February Newsletter
Hello Pre-3 families! We have had a great start to our spring semester! We look forward to another great semester with you and your children! Here are a few updates on our classroom and what we have been up to these last few weeks. We have been busy with several classroom activities and planning upcoming events for children and families.
Music Students
The children were able to experience the music students coming into the classroom to teach us new songs, play a bean bag game to encourage the children to move fast and slow and to read a story. We have not been able to have the students from this department due to covid. It was exciting for them and our children. We look forward to more of these experiences.
Kindergarten Readiness Workshop
The center will be conducting a kindergarten readiness workshop on April 19 from 3:30-4:30 in the large motor room. This will be a great opportunity for you to learn about what to expect and ways to prepare your child for this new adventure. We encourage all our families to attend because the information will be very beneficial and helpful. The children transitioning in the fall will also receive a kindergarten readiness kit that will have activities and materials you can use with your child to help prepare them for the transition.
Social-Emotional Skills
We have continued to work and build on our social-emotional skills. One thing that could use some work has come up over the past few weeks and that is using kind words with ourselves, our classmates, our teachers and family members. We have observed the children at times saying and doing some unkind things to each other and we are trying to work on teaching them the consequences of these actions and words. We are learning that words have the power to hurt each other and our feelings which may cause us to need space, find a new playmate, have a good cry, etc. Please take the time to encourage kindness and kind words with your children by modeling for them.
We also continue to work on ways to interact with each other like answering questions and having conversations with each other, how to enter play, how to problem solve our way through issues that arise in the classroom. With working on our problem-solving skills, we see that our children may have a challenging time getting through a situation where things do not go the way they planned. We may see tantrums, crying, and feelings of anger. Overall, we see the kids get really frustrated during these times and we are trying to find ways that will help them to calm their bodies, so they don’t get to such a heightened state. We will be really utilizing our Solution Kit in the classroom. This offers the children to have a visual of different solutions they can and need to use during a moment of frustration. We have attached a copy of the Solution Kit the classroom and home edition to the bottom so you can have access to it at home. We have also attached a calm down tool to help the children (and you as a parent too) bring themselves down after such big emotions. It has three steps to calm and reconnect with the children at a more relaxed time. We are finding that this technique works with a lot of the children as we recognize that we may need to have some “Space” to calm ourselves before we return to each other. The more we can work together on building these skills with the children, the better off they will be as they will see that we are being consistent with each other!
Introducing the Solution Kit! (challengingbehavior.org)
Solution Kit: Classroom Edition (challengingbehavior.org)
Solution Kit: Home Edition (challengingbehavior.org)
Help Us Stay Calm: Strategies that help you and your child during challenging behavior.
Routines and Expectations
At the beginning of the spring semester, we started a routine visual displayed in our doorway! We compiled a list of all the things we do in the morning into a visual to help the transition of coming into the classroom at the start of our day. We have a similar one for dismissal at the end of the day. The goal of these is to help ease the transition into school and the transition going home at the end of the day so that everyone’s day starts off and ends on a good note. We recognize that transition times are some of the hardest parts of our day for several reasons such as the concept of time, the children not wanting to be done with what they are doing, the children trying to assert themselves and their independence and make their own choices, etc. What is hard is wanting to let them do these things but knowing that is has to be a time to move on or a cut-off time, and a time where they aren’t going to have the opportunity to make a choice, and this is where we see a lot of the challenging behaviors come out. The important thing to do in these cases is to be consistent with our expectations and follow through on them. As a family, create some home expectations and make sure to follow through on them. If the children are not responding, have a logical consequence in place that makes sense to you and your child. We have included some resources at the bottom of this section for reference and things to use at home! Please let us know if you would like to see our classroom expectations to help with creating yours at home. Again, the goal of these things to have consistency between home and school that way our messages are the same!
Positive Solutions for Families: Family Routine Guide (challengingbehavior.org)
Backpack Connection Social Time (challengingbehavior.org)
Sample Rules Poster (challengingbehavior.org)
Teaching Rules at Home (challengingbehavior.org)
Parent Teacher Conferences
Please be on the lookout for a sign-up sheet for Parent Teacher Conferences with us! Kat’s conferences will be on April 18, 2023, from 8:00-4:30. Diane’s conferences will be on April 19, 2023, from 8:00-4:30. We will be sending out forms for you to fill out to help us set up the direction of the conference. It is a quick 3-question questionnaire that helps us a bunch with where we can help you better! Please submit this questionnaire as soon as possible to us so we can be prepared for our conference.
Conclusion
As always, please keep communicating with us as to what has been working for you at home, any questions or concerns you may have, and with anything you need more help with. Navigating this time with the children can be challenging at times and the best way to help is for us to be consistent with our messages to them. Having this consistency between home and school will help the children eliminate any confusion with mixed messages. Thank you for all you do, you are amazing!!!!
