RPDS ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER

e-RPDS January 2019

Letter from the Director

Dear Redeemer Community,

January is usually a time for reflection. We feel energized about our resolutions and beginning anew, all while being grateful for our many gifts. In thinking of a new year, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to be part of a preschool environment. Our students are full of smiles, energy, and enthusiasm. They surprise us regularly. What they say and do is full of spontaneity and wonder. I, like many, have resolutions and am determined to make some changes in the New Year, but there is one thing I know for sure. I wouldn't change the time I spend in preschool!

Cheers to 2019 and the preschool days ahead!

Best regards,

Mary

Classroom Updates:

Mrs. Barta's Pre-first:

W elcome back. The pre-first children have jumped right back into the class routine. Last week, we were busy discussing resolutions and what they really meant. Each student has worked hard to create some of their own promises and goals for the new year. Here are some of our resolutions:

1.Learn how to tie shoes.

2.Get better at swimming.

3.Get better at riding a bike.

4.Help other people.

5.Get better at reading and writing.

6.Get better at gymnastics.

7.Get to school on time.
8.Learn how to snowboard.

9.Be "funnier" in the new year.

10.Learn how to ice skate.

What a wide range of goals we have! Money has been introduced in our Math unit. This is a difficult concept that we will continue to work on throughout the year. We have been
practicing exchanging smaller coins for larger valued coins. The "Pre-first Bank" will be set up in the Math Center so children can have a hands-on opportunity to explore with different coins. Ask your child to help you the next time you pay for something with coins. In Language Arts, we have done a story comparison of the book The Mitten by Jan Brett and Alvin Tresselt. We continue working on our phonics skills as
well as handwriting. What a difference since the beginning of the school year!Next week, we will focus on Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as polar bears and hibernation. Happy New Year!

Mrs. Smith's & Mrs. Vandenberg's Kindergartens:

We are so excited to be starting the New Year with your kindergartener. We have so many things that we will be learning in 2019! We have begun sounding out words, reading small books, and studying characters in stories in language arts. In math, we will be studying weight and measurement, two and three dimensional shapes, and the "tricky teens". We are also very excited to be starting our Star of the Week!

Please send in boots for the snow and mud, and warm clothes for playing outside. Our homework assignment for the long weekend is to have your child practice zipping their coat and practice putting on their boots. With the colder weather, we are looking forward to learning about how animals and people adapt to the winter weather. We hope that you have a wonderful weekend together!

Mrs. Arrup & Mrs. Baker's Pre-k:

The Fours have returned from break ready to learn! We have used lasers, lights and fly swatters to review "last year's" letters and sounds. This week we are marching our way through letter M with magnets, monsters, matching games and measurement. In addition, we start getting a bit more precise with letter/number formation (start at the top) and cutting skills. The blocks have become much more popular during play time and it has been fun to see creativity at work as they negotiate and build different structures. The clean up is always interesting as the children figure out how to stack the blocks according to size and in stacks of ten. The temperature has definitely dropped and we appreciate you sending in appropriate winter clothes!

Mrs. Loeb & Mrs. Vahedi's Pre-k:

Happy New Year from Mrs. Loeb's pre-k class! We hope you had a lovely holiday full of love, laughter, and family time. We celebrated with a new little addition to our Redeemer family - little Clementine Vahedi joined us and is adorable! Mom and baby are doing well! We have had wonderful help with our substitutes - Lisa and Allison. They have been fabulous and the children love them! Thankfully the weather was great last week and we were able to go outside every day! Note: we almost ALWAYS go out, so please make sure hats, gloves, and mittens are in backpacks! This will be especially important as we have intermittent 'snow' days. Boots are ALWAYS welcome, but please send in sneakers too. Boots are clumsy in the classroom and don't allow for much flexibility of movement. We are working on "M" and have had a great time making monsters, and reading and acting out "The Mitten". Our cooks have made Lemon cake and Macaroni and Cheese. We continue to work on number recognition and handwriting - those diagonal strokes are getting a workout this month and they are hard! Please check out the "monster math" in the hallway next week. It was fun counting all the eyes, teeth, and feet of those crazy little monsters!

So great to see our moms at "Bingo Bonanza". It's always so much fun!

