October Randomness!

Just a quick note.  I want to thank everyone for coming to our open house.  I know it is often difficult to take time off of work to attend events such as these.  I am thrilled with the turnout that we had.  I hope you enjoyed being able to experience a small portion of how your child learns on a daily basis.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about what we do please do not hesitate to share.  I love hearing from you all.  It was great getting to spend time with each one of you for more than the quick drop off and pick up.  I also know the children really loved having the opportunity to share the morning with you and work on a project!

As you know, today we went to the fire station.  We met two firefighters who gave us a tour of the fire station.  They showed us all the fire trucks, demonstrated what they do, how they get dressed and what to do in a fire. The children were so well behaved.  I am so proud of them!  I just posted some pictures from today on Shutterfly.  When you have the chance, please take a moment and have a look!  Patrizia and I also have been posting pictures from a few group projects that we have been collaborating on.  =)

Have a good weekend.

Jeanette

Apple Week

This week the children will learn all about apples.  On Friday, Miss Patrizia and I will combine the three and four year old classes for a day of apple activities.  We have a lot of fantastic activities planned for the students.  We are very excited about this event!

Today I taught the children the lyrics to our apple song.  We practiced a few times today.  One student was caught singing it on the way back from the bathroom! (Too cute!!!)

Apple 

(Sung to the tune of Bingo)

I know a fruit that grows on trees,

An apple is it's name, oh!

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

An apple is it's name, oh!

In Summer and in early Fall

It's time to pick and apple.

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

An apple is it's name, oh!

It may be sweet or may be tart,

It's red, or green, or yellow.

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

An apple is it's name, oh!

Make applesauce or apple juice

Or apple pie with apples!

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

A-P-P-L-E

An apple is it's name, oh!

Show and Tell

I just wanted to remind you all that every Friday we will have Show and Tell.  The items selected should reflect the theme of the week, unless otherwise noted.  I will do my best to send home Show and Tell reminder notices to help you with this.  If I should forget, you can always come to the blog and click on the calendar to see what the theme for the week is.

Here are some guidelines:

• Items should reflect the theme of the week
• Unless otherwise noted, please only send in one item
• Items should be small enough to fit in your child's backpack
• Items should not be of extreme value that would be problematic if they become misplaced or accidentally broken (I will do everything in my power to ensure this does not happen.)
• Items should not be made of extremely fragile materials such as glass
• Items should be ones that your child selects with your assistance or guidance 
• Items may include toys, books, pictures, music, puzzles, trinkets etc... 

Be creative and have fun with the selection.  This is meant to be an experience that is enjoyable and exciting for your child!

 

During Show and Tell time, your child will be asked to sit on the bench in front of the class with his/her item.  He/she will then describe the item to the best of his/her ability to the class.  I will assist your child, as necessary, in describing the item to his/her peers.  This will be done by asking various questions and providing choices. Some questions I may ask are; What did you bring today?, Where did you get it?, Who gave it to you?, What does your (item) do?, Why did you bring it in?, Why is this item important to you?  Additional questions will be asked as they arise naturally during conversation with your child. If you are able to, it would be extremely helpful if you reviewed some of the questions that may be more difficult for your child to answer prior to Show and Tell.

Thank you for all of your support and cooperation. 

Jeanette

 

Get Set For School is here!

I have some very exciting news, our Get Set For School books and Handwriting Without Tears supplies have arrived!

Our supplies include:

• Magic C Puppet 
• Get Set For School Sing Along CD
• Capital Letters Wood Pieces Set
• Pre-K Color Wall Cards

We will begin this program next week. I am very excited to get started. I think the children will love it!

Wooden pieces are used to help the children
explore and construct letters.

Magic C Puppet helps to
teach how to form the letters.

Color Wall Cards give a great visual
and are utilized to help teach.

If you would like to read the bucket filler books and cannot find them in your library, please ask me about borrowing my books.  I do not mind loaning them out as long as we are not using them and that you promise to return them to me in a timely matter!

For more information about bucket filling please visit http://www.bucketfillers101.com/

The First Day of School was a Success!

