Hello PreKPals!

Happy to be back with a blog post after taking a little break last week! We hope you enjoyed your President’s Day holiday! Ms. Lee and I worked in the classroom, getting things ready for Spring! We changed the Sweet Shop in Home Living to a Dentist Office and the PreKPals have had a lot of fun with this study! We even have a light box and real dental x-rays, a new dentist chair and masks for each dentist to wear while playing. We will continue in Social Studies with more Community Helpers this week.

We will be working on the letter Zz and on rhyming words! Rhyming words sound the same at the end of the words. Read some books with your child and look for the rhyming words in the text. Sing some nursery rhymes or silly songs like “Down By the Bay” and find the rhyming words. Our author study will be Dr. Seuss! Dr. Seuss made up his own silly rhyming words! We will have a fun dress up day each day this week as we focus on a different Dr. Seuss book daily (see the list below). In math, we are working on matching numbers to sets of items and in counting with one to one correspondence (touching each item as you count). We have learned that we need to count in an organized fashion and are working on ways to make sure we count each item only one time. We are also going to work on counting with tally marks!

On Friday, RQES will celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday with a pajama day! Wear your PJ’s (and your tennis shoes) and we will have a read in while enjoying all of our favorite books. We will also get to see Libby, the super soft, super gentle, golden retriever from Libby Listens on Friday! Her ‘mom” is retired RQES teacher, Mary Calhoun. Please sign and return the permission slip in the Bear Binder for Libby Listens.

In exciting news, Ms. Lee and Mr. Tony got married on Saturday! The new Mr. and Mrs. Minifield will be taking their honeymoon during Spring Break. The PreKPals were all excited about this wedding! Thanks to all of you who helped us celebrate the new couple at our Valentine’s Day surprise party! We have such a sweet class and such generous and thoughtful parents.

Important Dates:

February 26: Please sign and return the Libby Listens permission slip and the green cover page for the health forms found in the Bear Binder. Also look for the birthday party invitation from Ava that was sent home last week. Some families haven’t seen the invite yet and I don’t want anyone to miss the fun party.

Now-March 9: PreK applications available for 2018-19 in the RQES school office. See Mrs. Anne Gray for applications. Please share and spread the word!

March 11-18: Spring Break

March 30: Spring Egg Hunt (Info coming later, but only toy or sticker filled eggs will be allowed due to the Health Policy)

April 6: CHOM on Wheels comes to RQES for “All About Bugs”

Have an amazing week! Alicia

Hey PreKPals!

This week we will finish up our friendship study and move into learning about dental health. Our Valentine party will be on Wednesday afternoon, and all treats are provided. We are all going to wear pink or red to stand against bullying. We will have our snack and open our Valentine bags. Check the Class Dojo for a special message about our special event on Valentine’s Day.

We’ve had a lot of fun with our Sweet Shop Bakery and are looking forward to turning our Home Living center into other fun things in the coming weeks!

This week in literacy, we will be working on the letter V. Everyone is doing a great job reading their own and their friends names. We are also learning about beginning sounds in words. We will get our new journals this week! This class loves to write!! We will continue working on patterns in math and will identify numbers 0-10 and match numbers to correct sets of objects. Everyday we work on signing in and writing our names with correct letters (uppercase for the initial letter and lowercase for all other letters).

Important Dates:

Now-March 9: PreK applications available for 2018-19 in the RQES school office. See Mrs. Anne Gray for applications. Please share and spread the word!

Now-February 16: Group Picture money due! These are so so cute! They are $8 and you will get the photo when you send in the money. We will be making another group photo snapshot soon, so we will have one with our new friend Andrew in it and we will make sure both get in the yearbook. The group photo is posted on our January photo timeline outside the door if you want to sneak a peek.

Now-February 13 : Cupid for a Day! Please make sure to send 18 treats total. We have 9 girls and 9 boys. Make sure you send one for your child also! This program works just like Santa for a Day. On the student’s assigned day, he/she will bring his/her Valentine’s goodies and cards. As is the nature of Valentine’s Day, you may send candy treats or cards with candy treats. Just make sure none of them contain tree nuts or peanuts as we have an allergy in our class. The following note came home in the binder last week.