Mrs. Schroeder & Miss Ball's 3s:

We hope that you all had a great break and got some fun in with all the holiday hustle and bustle! The kids are getting back into the swing of things and finding their groove again! We are working on some new units, new color, new poem. This month brings us blue, rectangles, and Little Boy Blue. We will also be doing a really fun unit based on the Piggy and Elephant books by Mo Willems. The kids love these books and it's fun for them to learn about an author. The underlying theme of all the books is friendship, so we will be talking a lot about how to be a good friend and what that looks like.
We will also learn about winter, winter animals and talk about snow and weather. We usually see all different types of weather in January, making it a great time for a weather unit. It allows us to use predicting skills, observation, and measuring. We continue to review our letters, shapes and colors.

Mrs. Hooper & Mrs. Grieve's 3s:

January in the 3 Day 3's is all about rectangles, winter, polar animals and the color blue with lots of special books being enjoyed at circle time! Our nursery rhyme for the month is appropriately, "Little Boy Blue." We are talking about winter and how happy we are to have seen a "few flakes" fall! The children painted a blue snowflake placemat for snack time and finger painted blue rectangle snowflakes, which are hanging from our classroom! Everyone designed a pair of matching mittens and their own melted rectangle snowman....each one is unique with such personality! This week we made a puffy painted polar bear and learned a poem about this Arctic friend. Blue rectangle "stitch cards" were a great fine motor activity this week and your children did a great job!!! Library has begun....we ask our readers to arrive (to our classroom) at 11:15 with a few favorite books from home. Plan to read for about 15 minutes. Thank you, Thank you, the children LOVE having their parents/friends participate at school! It was nice to see many "Moms" at Bingo Night....it's always a fun evening with lots of laughs. Your children have become such good friends with one another....what a GREAT GROUP! It is wonderful to watch them interact and converse; remembering that "creative play" is one of the most important aspects of school for 3-4 year olds. Stay warm, read to your children and enjoy their company and conversation!

Mrs. Astley & Mrs. Knott's 2s:

Happy 2019 from the Astley's 2/2s! January has been a fast and busy month for these fantastic two year olds. This month we have talked about winter, pets, the color blue, the star, and dressing for winter. In circle we have read several books about different pets and we even shared pictures of our own pets! I will say the dogs outnumber the cats in this group! We have painted blue stars, made hermit crabs, pet rocks, and our own fish bowls. Please remember that even with this cold and snowy weather, that we still do our best to go outside. Please send in boots, snow clothes, hats and mittens when there is snow on the ground so that we can go outside to learn and explore. Thank you to all of you for checking your cubbies and making sure that we have plenty of diapers, wipes and a change of winter clothes. I look forward to seeing you all on Conference day on the 22nd. Thank you so much for sharing your children with us. They are a pure joy to teach.

Mrs. Wyatt & Mrs. Zuidema's 2s:

We are kicking off the new year with our unit on pets. It was fun to hear many of our friends talk about the pets they or their families have or the pets they would like to have. "Kiss" the dragon was a big hit! I wonder what dragons eat. Be sure to check out our cubbies. They are covered in beautiful hermit crabs, another fun pet. At the end of the unit we will be sending home a special pet with each of your children. No need to worry, it is very low maintenance. We are also talking about the color blue and stars. Next week we will move on to our unit on winter and how to dress for the weather. With that theme in mind, please remember to send your children with appropriate clothing for the weather. We love to go outside, even when it snows. As always, we thank you for sharing your children with us.

Lunch Bunch:

Lunch Bunch has been enjoying the beginning of the winter season. We have been making snow scene pictures, painting with ice, making experiments and playing fun games in the classrooms such as twister and having balloon races. For the rest of January we plan on doing more cold weather themed experiments, projects and games. Please remember to label all of your children's items. We love layers this time of year, but they often are shed during the afternoon as the children come inside from the playground. We highly recommend putting your child's name in anything that you want to make sure returns to your home. It helps the the Lunch Bunch staff find owners of clothing that is left behind or misplaced by the children. We go outside when there is snow on the ground so please keep the weather in mind when packing your child's bag. Thank you for sending your children to Lunch Bunch we are looking forward to the next few weeks we get to spend with them.

