We welcome a new toddler to our classroom, Kane. He will be joining our classroom on November 1. We are excited to have Kane join our classroom family. Kane is filling a spot left open by Alek. Alek has grandparents that are here to take care of him while his Mom and Dad work. We will miss Alek and hope that he will return to the CDFC in the future.
We have observed so much growth and development in our classroom during the month of October. We celebrated two milestones in our classroom at the end of October. The first one was Xorlasi moving to a cot to sleep at nap time. Once the children turn 15 months they move to a cot because they are no longer considered infants and the Back to Sleep guidelines are no longer applicable. Children are invited to bring a blanket and/or a stuffed animal or lovey from home to have on the cot during nap. Zila turned 1 on 10/25 and spent her first birthday here with us. We sang Happy Birthday to Zila at group time, during lunch, and throughout the day. At lunch Zila used the Happy Birthday plate. We will be celebrating more 1st birthdays in November and December.
Language is another area of where we have seen more growth. Language is growing in the areas of both receptive and expressive. We are hearing more verbalizations from all the children. What we are hearing is more babbling, the blending of consonant and vowels. Some of the children are combining those consonant and vowels to form words. In addition to those words the children are saying consistently we are also hearing echoing or parroting. Echoing or parroting is when a child repeats a word spoken by someone else. The child may or may not add the word to his or her list of consistently spoken words. The children are interacting with songs we sing, sometimes speaking a word as we sing or babbling to the tune of the song. The children are using the phones in the dramatic play, putting the phone to their ear and saying “hi”. Along with the verbalizations we are noticing more children using the basic sign language used by the adults in the classroom. One of the ways receptive language has been demonstrated by some of the children, is beginning to follow 1 step directions or questions. For an example: when we ask the children to find a particular item or person in the classroom more children are participating by pointing to the person or item or going to the person or item. The adults in the classroom are using basic sign language with the children and we are seeing some of the children signing to communicate their wants and needs.
On Wednesday, November 2 we will host a Family Night here at the CDFC. The evening will include socialization with other families, eating a pizza dinner, and a make and take activity. The activity for our classroom will be to make a First and Then picture chart for you to use at home. Not all the children are ready to use this chart at home, you will have it once your child is ready to use it. We will talk about routines and why routines are so important for young children. Hope to see you there!
Kellie will have Parent Conferences on December 6. A sign up to schedule your parent conference will be available during the middle of the month. If December 6 doesn’t work in your schedule another day and time can be worked out. For most of you this will be your first parent conference. It is a time to share information about the things your child is doing at home and here at the center.
Reminders:
• Please be sure to have appropriate clothing for the weather. We do go outside when the temperature is above 15 degrees with the wind chill. It is a good idea to have extra set of mittens and an extra hat in case the items get misplaced or wet from the snow. A winter coat, snow pants or a snowsuit, snow boots, hat and mittens are recommended to have here each day as the weather gets colder.
• Please be sure to have extra shirts, pants, and socks here that are weather appropriate.
• Please label the tags of all indoor and outdoor clothing items to help us keep track of everyone’s items.
Have a great month of November!
Kellie and Sarah
