Holiday News

 December 21, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

The students are so excited for this week’s holiday. We have been working on many holiday projects and activities. In the classroom ew have read many holiday inspired stories including: Our Eight Nights of Hanukkah by Michael J. Rosen, Christmas Tree by Wendell and Florence Minor, Jingle Bells by Iza Trapani, Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn Buehner, Snowbear’s Christmas Countdown by Theresa Smythe, and The Polar Express by  Chris Van Allsburg. Also, please check your child’s bag on Monday for wrapped up gifts that they have made. 

Last week, Mrs. Grady, the school librarian, visited our class to distribute RIF (Reading is Fundamental) books. Thi is a wonderful program that provides free books to our students to take home. 

We have also finished the introduction to the uppercase alphabet by using the Fundations literacy program. We have shown the students letter names, keywords, and letter sounds. After the break we will review numbers 1-10 by making number books, and then we will start practicing uppercase letter formation. 

On Monday, you will be receiving your child’s TS Gold Report card which will describe your child’s progress and development in PreK. Please let me know if you have any questions. 

We will still be having pajama day at PreK on Tuesday, December 22nd, even though the K-5 classes will be wearing school spirit colors (red, white and blue).  We will be doing some activities based on the Polar Express story, in which children take a magic train at night to see Santa while wearing their pajamas. Your child may wear pj’s to school that day. Your child will still need to wear shoes and bring snow gear for outdoor play. If your child doesn’t want to wear pajamas to school, he or she can wear regular play clothes. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Ms. Taylor

IMPORTANT DATES

12/23/20-1/3/21 Holiday Break

1/4/21 Return to school

1/14 & 1/15/21 NO SCHOOL: Teacher In-Service

1/18/21 NO SCHOOL: MLK Holiday

December News

 December 10, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

Before Thanksgiving, we were learning about the holiday in the classroom. We had discussions about being thankful for many things in our lives, especially our  needs of having a home, food, a family, friends, and toys. The students reflected on what was the most important to them personally. It was also fun to have a special Thanksgiving meal together on November 24th. 

We have been very busy since returning from the Thanksgiving break. We have been reading many stories about the gingerbread man. The students have been so excited to read these stories and compare and contrast them. We have read The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth, The Gingerbread Man by Karen Schmidt, Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett, The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett, Gingerbread Mouse by Katy Bratun, Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst, and The Gingerbread Pop-Up Book by Scholastic. We will also make our own book about making a gingerbread man who runs away from the PreK students. 

It has been getting colder outside. Even though there isn’t snow, many children feel warmer when they are wearing snow pants and boots out to play at recess time. Also, feel free to let your child keep a pair of indoor shoes at school during snow boot season. Each child has their own cubby to keep items in. Children that have smaller backpacks might want to have another bag (such as a reusable shopping bag) to carry snow gear to and from school. 

We will be having pajama day at PreK on Tuesday, December 22nd. Your child may wear pj’s to school that day. Your child will still need to wear shoes and bring snow gear for outdoor play. If your child doesn’t want to wear pajamas to school, he or she can wear regular play clothes. 

Please log into Scholastic Book Clubs  if you would like to place a book order. I will send the order out tomorrow. 

In case of a snow delay, you will recieve an automated call from the Superintendent's Office. The message may say that there is no morning PreK, since the other elementary schools still have half day programs. If we do have a delay, PreK would start at the same time as the elementary classes do. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Miss Taylor

IMPORTANT DATES

12/18 No PreK ECP In-Service

12/22 Pajama Day in PreK 

12/23 to 1/3 Holiday Break

Thanksgiving Newsletter

 November 21, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

Last week, the whole school practiced doing a LOCKDOWN drill. We practice these throughout the school year with the Hartford Police Department to prepare for emergency situations. During a drill we shut and lock our classroom door, pull the window shades and turn off the lights and sit quietly in our classroom until the drill is over (usually less than 10  minutes). The students all did a great job practicing. Please let us know if you have any questions. 

Last month, the class enjoyed learning about pumpkins and Halloween. We did many art projects, and we learned the song Five Little Pumpkins. We read books such as: Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, It’s Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall, Spookly the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano, Go Away, Big, Green Monster by Ed Emberly, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat by Lucille Colandro, and Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. The students really enjoy hearing stories and we usually discuss our favorite parts of the story. If you do not have copies of these stories, you can often find read alouds on well known children’s books on YouTube. 

