Well…….the sun rose bright and early this morning…..but this Bama girl was sure it wouldn’t! What a game! I know a few of you are happy with the outcome, but I am going to hang on to my grudge and hurt for a few more days…LOL!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving vacation. It was a tough one for me personally, but I am glad I was able to be with my Dad while he recovered. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers! My Dad is recovering well and will have a follow up procedure in December. Hopefully this one will not have any surprises!

Speaking of December…..We have a lot to do in a short time! I am honestly not sure where this semester has gone but here we are, looking at the last 18.5 days of 2017.  Our Santa for a Day letter will be coming home this week. In our class, instead of exchanging gifts or books between the students, Ms. Lee and I have a stocking for each child, labeled with his/her name. We will have a schedule and two students per day will get to play Santa and put their small happy in each stocking. Some ideas for happies are: matchbox cars, notepads, lip gloss, finger puppets, etc. You can find fun things at the Dollar Tree or in any birthday party aisle at any store, usually several to a package. Due to allergies, we ask that no candy be sent. The students love seeing their stockings grow daily! You are welcome to send a bag of girl happies and a bag of boy happies if you wish. You may label them if you’d like “From, Annelise” but we ask that you don’t put “To: Annelise From: Grayson” It makes it harder for the Santas to deliver their happies if they are trying to also match names. A detailed note will explain it all but if you have questions, please let me know!

We’d love to know what YOUR family celebrates! If you have a family celebration you’d like to share with our class we’d love to have you tell us about it! Just send an email and we can get you scheduled! It is so much fun to learn about different customs and cultures!

Yearbook orders and school picture make-up packages are due December 1 (this Friday!) I have children upset every year when they don’t get a yearbook. Our yearbook moms make sure that every child is included in more than one picture and they are just priceless! To order a yearbook, please go to this link BEFORE December 1^st:  https://www.balfour.com

This week we are going to learn about Gingerbread! We will work on decorating a gingerbread house. In math, we will work on identifying colors and shapes and we will make Gingerbread Stew! We will read lots of books by the author Jan Brett and will go on a Gingerbread Hunt! In science, we will make gingerbread playdoh (and I will send the recipe home). We are going to work on our fine motor skills this month with some wrapping boxes and cutting ribbon, magazines and paper. If you have any extra wrapping paper (any holiday/any kind), old family friendly magazines or extra ribbon you would like to donate to our cutting tub we would love to have it! We have several friends who need this fine motor practice and the best way to practice is to have fun! If you’d like to help your little PreKPal at home with scissor skills it is super easy to do. Just take a newspaper and draw some wavy or zig zag lines and give them a pair of child sized scissors and let them cut along the lines. They can also use sales ads or magazines to cut pictures they like and then glue them to construction paper. Practice holding with one hand and cutting smoothly with the other without ripping the paper in half.

Dates:

December 1: Yearbook order deadline & School Picture Make Up ordering deadline

December 4: Begin “Santa for a Day” program. (Please see the letter in the Bear Binder about this program)

December 8: CHOM fieldtrip for The Gingerbread Man 10:45-12 noon. You are welcome to meet us at CHOM or you can ride the bus with us (please let me know if you plan to ride the bus) For this fieldtrip we will eat SNACK from 10-10:15, we will load the buses and go to CHOM, then we will eat LUNCH in the classroom when we return.

December 12: December Family Home Project due “Gingerbread House”

December 20: Half Day for students. School Wide Sing Along and class party day.

Have a wonderful week! Alicia

Gobble Gobble!

This is a big week in PreK! It’s our last week before the week-long Thanksgiving Break! There are lots of fun things happening this week. On Wednesday, we will have our Thanksgiving Feast in the cafeteria. If you are coming, please meet us at 9:45 in the cafeteria. We will sing a song or 2 for you and then anyone who wants to purchase a yummy Thanksgiving lunch can go through the line. Of course, you are welcome to sit with your PreKPal. The good thing about this opportunity is that there isn’t another class in the cafeteria during this time. Just us. So, you will be able to sit where you’d like. We have to have all tables cleaned up and be out of the cafeteria by 10:30 because that is when 3 more grades will come in to eat. Immediately following lunch, we have our music and movement time before PE. You are welcome to come to the room for this fun and LOUD experience. We are short on space but big in enthusiasm with this time on our day. At 11:00 the children go to PE and I get the room ready for naps. You are welcome to come for any part of our day from lunch (9:45-10:30) and music and movement (10:30-11:00).

You will be able to pre-order tickets to the Turkey Bowl (and avoid the LONG lines) from November 13-16 for $2 per ticket. Prices at the gate will be $5 per ticket. If you wish to purchase tickets please put the money in an envelope labeled Turkey Bowl/student name/number of tickets and put it in the clear pocket of the Bear Binder. We will send tickets home in the binders as they are delivered.

Yearbook orders! you will NOT want to miss this one. I have children upset every year when they don’t get a yearbook. Our yearbook moms make sure that every child is included in more than one picture and they are just priceless! To order a yearbook, please go to this link BEFORE December 1^st:  https://www.balfour.com

This week we will work on the letter W. We are working on building our names with Turkey feathers, and making and counting items in a graph by rolling a Thanksgiving cube. In science, we will learn to plant and grow corn the way the Wampanoag Indians taught the Pilgrims. Your PreKPal will bring their corn home before the break. Did your PreKPal tell you that the Wampanoag people did NOT live in tipi’s? Those were used by the Plains Indians when they were hunting. The Wampanoag people lived in round houses called wetus. We are making a wetu in our classroom this week! It should be pretty interesting! Look for pictures in DoJo soon!

