CLASSROOM COLLAGE
The preschool classes had a wonderful time enjoying the holiday season. We learned about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas traditions, and had fun making crafts for these holidays. We also had a visit from the 8th grade band and Santa before break. We also learned about gingerbread men and snowmen, especially our friend Frosty.
This month will be just as action packed as last month. Students will be learning about the weather. Since the weather is changing, and as the cold comes in, so does the warmer clothes. Students are learning those self-help skills to gaining independence with the jackets, zipping, putting on the hats, scarves, and mittens. They will also be learning about snow, hibernation, and doctors. We all know when the cold comes, so does the runny noses, perfect time to teach about doctors and better hygiene.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! We hope that you enjoyed your time off and were able to spend it with family and friends. The children in Mrs. Chranowski’s class, Mr. O’Brien’s class, Miss Rigby’s class,
Mrs. Martin’s class, Miss Lipinski’s class and
Mrs. Otto’s class are off to a great New Year! We are busy learning new sight words and tapping out cvc words (words that begin & end with a consonant with a short vowel in the middle: i.e., cat, cup). Soon we will work on correctly forming upper case letters. In reading, we are working on our Non-Fiction unit. For writing, we are remembering how to make our pieces easier to read by using spaces. We also have been taking previously written pieces and adding more details to the pictures as well as to the story. In math we are
spending more time with teen numbers and will be introduced to the + sign as well as the = sign.
We are all looking forward to January 11 when Rick Charette is scheduled to visit us. Some of our favorite songs include: Mud, Mud, I Love Mud, There’s an Alligator in the Elevator, Yellow Bus, & I’ve Got a Staple in my Sock! Continue at home reading, writing, practicing sight words and counting with your child! Your help definitely makes a difference!!
In January, the Blue Wing, Miss. Bucci, Ms. Dillard Miss Drummond and Mrs. Lamanna learn about winter weather and snow!! We love listening to and singing along with Rick Charette. January also brings the observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We learn about this great man and how he spoke about things being fair and equal for everyone. We continue writing, listening to stories, learning new words and counting toward the 100th Day of school. We are having fun as we learn!!!! We really enjoy bringing books home to read with our families. Reading to and with your child is one of the best activities to help them learn!! Happy New Year EVERYONE!!!! We hope you had a restful Winter Break. Thank you for your continued involvement in your child’s education.
Excitement is increasing as the boys and girls anticipate Rick Charette’s arrival. The children have learned many of Rick’s fun, entertaining songs. They will also be able to watch him on classroom Smart Boards after he has visited us. The children are working very hard learning to read as well as learning to spell words. Students will also be counting to one hundred in their classrooms. Please practice this at home too. In addition, the boys and girls will be studying Artic Animals this month. The children will learn about animals such as polar bears, penguins, and Artic Owls. The month of January also marks the beginning of Olweus lessons. The children will be discussing kindness and helping each other.
LIBRARY LIFE
Happy New Year!
As we get back into the swing of things, Mrs. DeAngelis want to go over a few reminders regarding library.
1. I have placed the book return schedule on my Teacher page. I will keep this up-to-date, so that you will know when books are to be returned.
2. I will send home overdue notices.
3. To avoid loss, damaged or misplaced books, please have the children keep their library book in their backpack. This is especially necessary if your child goes to another school or someone else’s house.
4. Don’t forget about “Tumblebooks”. This is an online collection of animated talking picture books which teach young children the joys of reading in a format they’ll love. It is paid for by the HSC.
www.tumblebooks.com/library
Username: GTECC
Password: books
With regards to instruction, during the month of January, the students will be introduced to what makes a book fiction or non-fiction. I will use the subject “bears”; by reading Bears by JoAnn Early Macken and The Three Bears by Paul Galdone. Once again, the students will be doing a little Reader’s Theatre as they retell Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Remember to read each night to your child. I promise it will be a memory that both you and your child will never forget. I know my own kids still talk about the books we shared before they went to sleep.
THE LITERACY CENTER
Fun Ideas You Can Do At Home for Fine Motor/Letter Formation
Handwriting has many components to it, including fine motor skills, and visual perceptual skills. Children need a lot of practice building their small muscles in their hands and fingers, before they can master handwriting. Fine motor skills and activities involve using the hands and fingers. These activities require the small muscles of the hand to work together to perform precise and refined movements.
Below are some fun activities to build fine motor skills and practice letter formation.
Ø Have your child draw letters or shapes on the wall of the tub with shaving cream
Ø Trace a letter on your child’s back and have them guess and write the letter on a piece of paper
Ø Trace letters in sand – use a shallow box or cookie tray
Ø Form letters out of playdoh
Ø Writer letters on the carpet
Ø Writer letters in the sky with your finger
Ø Use different writing utensils; gel pens, colored pencils, markers, chalk, crayons, etc.
