NEWS FROM THE WCCNS OFFICE
Happy Spring! The days are getting longer, the sun is getting stronger, and the birds are singing… there’s a feeling of spring in the air!
We are all looking forward to our spring break to enjoy some relaxing time with our families, coming back rested and renewed to continue working and playing together.
April brings NAEYC’s Week of the Young Child and the teachers have planned many fun activities to celebrate the important work of educating young children. We will also have our annual All School Music and Movement program with Ms. Mary… watch for dates and times.
Enrollment is well underway for classes and enrichment programs for next year. Remember that we offer a Summer Camp in June, July and August. Check with the office if you would like more information. Have a great spring break!
Sara
DATES TO REMEMBER
NAEYC Week of the Young Child – April 16-20
Music & Movement Program – April 17 & 18
Cards For A Cause Fundraiser through April 25
Evereve Fundraising Event – May 3
Teacher Appreciation – May 7-11
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” – William Shakespeare
FEATURED CLASSROOM: LITERACY ADVENTURES
Keep Literacy Adventures in mind for the 2018-2019 school year. It is an excellent enrichment class to have when they are in the Five-morning class or the Three-morning Prekindergarten classes. Here are highlights of some our activities so far this year. At group, we have been using white boards each day to practice writing our letter of the week and now words that start with the letter of the week. We write our own first and last names and are even learning to write other classmate’s names. By the end of the year students are able to recognize and write their upper and lower case letters. As we read stories each day we identify some of the elements of stories; i.e author, illustrator, title and characters. We expand on these terms as the year progresses and then the students create their own rendition of the “Three Little Pigs” story. It is quite the accomplishment for them! We also write as a class many other silly version of stories such as “The Book with No Pictures.” All of these silly activities are meant to foster a love for literacy at an early age ! We also write monthly Pen Pal letters. We show them on a on a map where the school is located and where the Pen Pal lives. They dictate the letters and as the year progresses they write more of the letter themselves. We are writing in our journals each week. Each entry pertains to the letter of the week. As their letter writing skills improve and their confidence increases they do more of the writing themselves in their journals. By the end of the year our literacy students have made significant strides in gaining confidence in basic reading and literacy skills.
FEATURED ACTIVITY: MARVELOUS MONDAY
Marvelous Monday is an enrichment class designed for Apple Room students in the 2AM program. During the 2018-2019 school year, it will be offered to the 2AM Sunshine room children as well! This is an exciting development that we can’t wait to see bloom. This class takes place on Mondays from 9:00am to11:30am and follows the daily routines and rituals of the Apple Room and Sunshine Room. The curriculum is designed to be an exploratory first look at the world of science. Each class is designed around a theme such as Space, dinosaurs, water/ice, colors, sounds, insects, and much more! The scientific concepts are kept simple as to foster a love for science and a questioning mind. Children are encouraged to explore these themes through sensory tables, arts and crafts, games, and one on one teacher instruction. At the end of each day the class sits down for a short time of science experiments. This is a highlight for the children. A brief summary of the activity is given, and the children are asked “what do you think is going to happen?” At the beginning of the year the children were often quiet, but their curiosity has peeked throughout the year and its fun to hear their guesses. Some of our popular experiments have been, exploding pumpkins, exploding volcanoes, predicting leaf sinking with coins, playing musical notes with water, and warm water Skittle experiment. It has been a joy to see the children?s minds expand throughout the year as their scientific curiosity matures.
BOOK DRIVE RECAP
In the month of February we collected over 200 books for Read Indeed! Thank you for your generosity!