Last week we learned about Pilgrim life and the chores the Pilgrim children had. We decided their lives were pretty difficult compared to ours. We made butter in class and tasted it on crackers. Several friends were surprised to learn that they liked it! Our prediction graph for this activity is in the hallway outside #216 if you want to see what your PreKPal thought about the butter before tasting it. We also painted with “turkey feet” (pipe cleaners shaped like turkey feet) after reading the book Animal Tracks. We will continue this activity this week until everyone who wants to paint gets to do so.

Special thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! I’m still not sure how you all coordinated that (or how you even remembered because I didn’t put it on the class calendar!) I appreciate each lovely little card and gift! You are such a blessing to me and your children are all the gift I need each day! Thanks for making my millionth “5^th birthday” (because we all turn 5 in PreK!) a memorable one!

Please remember to send all changes in dismissal in writing! You can email, send a note in the Bear Binder, message on Class DoJo or call the school office and Mrs. Gray will notify us. We load buses at 2:25, and our school policy is no dismissal changes (unless extreme emergency) after 2:15. If you communicate with me and do NOT get a reply, then assume I did not get the message and go ahead and call Mrs. Gray at 205-759-8347. Thanks for helping us get everyone home safely!

Dates!

November 13: Turkey Feather “Home Project” due

November 13: CHOM fieldtrip permission slip due

November 13-16: Pre-order Turkey Bowl tickets

November 15: PreK Thanksgiving Feast 9:45-10:30 RQES cafeteria! Meet us in the cafeteria. We are going to sing a song or two and then have lunch!

November 16: 10th Annual Turkey Bowl Pep Rally and Football game (Rock Quarry 4/5th Graders vs. Verner 4/5th Graders under the lights at Northridge!) All proceeds are split between the 2 PE departments. This will be one of the highlights of the fall and you won’t want to miss it!

November 20-25: Fall Break

December 1: Yearbook order deadline

December 4: Begin “Santa for a Day” program. (Letter coming home soon about this program)

December 8: CHOM fieldtrip for The Gingerbread Man 10:45-12 noon

December 20: Half Day for students. School Wide Sing Along and class party day.

Have a wonderful week! Alicia

It’s Turkey Time PreKPals-

I don’t know about you- but last week nearly did me and Ms. Lee in! LOL! We had a lot of fun though- and hopefully now that we can both breathe somewhat better, we will be a-ok! We were sooooo proud of the behavior of the PreKPals on the field trip! Didn’t you think they did a great job? Ms. Kami at the Barnyard surely did! She said that RQES can have a standing date at the Barnyard for Halloween Day! I am so glad that so many of you got to come and be with our sweet, sweet class!

Our Libby Listens time has been rescheduled to a later date. We will send home another permission slip closer to the new date. If your child still has the permission slip in the Bear Binder, just toss it. A new one will come home.

Speaking of Bear Binders- PLEASE flip through them every day and take out anything that comes home. If it needs signing, please sign and return. All other artwork and memos are yours to keep. This helps us so much if you can do that daily. Also make sure that any money or notes to us go in the zipper pocket of the Binder. We check these daily and lately we’ve had lunch money and changes of dismissal notes in children’s pockets, in random pockets of the backpack and elsewhere. Using the pocket in the Bear Binder helps me and Ms. Lee know exactly who is doing what for lunch, book fair, book orders, dismissal, etc within the first 5 minutes of the day. Thank you so much for helping keep us straight!

There are two opportunities you will want to take advantage of, but they MUST be completed online. They are both optional but I don’t want you to miss this chance. Once it is gone, it is gone. The first is the 10^th Anniversary Turkey Bowl shirt (totally optional). The Turkey Bowl is a big deal as you will soon see, and one will be played every November. To order a shirt, please go to this link asap: www.alabamatshirtfactory.com

The second opportunity is one that you will NOT want to miss. Yearbook orders! I have children upset every year when they don’t get a yearbook. Our yearbook moms make sure that every child is included in more than one picture and they are just priceless! To order a yearbook, please go to this link BEFORE December 1^st:  https://www.balfour.com

We had so much fun with our Stellaluna Day with 5^th grade last week! The PreKPals worked hard with their big kid partners to create and test something that would help their baby bat (Stellaluna) fly 10 feet home. They could use as much tape as they wanted, 2 straws (one bendy and one straight) and 2 strips of paper, both one inch wide (cardstock and regular paper). Don’t be surprised if they begin doing some of these exercises at home! We surely do love to learn in PreK!

Dates!

November 7: 9:50-10:30 PreK Duty Free Lunch (I forgot about this last time and wondered why so many sweet parents were there with us for lunch! Ha!)

November 7: Book Fair in the RQES Library 8:30-9:00. We would appreciate any and all help as the PreKPals shop at their first ever book fair. If you cannot come shop with your child, please send their book fair money in an envelope labeled with their name, Book Fair, and the amount you are sending.

November 7: PTA Meeting We are asking all students to wear red/white/blue to school and to the PTA program that night. PTA/Veteran’s Day Program at 6:00 pm. The Book Fair will also be open before the PTA program.

November 10: No School

November 15: PreK Thanksgiving Feast 9:45-10:30 RQES cafeteria! Meet us in the cafeteria. We are going to sing a song or two and then have lunch!

November 16: 10th Annual Turkey Bowl Pep Rally and Football game (Rock Quarry 4/5th Graders vs. Verner 4/5th Graders under the lights at Northridge! All proceeds are split between the 2 PE departments. This will be one of the highlights of the fall and you won’t want to miss it! Look for shirt and shaker order forms coming home soon.

November 20-25: Fall Break

Have a gobblin’good week! Alicia