive:

A HUGE thank you to our generous families for bringing your donations of food in this week for the families of Boyd Elementary.  We will be delivering the donations to the school the first of next week and the teachers at Boyd will be putting Thanksgiving boxes together to give to their students in need of food for the holiday.  I talked about it with the children in chapel this week and thanked them for their generous and loving hearts in sharing with other children in Allen that are in need.  Thanks again parents for teaching your children the importance of sharing with those in our community that are in need.

Such a great lesson!!

Lastly, next week please make sure to stop and look for your child’s leaf on the Thankful Tree that will be in the hall across from the office. I always love to see and read what each of the children share they are thankful for. So sweet!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

~Blessings,

Lisa Newman

Director