Earlier this month, we learned about farms. We did art projects about several different farm animals, painted and made paper barns, and did a class project on Mrs. Whishy Washy based on the book Mrs. Whishy Washy's Farm by Joy Cowley.  We made a graph about our favorite farm animals and discussed that we get our food from farms.  The class had fun learning nursery rhymes about farms such as, BINGO, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Old MacDonald Had a Farm. We also read many books about farms, including: Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise, Inside a Barn in the Country by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Click, Clack Moo, Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. 

Currently, we have been learning about the Thanksgiving holiday. We have read many books so far, such as I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson, This is the Turkey by Abby Levine, and Thank You, Thanksgiving by David Milgrim. Your child can retell the story of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie with his or her story kit in a paper bag. This coming week is a special time at WRS, it’s the week of the Feast. In a normal year, the whole school has a Thanksgiving dinner together in the gym served family style. It is a memorable event for everyone at school. This year we will still have the Feast, but we will be eating in our classrooms instead. If you are able to, please contribute a jar of applesauce towards the Have Foodshelf.  

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Miss Taylor

IMPORTANT DATES

11/25-11/27 NO SCHOOL for Thanksgiving

12/18 NO PreK - ECP In-Service

12/22 PreK Pajama Day

12/23-1/3 NO SCHOOL Holiday Break

 November 1, 2020

We hope that you enjoyed a safe and fun Halloween this year. The children were all very excited about their costumes. We have been hearing about them all week at school. 

The class loved exploring our playground when we did our unit on fall and leaves. We did a nature walk around our playground and the students each found items for their nature collections. They examined their collections with magnifying glasses and created leaf collages after we read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. We also made leaf rubbings, created colorful leaves with watercolors, wrote in our journals, looked at leaf symmetry and matched like leaves. Our class loves to listen to stories and they enjoyed The Leaves Are Falling One by One by Steve Metzger, We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger, and There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves  by Lucille Colandro. 

We will meet for PTC on Monday and Tuesday 11/2 and 11/3. During the meeting we will discuss what our typical day is like and also review your child’s progress and development. In HSD, all of our PreK Programs use Teaching Strategies Gold (TS Gold) to track individual student development and progress in the following areas: social/emotional, physical, language, cognitive, literacy, mathematics, science and technology, social studies, and the arts. 

On Monday, I will send your child’s progress report on Social/Emotional Development from TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold) for you to review. We will discuss some of these points during our virtual meeting. You will receive a full report at the end of December. 

At school, we have been working to help students develop independence. Some age appropriate things that your child can do at home include all dressing tasks (including snow gear), putting items in their backpacks, zipping their backpacks, bringing dishes to the counter, putting garbage in the trash can, and opening snacks. We will be sending home a winter gear task strip that you can post near your door. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Miss Taylor

 October 19, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

We have finished our learning unit on apples. We learned about the apple life cycle. The students really enjoyed this video about how an apple grows. We also took a virtual field trip  to an apple orchard with Miss Caitie. We did many art projects and read lots of books about apples. Some favorites were Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins and Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss. 

Ten Red Apples, by Dr. Seuss , projects hanging in the hallway and apple stamping artwork on our back wall.. 

This week, we have started learning about pumpkins. We will be doing some craft projects, some science activities, learning about shapes, and reading stories about pumpkins.  

We have also started introducing the upper case letters to the class. We spend about 5 minutes on these activities 3 days a week. We use a language program from Fundations, which is used in the early grades in our district. This fall, and into the winter, we will learn all of the upper case letter names, keywords, and sounds. In the second half of the year, we will start to learn how to write the uppercase letters. 

This week, we will begin using Second Step in the classroom. This is a program that helps with social emotional learning. Afain, this is a program that is used throughout our building, so the students will be familiar with this after they leave PreK. 

Parent teacher conferences are coming up on November 2nd and 3rd. On those days, we will be making times to meet with families virtually to discuss individual student progress and development. We will have an early dismissal at noon on Monday the 2nd to start PTC’s in the afternoon. Three will be NO SCHOOL on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd for PTC meetings. Later this week, you will receive an email to note your time preferences. 

You will also be getting a message from me on SeeSaw which is an on-line learning platform that the school district has an account with. If you have an older child, you may be familiar with it. The email will lead you through the steps to set up a parent account so that you may see your child’s work at school and it will be another way for us to communicate. Please let me know if you have any questions. I will try my best to answer them! I am new to using SeeSaw as a teacher. 

