Thank you for a great first month of school and for the continued support and encouragement. The children have done a wonderful job returning to school and I am so proud of them! To see the happiness, laughter, and learning that goes on inside these rooms is pure joy.
I was reminded of God’s truth as I was reading the children’s Bible story about Jesus calming the storm. God is powerful and even the storms and scary things obey Him. This message was perfect timing not only for our children, but also a reminder for us as parents. With the weight of the world outside of our precious preschool it is easy to lose sight of God’s faithful promises, but He is faithful to remind us of His mightiness, goodness, and love.
Our school provides a safe, loving, and nurturing place for our children to come on a daily basis. Consistency and routine is vital during the early years of life for children to thrive and develop, especially with uncertainties in our world. Remember to take good care of yourself as the caregiver of your child. Connect with your children and shower them with love and attention. Provide stable routines as their “home base” and tune into what their behaviors may be “telling” you. Offer words to help your child express feelings. As you extend patience and grace to your child, don’t forget to extend it to yourself as well.
Each and every family is extra special to our school. My door is always open and I am here to serve you as the preschool director. I am still trying to connect our new faces with familiar parents. If we have not met personally, please stop by my office or catch me outside, so I can say hello.
As we begin our second month of school we see our teachers, children and families enter into new and comfortable relationships. Communication, observation and interaction provides the insight into our children’s strengths, challenges, interests, developmental abilities, temperament, and problem solving skills. This connection and understanding helps to guide us in our program planning. Communication and reflection by teachers and families together, contribute to a strong, solid learning environment and forms the basis for teachable moments and ongoing curriculum development that is successful and rewarding for our little ones.
Thank you parents and teachers for your partnership in helping us provide this strong and solid foundation for success with the children. We are ever so blessed in this preschool ministry that we share together. We look forward to seeing all of our moms and dads at our Virtual Parent Night scheduled for Tuesday, September 21st at 6:00pm. Be on the lookout for more information from your teacher! A Summer Program interest survey will be emailed to you soon. We would love for you to take a minute to let us know if this would be helpful for you and your family. Our gift wrap sales will begin on September 8th. Thank you for supporting our school.
Sincerely,
Allison Lee, School Director
Classroom News
Ms. Fenstermaker and Ms. Baker Two Year Olds
Welcome to school!
We are so glad to be back starting our 2021-2022 school year! Our two year olds have been doing so well with the beginning of school and have learned our routines so quickly. We are so proud of them all!
We began our year with two units: Welcome to School and All About Me. Within these units the children got to finger paint, put together their own school bus, and practice holding crayons while coloring. They are loving any Pete the Cat books we read and singing Wheels on the Bus.
September brings us into our Transportation and Farm units. We look forward to learning all about these topics. Don’t forget to peep in our windows to see all the artwork either hung on our bulletin boards or up in the window itself.
A big thank you to Kaylan Owens for being our home room mom and to all the parents who have been kind enough to bring us things off of our classroom wish list. You are all so appreciate!
Wishing you all a happy September and here’s to hoping we have cooler weather on the way!
Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Roberts Two Year Olds
Happy September! Mrs. Roberts and I have been enjoying getting to know your little ones these past few week and love seeing their personalities emerge as they adjust to our schedule and classroom. Some friends are still adjusting, so do not worry if there are still a few tears at pick up and drop off. Preschool is hard work!
Everyone had loads of fun learning “All About Me” in August. The children have been working hard to put together a special book for you to take home soon. We used many different art mediums during this unit! Mrs. Roberts introduced glue, finger paint, markers, and stamping with cookie cutters. It was so fun to see them explore the different ways to create art, and we got some good insight about different mediums they loved (or didn’t love sometimes).
September begins our Farm unit, and we will continue talking about Apples. We will explore our sense of taste, colors, shapes and do a lot of counting. We even have an apple pie sensory bin for them to scoop and pour oats and apples. The Farm is an especially fun unit because it is full of so many themed books and songs. We will explore our sense of touch as we learn about animals on the farm.
Mrs. Larkin and Ms. Fannin Three Year olds
We have jumped into Preschool on the Pond! Learning and exploring about pond life and the different creatures that live near the pond. The children have been getting to know each other by playing pass the ball game, singing songs about our pond friends, the speckled frog, 5 little ducks and our fishy friends.
Everyone seems to be adjusting well to our schedule and class routine; we couldn’t be prouder! A special thanks to all our faith families for your generous donations to our classroom and for signing up for volunteer opportunities. We love our families to be a part of our class experiences.
As we jump into September, we continue to learn our Spanish number and color words for the month, (uno, dos, & rojo) and the children are picking up the language quickly. We continue our month with Community Helpers and Transportation as we move through September and will be learning about fire safety, different types of transportation, cooking experiences, and dramatic play in our doctor’s office. The children always enjoy taking care of others and what a fun way to finish up our unit.
We are looking forward to sharing how wonderful your children are doing with our “Zoom Parent Night” on September 21st at 6pm. Be sure to save the date.
It’s going to be a great year with your sweet children!