Ø Use a cotton swab to write letters with paint
Ø Trace highlighted letters
Ø Finger paint letters
SPEAKING OF SPEECH
Mrs. Meeks hopes the children (and parents) have enjoyed the winter break and are ready to continue reinforcing speech and language skills at home regularly. It is not unusual for students to demonstrate some “slipping” with their developing speech skills as a result of the time off (or for that matter with any interruption of lessons). Continued regular attention to home practice will help the students regain previously mastered proficiency in budding articulation abilities. Parents will observe how quickly the children can recoup with regular practice. Parents often ask if they should correct their child’s speech errors during conversations in order to promote the carryover of sounds into their conversational speech. The best recommendation is to correct them only at the level in which they are working in speech class, therefore in their homework lessons. If a child can easily say his/her “new” sound in words, but not in phrases or sentences yet, then only correct a speech error in a one-word statement. This will help promote the carryover of a sound into a child’s speech without frustrating the child. As parents and teachers we model correct sentence structure and grammar for the children in general. Children having difficulty with these language skills will benefit greatly if they are willing to “try” to imitate a corrected sentence after a parent or teacher during conversations. Willingness is important in order to prevent frustration. Modeling and imitating are key components in a child’s developing language.
I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year! I look forward to working with your children with speech, language or fluency goals for the remainder of the 2016-2017 school year. Please know that working with you, the parents, will also make it a very successful New Year!
SPECIAL SPECIALS
February is American Heart month!
Kindergarten students at Grenloch Terrace ECC will be celebrating by participating in the Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser during their physical educations classes with Mrs. Laczkowski from February 8th through February 10th. This fundraiser is sponsored by the American Heart Association. This is a life-saving and educational community service program. Your child will help kids with special hearts and learn about how to be heart healthy and feel good! Collection envelopes will be distributed during the week of January 18th and will be due by February 10th. For more information visit: www.heart.org/jump.
In Mrs. Stracciolini’s art class the children finished a Cave Art project and went on to make Holiday Pictures to bring home to their families. Some children had a chance to make snow scenes with wonderful Snowmen. All of the children had a chance to design some beautiful ornaments and take them home as well. We enjoyed listening to Holiday music during Art and it set a wonderful tone for being creative. Now we are back off Winter break and learning about Ancient Greek Vases. The children are using scratch paper and wood sticks to create a Greek Art inspired Vase. I know they will turn out beautiful. We are also learning our warm colors to prepare to paint some Warm Summer Suns this month.
January is an exciting month for the children in Ms. Sebastiani’s music classes! We are having a special guest performer, Rick Charette. Rick is a singer-songwriter of children's popular songs. Please check his website www.rickcharette.com . Rick has written several children's books as well as CDs for the children to enjoy and sing along to! As a singer and songwriter, Rick Charette has been capturing the hearts and spirits of young and old alike with his delightful and inspiring children's songs. His performances blend original contemporary pop music and lyrics with imaginative activities that generate all kinds of audience participation. Rick graduated from the University Of Southern Maine with degrees in Music Education and English. Elementary teachers across the country use his music in their classrooms to enhance and facilitate their language arts programs. He has been a featured speaker at the Northeast Whole Language Conference, a keynote speaker at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference in Washington, D.C. as well as other education conferences around the United States. Rick travels throughout the U.S. and Canada performing at schools and concert halls. For large concert events he performs with The Bubblegum Band and has appeared in venues such as Riverfest in Little Rock, Arkansas; Boston Citywide Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, and Imagination Parade - a live concert radio broadcast in New York City. His music has been featured on Peter Pan and Walt Disney Records and been cited in Entertainment Weekly and Billboard magazines. The television broadcast on NBC-TV affiliates in New England entitled "An Evening with Rick Charette" won the National IRIS Award for programming excellence. His music receives airplay on such radio networks as KTOO-FM, Juneau, Alaska which syndicates its program "We Like Kids" on 35 public radio stations around the U.S. Concert excerpts of his songs are a regular feature on "The Learning Channel" (national cable).Rick has released twelve albums, two children's picture books and three live concert videos, which are distributed nationally and have sold well over a quarter million copies to date. In 2009, he recorded his 3rd DVD of a live concert filmed at Deertrees Theater in Harrison, Maine in which several new songs were debuted, in addition to a new version of his timeless classic "I Love Mud". His 12th album "Seven Ate Nine!" (a collection of new original songs) was released in June 2016.
A life-long resident of Maine, Rick and his wife have three grown children, and he continues to enjoy performing and creating music for young children & families.
Kindergarten Techies
Our classes are doing a great job working on identifying and using various special keyboard keys such as shift, cap and enter. We are also practicing how to open and close a program. January brings us to the introduction of using a word document to write a few sentences based on a picture that each student took. By the end of the month, look for the picture and a word document that your child did during technology class.
Happy New Year.
EXCITING ESL
Grenloch ELLs (English Language Learners) corner.
This month was certainly fun seeing the excitement of the children as they talked about their favorite festival and got ready for a well-deserved winter break. We finished studying our unit on family and learned family member names, typical activities that families do together as well as how to express basic feelings. Throughout this unit we used –wh question words: who, what and when. We also studied the concept of same & different. We looked at how some families are the same and some are different, not just in how we look, but also in size, the foods we eat, the music we listen to and the languages we speak. We all agreed that in the end we all love our families! In January we will build on our use of question words and also use -where to talk about winter activities and where those activities take place. Please feel free to reach out to me through email at .
COUNSELOR’S CORNER
Greetings from Mrs. Krupa, the Guidance Counselor!! The lesson in January is going to continue our year-long discussion on being a buddy not a bully. We will read a story called “Leave Me Alone” A tale of what happens when you stand up to a bully. It’s a story about a little boy who struggles to stand up to a bully until his friends show him that eight loud voices are stronger than one! We will do an activity to practice using our words to stick up for our friends.