Our class has an account with Scholastic Book Clubs. Scholastic Book orders are due Monday, Oct. 26th. If you would like to order books, please make an order on-line, and then the books will be delivered to school. You may also order books online. Our class code is K3677. 

Thank you, 

Ms. Zayas & Miss Taylor

IMPORTANT DATES

11/2 Early dismissal at NOON for PTC

11/3 NO SCHOOL for PTC

11/11 NO SCHOOL for Veteran’s Day

11/20 NO PreK ECP In-Service

11/25-11/27 NO SCHOOL for Thanksgiving

 September 27, 2020

Hello PreK Families, 

We are now entering the 4th week of school and our students have learned so many school routines. Our classroom schedule is the same every day. We have a picture schedule posted for the students to refer to throughout the day. As you know we start off with 30 minutes on the playground. Families are doing such a great job at drop off, sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye, but know that all of your children enjoy the playground time and are having fun with their classmates.  

Then we enter the classroom and use the bathroom and prepare for snack. After snack, students can do puzzles or read books until we have our first circle time. At the morning circle we review the schedule, look at the calendar, count the kids and review the lesson/project of the day. After the project is completed centers are open. Each day we have a different shelf and large play activity area open. We clean all materials that are used daily and sanitize areas that are used each day when the students leave. We have 3 main activity shelves that we rotate through every 3 days, that contain an assortment of activities, such as magnatiles, people, animals, blocks, legos, games, and puzzles. We also have 3 sets of books that we rotate for the students to read throughout the week. We have also introduced individual watercolor paints, playdough, small chalkboards, and individual pencil boxes into daily use.  After centers, we meet for the second circle, where we sing songs or do literacy activities. Then we use the bathroom again and have lunch. We are practicing good manners at meal times, such as sitting in our chairs, raising hands to ask for help and asking to be excused from lunch. After lunch it's story time, followed by yoga, math materials, bathroom and our second recess.    

The Prek Class started practicing Yoga at circle time several years ago. We will continue this activity. Yoga and mindfulness have been shown to produce positive changes in the brain in people.  There have been changes in self-awareness, communication, and overall self-regulation after beginning regular yoga practice.  Implementing a yoga practice in the classroom will help the students to pay more attention, regulate their emotions, get physical exercise and have fun. I aim to incorporate a few minutes of yoga practice into circle time.

We have finished our All About Me books, and the students have brought them home. This week we started a unit about apples and how they grow. 

If your child will be absent from school, please call the office to let us know, the number is 295-8650. Otherwise, the school secretary will give you a call to see why your child is not at school. 

This week, the school nurse, Mrs. Hutchings will be doing vision screenings. She will let you know if she finds any issues with your child's vision. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Ms. Leavitt

March News

February 28, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

We hope that you all had a restful and healthy winter break. We have jumped back into our PreK
routines here at school. 

This week we have the Upper Valley Smiles Program visiting. Some students saw the dental hygienist
team for a tooth check-up. Students who saw the team went home with a goodie bag and a report
from the hygienist. We also had a dental hygienist visit the classroom to talk with the students about
eating healthy foods and how to take care of our teeth. Our students knew so much about eating
healthy snacks and that we need to brush our teeth two times every day. Please ask your child what
he or she remembers from Miss Rebecca’s lesson. 

Currently, we are working on an author study unit about Dr. Seuss. We will be reading any of his well
known books, including The Many Colored Days, The Cat in the Hat, Bartholomew and the Oobleck,
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, The Lorax, and Green Eggs and Ham. This has also been a
time to practice rhyming songs and games. We even made Oobleck in the classroom this week. It
was very slimy.  (Oobleck recipe).  We will also do some more craft projects and we will celebrate
Dr. Seuss next week. On any day, next week, your child may bring in his or her favorite Dr.
Seuss book from home. Please make sure to label your child’s book with his/her name. 

Also, on Monday, our school will be participating in Global School Play Day. Our PreK program is
play-based, and we will have a regular morning schedule. Your child may bring in a toy to play with
during the morning on Monday. The toy must be hand-held sized and should not be electronic.We will
share about the toys at circle time.  

Our class has continued to practice yoga on a regular basis, at about 4 days per week. Once a week,
we do yoga from the Cosmic Yoga webpage on YouTube for Schools. The students already learned
the yoga poses in our classroom sessions and are now able to follow along with the on-line yoga
classes. We usually do a 5 minute yoga class from Cosmic Yoga. This might be a fun activity to do
at home on a rainy day. 