Mrs. Marsh and Mrs. Rowan Three Year Olds
We have been having a great time growing and learning in the 3s! During the month of August, we spent the first week or so familiarizing ourselves with the routine. The children have enjoyed taking leads in new tasks such as holding the flag for pledge, being the line leader and giving the daily weather report. We also read and talked about beginning a new school year. We spoke about it being ok to be a little scared and that we would help each other out. The kids enjoyed books about the first days of school including “Biscuit Goes to School” and “Little Critters First Day of School.”
During August we also became familiar with most shapes and colors. [Subsequent months we will focus on one shape and color.] The books we used for these lessons were “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” and “Bear Sees Colors.” The kids had fun with Mrs. Rowan enjoying the process of painting with different colors and textures including coffee grounds in the brown paint – which smelled delicious! We also made shape garlands to hang from the ceiling and used our creativity to make silly shape monsters (inspired by a new song called “Shape Monsters”).
The whole month of September we will be studying “All About Me!” This will include learning about favorites, body parts, the 5 senses, families, friends, and pets. We will be celebrating ourselves and the amazing people that God has created us to be! We will acknowledge our likenesses and our beautiful differences – recognizing that we are all “wonderfully made!” September will also bring our Virtual Open House on 9/21 at 6pm. This event will be on Zoom and you will be receiving information and a link closer to the time. As always if you have any questions, please let us know!
Mrs. Bearss and Mrs. Jacobs Four Year olds
Hello VPK families! What a busy month August has been! We are looking forward to September as we are learning the routines and really starting to find our rhythm as a class.
In August, we enjoyed getting to know our new school and classmates during our All About Me, All About Families, and Our 5 Senses units. We have talked so much about our class being a special family, and we are truly learning how to take care of each other and ourselves! ❤ We even shared a special snack and art experience where we got to explore with all of our five senses. God truly made each of us special and he loves us very much!
As we move forward into September, we will begin talking about God's Fall Gifts. In this unit we will study Farms, Apples, and all kinds of Trees and Leaves. We’ll be making bread with the Little Red Hen, exploring (and tasting!) Apples inside and out, and building Leaf Men from our nature explorations along with many other great fall activities. And hopefully, all this talk of fall will go ahead and bring that cooler air on over to Tallahassee! 😅
Remember, there is no school on Thursday, September 16th. And mark your calendars for a special ZOOM meeting for parents to take a peek inside our room and find out more about the awesome things we will be doing in VPK this year! We feel so blessed to have your children in our class - thank you for sharing them with us!
Mrs. Roberts and Ms. Arthur Four Year Olds
August has flown by! We have had so much fun learning about our daily routine at school and making new friends. Everyone did such a great job sharing their "All About Me" bags at circle time and we learned a lot about each other. One of our favorite parts of the day has been our "Question of the Day" time. The children are also loving music with Mrs. Cooke and of course playground time.
Our September units include God's Fall Gifts, Apples, and the 5 Senses. We will also begin our letter study this month and we are looking forward to our first cooking/food prep day. Thank you for a great start to our school year!
** A special thank you to the Arce family (Hazel) for planting the beautiful flowers in the planter next to the gate!
Mrs. Cherry and Mrs. Poucher Four Year Olds
What a wonderful start to VPK we have had over the past few weeks. We have 15 children that are eager to learn and play. Making new friends, celebrating 3 August birthdays, learning routines and working together as a class family has kept us busy each day. Each child has done a great job of sharing items in their “All About Me” bag as we finished up our first unit.
September brings us learning about the letters, A, B, C, D, Apples, Our 5 Senses, Health/Nutrition and our Amazing Bodies. Thank you so much for all of the class wish list items that have been donated. We feel so blessed to have such a sweet group of children and families to partner with this year.
Mrs. Hamrick and Mrs. McConnaughhay Kindergarten
What a great start to our school year! We are really enjoying getting to know all of the sweet children. Even though some things are still a little different, the children are doing an amazing job learning our routines and procedures. We also appreciate everyone following our safety guidelines to help us all stay healthy!
The first few weeks of school, we were busy learning how to read and spell color words, learning new songs about the color words, and we learned how to make secondary colors by mixing primary colors. We also worked on recognizing and writing numbers 1-10. Each morning we talk about the calendar, the weather, and use a hundreds chart to count how many days we have been in school.
The month of September, we will be learning all about the rain forest and the animals that live there. The slow-moving sloth is usually a favorite. Watch as we turn our classroom into a rain forest, too!
Thank you for sharing your children with us. We look forward to watching them learn and grow with us all through the year!
Music with Mrs. Cooke
What a wonderful start to the school year it's been in music. We're having a lot of fun getting to know each other as we sing and play together.
The two year olds are warming right up with all kinds of fun movement using scarves, shakers, and drums. We are singing lots of songs about our awesome God and how much he loves us!
The busy threes are working on mimicking rhythmic patterns and sounds with instruments, but also getting creative with how we can make music with our hands and feet!
The VPK and Kindergarten classes have worked hard at mastering tempo and how to adjust when music gets faster or slower, and we are also incorporating rhythm into our singing and playing as well.
It's so fun to see them explore and get creative, while also sharpening our listening skills while we sing and play. Every couple of weeks we take a special day to hear a Bible story, pray together, and of course sing songs that reflect the message. Every Friday in my classroom is considered "Fun Friday" where we play all kinds of musical games and of course have the best dance parties! Looking forward to many more sweet memories and growth to come this year.
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