Jump Start Kindergarten & First Grade May 2019 Newsletter

MEDFIELD AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM

Jump Start, Kindergarten,

& First Grade Newsletter

May 2019

Important Dates in MAY:

Tuesday 5/7 – Deadline to sign up for Special Sign Up days at the end of June (6/17-6/20). See below for more information, or click here for the sign up form.

Friday 5/10 – Teacher Professional Day – Early Release Day - Children enrolled on Fridays are expected to attend unless you notify us otherwise – please remember to call MAP at (508) 359-2165 or email Meghan if your child will not be attending! There is NO JUMP START MAP.

· Children in AM Kindergarten have NO SCHOOL – Children in PM MAP can be dropped off at 8:30 am and may stay until 2:30 or their usual pick up time.

· Children in PM Kindergarten will attend the morning session of Kindergarten, will be released to MAP at 11:40 and may stay at MAP until 2:30.

· Children in First Grade & Full Day Kindergarten have a half day and will come to MAP at 11:40.

· All children will need to come to MAP with a lunch.

Monday 5/27 – No School – MAP Closed

***Special Assignment for the May Newsletter***

How many words can you make using the letters in

SPRINGTIME?

Work as a family to make a list, and email it or have your child turn it in to Meghan by Wednesday, May 8th. Each list will be entered into a drawing for a prize!

Looking ahead to JUNE:

Wednesday 6/12 – Last Day of Jump Start MAP

Thursday 6/13 – Transition Day at Memorial School. (No Jump Start MAP) All Ks go to school for the AM Session. If it is their regular MAP day they will be released to MAP at 11:40 and may stay until 2:30 or their usual pick up time. All Ks need to come to MAP with a lunch. First grade will be released at their usual time.

Friday 6/14 – Last Day of School– Early Release Day

· No Jump Start MAP

· NO PM Kindergarten – Children in AM MAP must be signed up ahead of time, and may attend MAP from 11:00 am until 2:30 pm (with the option to sign up for a later pick-up time). This day was not included in your tuition for the year. Please CLICK HERE for the extra day form.

· Children in AM K, Full Day K & First Grade will be released to MAP at 11:40.

· All children must come to MAP with a lunch. Please remember to call MAP at (508) 359-2165 or email Meghan if your child will not be attending!

Monday 6/17-Thursday 6/20 – MAP Special Sign Up Days – MAP will be open from 8-6. The sign up was emailed last week, and is due back to MAP on 5/7. Space is limited, so please be sure to sign up early!

Jump Start and Half Day K at MAP

The children have really enjoyed English Language Arts month! We started by learning the elements of a story - beginning, middle, end, characters, setting, and plot. The kids explored so many stories including The Rainbow Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg, and Edwina. We also compared two versions of the same story - 3 little pigs!! For poetry week we wrote Spring poems, color poems and enjoyed poems from Shel Silverstein. We also wrote a poem about Popcorn to explore our Five Senses! Popcorn looks bumpy, sounds poppy, and tastes yummy! To end the month we did alphabet games and practiced our nursery rhymes. The kids tried to recite Tongue Twisters and played Zingo.

Session 5 Clubs Begin!!!

Mondays

Dirt, Rocks, & Sticks Club with Joanne

Art Club with Sadie

Tuesdays

Bug Club with Jodi

Car Club with Mike

Wednesdays

Photography Club with Scott

Walking Club with Carol and Terri

Thursdays

Fun With Beads Club with Trish

Dragons Love Tacos Club with Megan

Fridays

Drama Club with Jeanne

Session 4 Clubs End

Monday

Coloring Club with Jeanne- Our last day of club was filled with more coloring. Velvet coloring pages were decorated with bright, beautiful markers. There is no doubt about it, coloring is an activity that provides so many positive benefits. Coloring Club opened the door to many fun conversations giving the children the opportunity to connect with new friends. It was a pleasure working with the group and seeing them take part in the art of expressing themselves through coloring.

Pet Club with Kathy- We had such a great time in Pet Club! We made leprechaun traps, pet seashells, bird nests and had a stuffed animal adoption! The kids were so focused and really took their time and did such a great job with all of their projects!

Tuesday

Kitchen Science Club with Kim- What a lot of fun this club has been!! We did so many experiments with Peeps, Skittles, Lemons, Popcorn and more! Each child is going to come home with a packet of all the experiments to try over and over again.

Imagination Club with Trish- Imagination Club was amazing!! Our last two clubs we used our imagination with popsicle sticks and cups. We built creative things with different sizes and colors of popsicle sticks. But our favorite was designing structures using plastic solo cups! We also turned off the lights and added string lights and candles! So much imagination!!!

