Hello and welcome to the new semester!
We have been getting to know the children each on an individual level. Learning their interests and in what areas they excel so we can extend their learning while they are doing activities they enjoy.
Our entire group loves music and books. Especially ones that are put into songs! Favorites at the moment are “The Soup Opera”, “There’s a spider on the floor” and “Pete the cats new shoes.” These songs help the children learn rhyming, alliteration, letter recognition, as well as develop motor skills such as traveling and balance as they dance around to the music. Books are a very important part of our curriculum.
We are working on fine motor, classifying and color names. We brought in a large pumpkin and had the children use plastic hammers to pound golf tees into the pumpkin- this also helps with extra energy, pounding is an excellent release! We have colored peg boards with matching colors for the children to group same colored pegs with corresponding boards. 
With the pumpkin we also cut it open and explored the inside. We used words gooey, slimy, cold, yucky, and bumpy to describe how the inside looked and felt. This was a great science experiment. We learned that the seeds inside a pumpkin can be planted and grow new pumpkins and they can also be cooked and eaten!
The children love all kinds of art. painting, gluing, and drawing. We also offer a variety of sensory activities such as water, cocoa shells, and pea gravel. Again this helps with fine motor as well as early math with pouring scooping filling different sized containers.
The sandbox is the favorite on both playgrounds! The children love it! They sit and dig, filling containers and they are learning that wet sand can make cool sand molds. They make roads for trucks and we play games by hiding items in the sand and the children take turns to find them.
We have a great group of children! We are beginning to learn social skills and using words to talk with our friends and we are also in the early stages of sharing and taking turns. This is a concept that can be hard but with many opportunities and encouragement, we are confident that this will become much easier.
Please remember that we play outside daily. Provide jackets when needed and make sure your child has the appropriate extra clothes in their bins.
Parent/Teacher conferences will be coming up so be looking for information on when to sign up with your child’s primary teacher.
Thank you for allowing us to be part of your child’s development.
April and Veronica
