The Pre-first has been learning all about our solar system; the sun,

planets, moon, stars, constellations and life as an astronaut. We have  been researching space facts and have written our own books about the  eight planets as well as a class book. Your children have become space  experts!  The writing in Pre-first has improved so much. I am seeing a big  difference from the beginning of the year. Children are using complete  sentences with nouns, verbs and adjectives. In literature, we have been  focusing on beginning,middle and endings of stories as well as  comprehension. This will help as we begin writing our books for the  Publishing Party. In Math, we continue working on place value, adding,  subtracting, word problems, and comparing numbers. We even made our own 

astronaut space themed math journal with word problems. I hope everyone  had a wonderful Easter weekend!

Can you believe we have only about 40 days left in this school year? We are so proud of the progress that the kindergarteners have made so far this year. We are seeing them taking more risks with writing on their own, and they are understanding and writing beginning, middle, and end in story creations. We are finishing our space unit and look forward to our "walk in space" with the younger children. We will then be changing gears and discussing what is "under the sea" for our next unit.  In language arts, we continue to practice reading stories together out loud, and on consonant blends, word families, long and short vowels, and sight words. In math, we are continuing the study of the meaning of the +, -, and = symbols. We are using these symbols to solve simple addition and subtraction problems. We are continuing to review the "tricky teen" numbers.  This time of year tends to get a bit muddy outside. Please check to make sure that your child has an additional change of clothes in case of a mud mess. Mark your calendars for our publishing party on May 18 at 9:15 - we hope to see you all there! We are still in need of paper towel rolls if you could please continue to send those in. Thank you!

Well, Wacky Wednesday weather has been warm, wet and windy so far- perfect for letter W. We dug up some worms and are treating them kindly as they are visiting our room and staying in our sensory bin. Mrs Poe whistled some tunes for us, Mrs Craig had the children using wind and water to make boats move and we still need to make magic wands!  Letter X next week does not have as many fun activities so we will continue to look for signs of spring and paint and craft more spring decorations for our room!  We are also starting to look at lower case letters. The children trace and write them on a white board where mistakes are easily erased. Not all children will recognize and be able to write them but we do want to expose them to the letters. Hope you can find time to go outside and find Spring in your neighborhood!

Thanks for putting names in jackets!

We certainly hope you all had a lovely Easter!   The weather certainly cooperated and we heard from all your children about Easter egg hunts, chocolate bunnies, gold eggs, and parties. We wish the weather was cooperating this week too, although the children LOVED the wind today!  The letters "U", "V", and "W" are all but finished and we did some silly things with them. We decorated underwear for our alphabet books, to much laughter and creativity. The children crawled under a table and painted an underwater scene complete with sharks and seaweed. The week was finished with an "upside down" cake that most of us loved! "V" was very exciting as we made a volcano with leftover playdoh and 'exploded' it! We had veggies and dip for snack and everyone enjoyed them. We pulled a bit of the letter "V" to this week and are switching our kitchen to the "Bone-apart" Veterinarian clinic. There are bandages, appointment books, syringes, and a grooming station. This should be fun for a couple of weeks! The weather was perfect today for "W" and wind! Be on the lookout for watercolors and wands! Enjoy the spring!

The 5 days 3s are excited to begin talking about spring. Our units this month include community helpers, spring flowers and a focus on the environment.  We are concentrating our flowers unit on the early and more common flowers that we first see when the weather changes. Try and point out the early flowers around your home to your children! We are also focusing on taking a more active interest in the environment and the world around us. This includes talking about the 3 Rs, and on an individual level, trying to make sure we do not drop trash (or food) on the ground, and if we do we can to pick it up! A fun and beneficial activity for your children at home can be giving them scissors and junk mail. You can reuse old paper, magazines and catalogs to practice cutting skills or to make art projects. We do this in the classroom about once a week. 

We will begin our unit on community helpers later this month. If you are able, we would love for you to find and take pictures of Community helpers that your child comes across in their everyday life. Examples include a Mail Carrier, Firefighter, Doctor, Nurse ect. You can send in a picture with your child or email it to us and we can print it. We will have your child share and explain the picture with our class! Thank you all for everything you do. As always please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or thoughts!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! The boys and girls had a ball before break creating bunny bags used during our annual Two's Easter egg hunt! They were as cute as can be racing around the courtyard gathering all of the hidden eggs. Who knew the Easter Bunny came to Redeemer as well? As we move into April we will study insects, Earth day, and spring. We are thrilled to begin our Guest Reader program on Tuesdays. Mrs. Saleh came in this week and shared three wonderful books that the children truly enjoyed. What a treat! Thank you for sharing your amazing children with us!

The Wyatt/Zuidema Twos finished March with our weather theme and Easter. We made weather wheels and painted thunderstorms with lots of lightning and rain. The children loved singing our weather song. For our Easter celebration, we made bunny bags and searched for eggs in the vegetable garden. Thank you to everyone who stuffed eggs and sent in goodies to make our party a success. With April comes our units on insects and spring. Soon our cubbies will be covered with dragonflies and butterflies, and our spring song with will stuck in our heads. Story Time with the Twos has been a great success. The children are excited to have special visitors come read to them. If you have not signed up, there are still a few dates available. As always, thank you for sharing your children with us.

Lunch Bunch: 

Lunch Bunch is in the swing of spring!  We are hoping for some warm spring weather for outside time and to match up with all our spring activities. We are working on out new bulletin board of spring flowers. We have painted the tree, sky, and grass using different techniques. We will be painting spring flowers, making spring colors necklaces and coffee filter flowers. We are also playing some springtime games, working on yoga poses as well as games that incorporate our Spanish colors. These include hot potatoe, bean bag toss, and rainbow games.  We colored and painted different eggs for Easter, hunted the school in search off eggs and Easter made Easter cards. We also attempted a peep experiment. This was a science experiment that worked on prediction and observations. They also really enjoyed squishing the peeps and feeling the difference between wet, dry and ones soaked in baking soda. Please remember the unpredictability of spring weather.