Wednesday

Minute It To Win It Club with Scott- Minute to Win It club was a raving success with friends chomping at the bit every week! We had an absolute blast challenging our hand-eye skills, fast thinking skills, balancing skills, and an opportunity to eat an extra snack every Wednesday. I have posted each weeks statistics up on our club boards, so feel free to check out your accomplishments. If anyone has a new challenge they wish for me to add to club, fill me in.

Passport Club with Terri and Carol- Passport club is back after 6 weeks, tired but happy! ...yes we went through the magic hat and filled our passports with stamps from Japan, Australia, Disneyland, Costa Rica, Iceland and Norway. The kids did some creative crafts and learned some fun facts - reindeer bacon for breakfast anyone?.. visit Norway for that or rise and shine to howler monkeys when you head to Costa Rica! We found out Walt Disney didn’t like mice yet his most famous host is none other than Mickey Mouse! We tried Brie and Berry lemonade from France but were unable to get fish jerky from Iceland - next time maybe!

Thursday

Super Structures Club with Megan and Joanne- We recently constructed and raced wind powered cars. The children really enjoyed placing their cars in front of a box fan and watching them zoom across the cafeteria floor. We learned to make adjustments to the cars to make them run straight and increase speed. In our next session, we discussed packaging delicate items. (Think Amazon deliveries!) We proceeded to carefully bundle up eggs, using recycled materials, to prepare for a drop off of the playground structure. All of our engineers had success with their individual package designs! Not a single egg cracked! We will be wrapping up our sessions this week with a parachute and zip line challenge day.

Circus Fun Club with Nancy- Circus Club was so much fun in many ways. For me, it provided a great opportunity to really get to know my group of children. They are passionate, creative, and willing to learn. I truly enjoyed their individual personalities and spirits. For the children, they worked together to create a circus train mural, circus animal costumes, and they hand-made the very fun carnival games for our final club day activity, the MAP Circus Carnival! Ring toss, juggling, ball toss, ping pong ball obstacle course, and more! It was a terrific way to end our weeks of fun!!!

Friday

Surprise Club with Jodi- We ended Surprise Club by surprising a friend on the other side of the world! We made pictures and sent some yummy snacks to Captain Nicholas Losapio who is currently flying Osprey helicopters in Kuwait on his second tour of duty. I’m happy to report he received the package and was thrilled! Thanks for making surprise club so fun!

Captain Nicholas Losapio

And in other MAP news...

The month of April has brought slightly warmer weather and of course, April Showers! We take any opportunity we can to get the children outdoors so they have the chance to take part in good active play. The spider climber, monkey bars and climbing structure have been busy places as the children run and climb with their friends. After a long day in school it’s always nice to see the children using their imaginations while playing together. Time in the MAP room also offers a lot of fun. Whether the children are building with blocks, playing board games, setting up the doll houses, or passing through security in the MAP Airport, new relationships are being established and creative minds are at work.

In the gym we have gone a little crazy and flip flopped games such as Foxes and Hunters to bring the ever quick but entertaining Foxes Revenge. This game the hunters become the casting outnumbered prey. We even brought out some Alaskan kickball providing a new team game for the gym.

April Vacation Week at MAP

April vacation was a blast! We had so much fun and fit in so many activities! We started the week with a trip to Papa Gino's for lunch for some delicious pizza. When we came back, the Pfaff kids came over for a dog show. Some of the kids were able to perform some of the tricks with the dogs! Then we ended the day with our drive in movie. The kids made cars out of boxes and then we watched the movie "Cars". Wednesday we had a mystery on our hands! The spoons for lunch ended up missing and we had to find out what happened to them. During the day each teacher was eliminated from the suspect list until only Scott was left! Turns out he stole the spoons to give the kids a special snack that day, ice cream!! We were also lucky enough to have mini golf come to us. The kids loved putting on 9 holes and practicing their golf swings. We went to the Franklin Park zoo on Thursday. The kids had fun seeing all the kids from the other MAP sites as well as all of the animals! We heard the lion roar, saw the peacock walking around, and the monkeys swinging from the trees. Bike day ended our week and was a success! The rain was nice enough to hold off so the kids could get a day of biking in.

Meghan Jackson Gaye Shannon

K-1 Program Director Executive Director

508.359.2165 508.359.0003

[email protected] [email protected]

Annette Gallagher

Assistant Executive Director

[email protected]

Fed ID # 04-3061993

MAP provides high quality afterschool enrichment programs and is supported by tuition & tax-deductible contributions from families, their employers, other organizations. Proudly serving Medfield families for over 20 years! A nonprofit organization.