Next month, we will have Parent Teacher Conferences on March 19th and 20th. We will put out a
sign-up sheet soon. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Mrs. Paronto

IMPORTANT DATES

3/3 NO SCHOOL Teacher In-Service

3/19 & 3/20 No PreK: Parent Teacher Conferences

4/13-4/17 NO SCHOOL Spring Break

February News

February 11, 2020

Dear PreK Families,

It seems like we got all of our winter weather this past weekend. The students have been enjoying playing on the fresh snow on the playground. 

We have finished our units on animals in winter and snow. The students enjoyed our projects about animals and how some migrate, some hibernate or become dormant, and some stay active. We read several books including Owl Moon by Jane Yolen,  The Mitten,  Annie and the Wild Animals, and The Snowy Nap by Jan Brett, and The Mitten by Alvin Tressalt. Maybe we will be able to find some animal tracks on  the playground now that we have some snow. 

We also did some learning activities about snow. We read books on how snow forms in the clouds and some fiction stories as well. We read The Little Snowflake by Steve Metzger, Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, Snow Day by Lynn Plourde, All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle, and The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler. The students got to use snow in the sensory table and we did a science experiment to grow crystals in the classroom using water and Borax. Your child will bring home his/her snowflake before the vacation. 

We have finished the introduction to writing the numbers 1 to 10, so you should see that work coming home. If your child wants to practice writing numbers at home, please remind him or her to start writing from the top. In the classroom, we have also been using our math hands a lot. Math hands are using your fingers to count, we count and show how many up to 10. 

This week we will begin writing the uppercase letters of the alphabet. We will not be going in alphabetical order, but by the way that the letters are formed. 

Later this week, the WRS Drama Club will be performing their first show, “The Jungle Book,” on Thursday, February 13th. There will be a dress rehearsal in the afternoon at 1:45 pm. PreK students and their parent/caregiver are welcome to attend the dress rehearsal. The show is only about 30 minutes long and will be over just before the afternoon pick-up time. The performance is in the gym. 

We will celebrate Valentine’s Day in the classroom by giving each other cards. There are 10 children in the classroom. Please send your child in with Valentine cards on Friday. We will also have a shared snack that day. 

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Mrs. Paronto

IMPORTANT DATES

2/13 Jungle Book Performance at 1:45

2/14 Valentine’s Day Party (card exchange and shared snack)

2/17 to 2/21 No School:  February Break

3/3 No School: Teacher In-Service

3/19 & 3/20 No PreK: PTC days

January 202 News

January 17, 2020

Dear PreK Families, 

Since we resumed school, we have been working on projects about animals in winter and next, we
will be working on projects about winter. Next Friday, on Jan. 24, your child may bring in a stuffed
animal to class for the day. It should be hand hald sized and a stuffy that is a real type of animal:
such as a bear, rabbit, bird, fish, etc. We will be doing aporject about what the animals do in winter:
stay active, hibernate or become dormant, or migrate.

Please remember to send in your child with full snow gear every day. We have some items to borrow
for children who forget something at home, but we do not have enough for everyone. 

In December, we had a lot of fun during our unit on gingerbread and holidays. We read several
gingerbread stories and voted on our favorite. The highlight of our unit was baking a gingerbread man.
Except that he was naughty and hopped out of the oven and ran away. We had to search for him, and
we found him in the office. The best part was eating him for a snack! This month, we are making a
class book about our gingerbread man adventure. 

We have finished with our introduction to the uppercase alphabet. Soon, we will be learning how to
write the uppercase letters. Your child also recently brought home a book of counting (either 1 to 6
or 1 to 10). We will also be introducing the students to writing numbers 0 to 10. An easy way to reinforce
this learning at home is to point out letter and numbers to your child when you are in your home or out
doing errands. 

The students have been enjoying Spanish class very much. The class sings many songs with
Maestra at each class. In the classroom, we have also practiced counting to ten, naming the colors,
and learning the Spanish alphabet. Here are some links to songs that we sing together in class. It
would be great to have your child practice the songs over the school break. 

¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?

¿Cómo te llamas? What's your name?

La lechuza

Tiburón bebé (Baby Shark)

Santa Tiburón (Santa Shark)

Thank you, 

Mrs. Zayas & Mrs. Paronto

IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, January 17th No PreK EEE In-Service

Monday, January 20th NO SCHOOL MLK Day

Tuesday, January 21st NO SCHOOL Teacher In-Service