It's bittersweet that we have come to the end of another school year. The memories are forever and a bright light shines on the path of accomplishments our PreK students have enjoyed. We wish our graduates a future full of success. God bless you and forever be with you on your journey through life.
Preschool Two Day
Celebrating our Moms with our annual SMCP tea party began our month of May. The children enjoyed singing special Mother day songs for their moms. Our Mother's Day photo booth also helped to capture the moment and make special memories. Thank you to all the mothers and grandmothers for all you do.
 
Letters W, X, Y, and Z were the letters for the month May. We used our letter cards to learn the sound each letter makes and what picture starts with each letter. Our students created a whale for the letter W, a xylophone for the letter X, a flower made of yarn for the letter y, and a zoo for the letter z. The color purple, the shape rectangle, and the numbers 9 and 10 were the color, shape and numbers of the month. Matching 9 big and small purple rectangles on our shape worksheet helped the students to recognize our shape and color of the month as well as the number 9. The children finger painted 10 hungry caterpillars for the number 10. 
 
The children took a special trip to the library to visit librarian Susan Babcock. The children heard stories about the hungry caterpillar, made their very own caterpillar, and sang and danced to songs with Ms. Susan.

During chapel, Father Rick read  When God Tucks In the a Day by  Allia Nolan and  Can I see The King  by Vince and Julie Daubenspeck and  I Wanted to Know All About God  by Virginia L. Kroll. The children learned with God all things are possible and God is everywhere. Father Rick and the children sang along to the songs "Gospel Train", "God Made Me" and "Jesus Loves Me."
 
The month of June bought warmer weather, and we enjoyed more of the great outdoors. June also brings bittersweet feelings as we prepared for the end of the year. Our students worked hard mastering their scissor skills, letter, number, shape and color recognition. They also worked hard practicing our end of the year performance for our moving up graduation ceremony. 

We thank our parents for the privilege to work with your children and to be the first influence in their academic lives. We wish them a wonderful summer and the very best in years to come!
 
Love,
Ms. Michele 
Ms. Carole
 
Preschool Three Day
The year has flown by! What fun we’ve had in the 3’s class. May and June are busy months as you can imagine, but we fit in plenty of learning and playtime. 

In May, we are able to honor our moms with a Mothers’ Day Tea. The kids looked forward to hosting moms and grandmas during this special event. It’s also a nice time of fellowship and relaxation.

In June, we created crafts for our fathers, including a drawn picture of dad in a puzzle piece frame. We also made a flag for Memorial Day. The students had the opportunity to take a field trip to the library to hear stories read by Miss Susan. 

In Language and Literacy, we made a sign book that identified different street signs and talked about their meanings. We also played games where we stretched our sentences by adding a noun to a given subject. We took turns and made pretty silly sentences which resulted in lots of giggles. We continued to focus on identifying letters and matching lowercase and uppercase letters. We concentrated on identifying the sound each letter makes by reviewing the clue word for each letter. We read the Eric Carle books Grouchy Ladybug, The Hungry Caterpillar and Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, said the Sloth. We created many crafts for each book and decorated our bulletin board with our creations. The students practiced building their names with their letter tags. 

During Math, we discussed sharing and figured out how to share a set number of toys with a friend. We then expanded and worked out how to share with even more friends. We created a rainbow of colored tag bags and had to carefully follow directions as we put each color to complete the lines of the rainbow. We then drew a rainbow based on our model. We discussed ordinal numbers and positions using the vocabulary words “before” and “after” as we stood in a line. We also talked about top and bottom positions.  We analyzed shapes and decided how many sides and corners each one had. We compared different sized shapes and found the shape match
 
One of the greatest feelings for the students is when they complete their Readiness and Writing workbooks, which they worked all year on. We worked diligently over the last 6 weeks to finish our books and reviewed what we learned. We traced the numbers 9, 10 and reviewed numbers 1 through 10. We traced the letters X, Y and Z and completed our alphabet review. We matched up lowercase letters to their capitals and reviewed letter sounds. 

Thank you to all the parents for all the support you provided throughout the year. It has been a blessing getting to know each and every child as well as family. We will miss some of you who are moving on to other schools, and we look forward to seeing some of you next year. It has been a great year - Ms. Carole and I hope that everyone has a safe, fun, and healthy summer.  

Amanda Rabolli
Carole Cleary
Preschool Five Day
This is our last newsletter for the 2017-2018 school year. What a wonderful experience it's been teaching our PreK students to prepare them for Kindergarten.

Word Time: With the help of Squawker, the children learned the pronunciation, spelling, and definition of words in the Construction and Animal categories.

Penmanship: The students completed their Letters and Numbers for Me books. During the month of June, the children were writing words, sentences, punctuation, paragraphs, and poems - WOW!! The also learned to write numbers 1 through 10.

They finished their My Book which is a personal journal of life, family and friends.

Language and Literacy: We completed our last chapter - Writing. Students tell stories through dramatic play. Children share thoughts to written language. They understand that what we write conveys meaning. The students learn that printed words can be used to label objects. They use scribbles, pictures, and letters to communicate an idea. We choose topics and let the students generate ideas about which to write.

Math: We finished our chapter - Data Representation and Probability. Students can answer questions with words by moving into groups. They gather data by using concrete objects in a simple graph. We used pictures to analyze a pictograph. Children use the words - certain, impossible, likely, unlikely - to make predictions regarding real events.

PATHS: With the help of our PATHS animals, we continued to discuss feelings and emotions. They learn that all feelings are OK. They relate feelings to facial expressions and body postures. The feelings we discussed recently were "excited" and "tired".

Chapel: Our Wednesday visits with Father Rick are very special. He teaches us bible stories, we sing songs, and pray together. Thank you, Father Rick.

Our Mother's Day Tea is a special celebration to honor the moms in our lives. We cherish the memories and the endless love they have for us. The children showed their love in return by inviting them to a Tea with special treats, gifts and lots of hugs!!

We wish everyone a safe and wonderful summer.

Ida Payne
Cynthia Dinan

St. Mary's Community Preschool www.stmtux.org/preschool
845-351-2389
ipayne@stmarysintuxedo.org