This program will work just like the Santa for a Day that we did in December. On your child’s assigned day, please send their Valentine cards and goodies. You may send cards, candy or other Valentine treats. To make it easier for delivery, please only write From: Your Child’s Name and leave the “To” portion blank.  Due to an allergy in our class, please do NOT send items containing peanuts or tree nuts. Thank you!

Please let us know if you have any questions! We are excited about celebrating our PreKPals friendships in #216!

February 14: Valentine’s Day Party (Wear red or pink)

February 16: Last day for group picture money!

February 19: President’s Day – NO SCHOOL for students

February 20: School Day! (this is no longer a vacation day)

Have a great week! Alicia

Hey PreKPals!

We finally have our whole class back from all of the illness! We are so glad. We will finish some science experiments that we “saved” so the whole class could participate and we hope that we will get to do our Music & Movement this week as well. (The big kids have been testing next door to us all last week – and our only job was to be quiet in the halls and in class. We are all missing our Music & Movement time.) This week we will explore friendships as our social studies topic. We will turn our Home Living center into a “bakery” with cookies, candy, donuts and other sweets that we will create in our art center. We will practice letter writing in “baking pans” with sand and sprinkles and will have some new stickers and stamps to go along with our Valentine writing paper in the writing center. We will feature books about friendship in our Book Nook and will make a new class book this week as well. We will be busy in #216 this week.

Thursday’s have become our Trike Days at recess and the PreKPals are doing a terrific job sharing and taking turns. Last week, Mrs. Suttles and her 5^th graders shared their crickets with us and we had a great time holding them, catching them, and observing them with magnifying glasses. We even learned how to tell boy crickets from girl crickets!

In other exciting news- we will now go to the library for story time, every other week, just like Kindergarten and First Graders. Books may be kept for 2 weeks, but may also be traded in once they have been read and the PreKPal is finished with the book. We will start by taking small groups daily to switch out their books and once we are sure everyone knows the procedures, the PreKPals can take the library passes and go with a buddy to return and check out new books. We are on the downhill slide to Kindergarten and are learning to be more independent every day!

Important Dates:

Now-March 9: PreK applications available for 2018-19 in the RQES school office. See Mrs. Anne Gray for applications. Please share and spread the word!

Now-February 16: Group Picture money due! These are so so cute! They are $8 and you will get the photo when you send in the money. We will be making another group photo snapshot soon, so we will have one with our new friend Andrew in it and we will make sure both get in the yearbook. The group photo is posted on our January photo timeline outside the door if you want to sneak a peek.

Now-February 13 : Cupid for a Day! This program works just like Santa for a Day. On the student’s assigned day, he/she will bring his/her Valentine’s goodies and cards. As is the nature of Valentine’s Day, you may send candy treats or cards with candy treats. Just make sure none of them contain tree nuts or peanuts as we have an allergy in our class. The following note came home in the binder on Friday.

It’s time for our Cupid for a Day! This program will work just like the Santa for a Day that we did in December. On your child’s assigned day, please send their Valentine cards and goodies. You may send cards, candy or other Valentine treats. To make it easier for delivery, please only write From: Your Child’s Name and leave the “To” portion blank.  Due to an allergy in our class, please do NOT send items containing peanuts or tree nuts. Thank you!

Please let us know if you have any questions! We are excited about celebrating our PreKPals friendships in #216!

February 14: Valentine’s Day Party (Check the Bear Binder for a note!)

February 16: Last day for group picture money!

February 19: President’s Day – NO SCHOOL for students

February 20: It is my understanding that this is no longer a vacation day and that it is an actual school day to make up for the first weather day that was used. The Governor didn’t declare it a state of emergency – so that day will need to be made up.

February 23: Lullaby Concert at The UofA @ 5:15 pm.  https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=lullaby%20concert

Have a great week! Alicia