Mrs. Blair's Art:

It's been snowing in the art room! Our artists have been discovering all there is to know about winter and snowflakes. We read "No Two Alike" by Keith Baker and "The Snowflake, Winter's Frozen Artistry" by Kenneth Libbrecht and Rachel Wing. We discovered that snowflakes have 6 six sides and that no two are ever the same. We all created, decorated or drew our own snowflakes. Our youngest artists also worked on their process art winter collages and our older artists followed the directed drawing technique and learned how to draw a polar bear using oil pastel. They should be coming your way this week!

Mrs. Craig's Gym:

The children and I love using our colorful parachute for gym play. It is a wonderful tool for cooperative activities. We all have to work together to keep the parachute up, to give our friends waves and bubbles to stomp, and take our friends for a ride while we all move along in the same direction. All of the children enjoy this non-competitive play. It offers opportunities for turn taking, sharing, and listening to directions, as well as helping to strengthen the upper body. The vibrant colors of the parachute and your children's happy cheers brighten even the most gray of January days!

Miss B's Music:

In this winter month of January, my students have been creatively dancing to the songs of the Nutcracker! We are moving with white streamers to the Dance of the Snowflakes as well as ice skating to the Waltz of the Flowers! Lots of fun and giggles and exercise! They also are using various percussion instruments to some of the music like the Russian Dance and the K/P1 are beginning to read some rhythm notes.

Mrs. Craig's Science:

As we continue to work our way through the alphabet in Pre-K science, we have explored leaves-their functions and structure, and this week had fun with magnets. We made snakes that we could "charm" with magnetic wands.
Kindergarten is enjoying a Simple Machines unit. Last week we made pulley toys, this week we made lever and fulcrum seesaws, and we will finish with the wheel and axle by building magnetic cars.Pre-first started their Physics Unit. So far we have explored gravity, magnets, and sound. The children all love our noisy "chicken in a cup" experiment! Next week we will investigate static electricity and light.

Mrs. Smith's Values:

Empathy is the ability to identify with and feel for another person.Here are a few things you can do to help your child show empathy towards others:
Talk about feelings
Share kind deeds
Capture caring moments
Make kindnesses matter
Model empathy

We read The Big Umbrella together. Remember there is always room for EVERYONE under the umbrella.

Senora Poe's Spanish:

This winter we have enjoyed singing this winter song. They can sing it for you!

Nieve, nieve

Copo de nieve

Cae en mi cabeza, nariz, mano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJZV6333Ww

Mrs. Knott's World Cultures:

With the holidays and Friday afternoon closings, we have been on a staycation! Please check our next newsletter for updates on our travels.

Office Updates

Student Contracts

Student contracts were mailed home on January 11th. The signed contract and enrollment deposits for the 2019-2020 school year are due February 8th . If you do not plan to re-enroll your child and have received a contract, please notify the office. We maintain an active waiting list of families who are eager to hear about enrollment opportunities. If you have any questions, please contact Mary Knott or Katie Poe.

SAVE THE DATE

Line up your babysitters now for our Spring Auction and Social on Friday, April 12th!

School Video

Each electronic newsletter features a new school video which can be found in the Quicklinks section. Please take the time to watch it with your children. They will love to see pictures of themselves and their friends.

UPCOMING CALENDAR EVENTS:

Monday, January 21- NO SCHOOL - MLK Jr. Day

Tuesday, January 22- 2 Day 2s conferences- school in session for the 2s!

F riday,February 1 9:00 am- Donuts at the Day School

Program Highlights:

Bingo Bonanza

Thank you to all the parents and friends who supported our Bingo Bonanza! We had a fabulous time and are so grateful to Megan Nee and Margee Sullivan for planning such a fun event, bringing our community together while also raising funds for our school and program.

Welcome PDS Faculty Babies

We are excited to welcome Clementine Vahedi, born on December 22 and Henry Zuidema, born on January 17!

In This Issue

In preschool we recognize the privilege, responsibility and joy of educating our youngest students. Alongside their parents, we work diligently at building the foundation for their ongoing and lifelong learning. Be sure to click on the link below found in every issue to see our wonderful students in action. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR SCHOOL VIDEO

"Cheers to the New Year"