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to let you know that we had a great first day of school!  Today we spent time getting to know each other.  The children learned what they need to do to be a good listener. (Raise our hand, wait until it is our turn to speak, listen to who is speaking, look at the person speaking, sit like a pretzel, and keep our hands in our lap.)  After that, I read the children The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn.  It is a story about a young raccoon who does not want to go to school because he will miss his mother.  The mother raccoon kissed the palm of his hand.  She told him whenever he begins to feel sad think of the kiss that is always in his hand.  The young raccoon did the same for his mother.  At the end of the story, the children had the opportunity to trace their hands and color them.  I cut out the traced hands and sent them home with a little project for you to do, if you chose to do so!  After our project, I showed the children all of the toys in the classroom and demonstrated how to play with each one.  Each bin is labeled with a picture of the toy as well as the the words.  This is to help the children know what is in each bin, learn that everything has it's own place (very helpful when it is clean up time) and help the children begin to recognize and become familiar with words!  The children then had indoor playtime, lunch, rest or quiet play.

Tomorrow we will begin to learn all about our school rules!

I hope everyone had a day just as wonderful as we did!

Jeanette

Welcome to Miss Jeanette's Class!!!

Welcome to our class blog!

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer and is ready for the new school year.

I am very excited to have the honor of being your child's teacher this year!  I know the beginning of a new school year is always a time filled with anxiety for not only the children but for the parents as well.  To help relieve some of that anxiety, I would like to tell you a bit about myself and how I came to be the four year old teacher of Noah's Ark.

After graduating high school I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life.  I enrolled at Suffolk Community College but hated it.  At that time college was not for me.  I worked full-time in retail for several years before deciding to enter the field of Recreational Therapy.  I worked full-time in that field for approximately 8 years before I came to the realization that even though I loved my job, I did not want to spend the rest of my life doing it.  I made the decision to leave the field and go back to school for teaching.  I took a few classes, on and off, at Suffolk Community College to "get my feet wet" and improve my grades while I worked as a NYS Certified Teacher's Assistant at Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI) in their Young Autism program.  In 2004 I left DDI and began to work as a NYS Certified Teacher's Assistant for Long Island Developmental Consulting (LIDC).  I am currently still employed with them, however I work on a part-time basis.  A few years after beginning to work for LIDC, I was accepted into the Child Study program at Saint Joseph's College.  In January of 2011, I graduated from the Child Study program with a Bachelor of Arts, a minor in art and four New York State teacher certifications. (Early Childhood Education Birth - Grade 2, Early Childhood Education Grades 1-6, Students with Disabilities Birth - Grade 2, and Students with Disabilities Grades 1-6)  Upon graduating, LIDC promoted me from Teacher Assistant to SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher).  In September of 2011, I began my master's program at Saint Joseph's college.  I will graduate with my master's in Infant and Toddler Development and Special Education in May of 2013!  I eagerly anticipate the day I am finished with school. =)

All throughout my school and teaching career my favorite placements had always been with preschoolers.  I decided that is really where my heart is at and where I should be.  In January, I began to send out resumes and eventually landed a teaching position for the four year old classroom at Noah's Ark.  I have a very busy schedule and live a hectic life, however I love every minute of it! So in a nutshell, that is how I arrived to where I am today!

This year, I wanted to try something new.  I set up a class blog in an effort to communicate with all of you on a "fairly" regular basis.  Ideally, I would like to update the blog on a weekly basis, however with my busy schedule I do not know if that is a feasible goal for myself.  Realistically, I will try to update the class blog every two weeks.  Through this blog you will have access to our class calendar, links to child friendly sites, links to Shutterfly and our Scholastic Book site.  I will also include brief summaries of our class happenings, reminders for special events, share cute/funny stories about the class and pretty much anything else I think is newsworthy!  Do not worry, I will not post any pictures of your children on here.  That is what Shutterfly is for!  However, I may post pictures of our classroom, classwork and bulletin boards from time to time.  Hopefully you all will enjoy the class blog and visit it from time to time.  I welcome any feedback and suggestions that you may have!

I look forward to a fun and exciting school year!

Sincerely,

Jeanette