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