Introduction
Greetings 2’s/3’s families! Welcome back and Happy 2024! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and look forward to a great spring semester. It is hard to believe that we are already halfway through the year, time certainly does fly. We want to welcome our new interns: Alyssa, Gianna, and Taylor. Alyssa and Taylor are joining our classroom for the mornings and Gianna is joining us during the afternoons. We also want to welcome our new friend Kaycei to our classroom! Also, as we enter the spring 
semester, we continue our work on helping the children build their skills in several developmental aspects and introduce new skills that they will continue as they get older. We are currently working on a lot of great things and look forward to continuing to build on these skills. We also encourage you at home to try some of these things out and tweak them to what works for your household.
Social Emotional Skills
Building social-emotional skills are so important for all age groups! It allows the children to self-regulate, which will be able to help them perform skills like sharing, taking care of others by checking in on them, being able to transition to the next activity successfully, etc. With this age, they have big feelings and emotions and may not always know how to express their needs, whether it be that they were pushed, they are just feeling sad or bored, something was taken from them, etc. In these moments, we have been working on ways to self-regulate like counting to ten then taking a deep breath, doing some yoga, taking a break, going for a walk, drinking some water and more. When giving a choice on what the child can do to self-regulate always give them two choices to pick as at this point any more than two choices is too much for the children. We also seem to see that when we take time to do something simple like just sitting with the kids and being around them seems to help them bring it down too. Please check out the Pyramid Model resources below to see what kinds of choices you can offer to your children during those moments of big feelings and emotions! We also included an article on creating a calm down area with several materials you can add to it to make it as cozy as possible. Having something like this could be helpful in making it be a designated spot you can sit in with your child to spend time together finding ways to cool down.
https://challengingbehavior.org/docs/Calm-Down_Poster_EN.pdf
https://challengingbehavior.org/document/taking-a-break-using-a-calm-down-area-at-home/
https://challengingbehavior.org/docs/Stay-Calm_Infographic.png
Potty/Toilet training
Children usually start the process of learning to use the bathroom at this age. The biggest thing to remember is following with your child’s cues as to when they are ready and then establishing the routine at home first. This will allow your child to build their confidence in using the bathroom. Start by using a long weekend because during this time, this will allow you will find what works best for your child, such as how often to take them initially, when to start gradually spacing it out, the signs that your child may display before going to the bathroom/having an accident, etc. At the end of the day, we want to work together with you when you feel like your child is ready to start using the bathroom at school. The key to success at school is to make sure they are as comfortable and consistent with it at home before we can bring it here so that we can be as consistent with you as possible. We do not want the children to get mixed messages which could ultimately cause them to not like the bathroom at all. Below are some helpful articles on potty training and tips on signs your child is ready, jobs you can do, jobs the child can do, when to “lay low” for a while if its causing some power struggles-remember, children at this age are recognizing they are in control of themselves and their own bodies, which could mean that they could hold on to their urine or bowel moments longer. This skill is a process!
https://www.zerotothree.org/resource/toilet-learning-steps-to-success/
https://www.zerotothree.org/resource/potty-training-learning-to-the-use-the-toilet/
Art
We try to offer art and/or creative work every day! The children really seem to enjoy finger painting, drawing with different writing tools, droppers, and watercolor paint, and more. Art is a great sensory activity for the children too as it allows them to see and explore with their senses. This week a new art medium was introduced, glue! We put glue inside little containers that have small brushes attached to the lids and they can brush glue onto paper. The children were very excited to try something new and place collage materials onto the glue. This kind of activity helps them to decide how much glue is too much or too little. The children are now starting to share more about what they made. They can be very specific in labeling and naming what they created, so when you see artwork coming home with something in quotes, those were their words describing and naming what their creation. They are always so proud of their work!
Reminders
- We go outside every day weather permitting. Please provide your child with hats, gloves, boots, snow pants and a coat. Also, please make sure each item is labeled with your child’s name so that we can make sure we send them home with the right person.
- Please make sure to grab and take home any artwork that is in your child’s cubby.
- Please be on the lookout for any notes indicating what your child needs for the classroom and please bring the items as soon as you can/are able.
- Thank you for all you do!
