Elf on the Shelf!

"Essie" the Elf has joined us for the month of December. She is keeping an eye on us and reporting back to Santa each evening. When she returns to the room, its always a surprise where she may find a spot to watch from the next day!

Books

Thank you to Leo and his family for donating several books to our classroom. They chose a number of books from the Scholastic Bookfair and purchased them for the children in our class to enjoy. The gift of literacy is one of the best gifts of all. What an awesome gesture from Leo and his parents!

Yoga

We are pleased to announce that Val Ritchie is offering a complimentary Yoga class for moms of Prek and K students for three weeks in November and December. It will run November 18, 25 and December 2. If you are interested in signing up, please do so at the school on the classroom door. If you are only able to make one or two of the classes, that is ok- just indicate it by your name on the sign up sheet.

Halloween Party

Thanks for joining us at our Halloween Party at the rink! We had a great turn out for the event! We appreciate all of the effort you put into both your costumes and the snacks you brought. We sure had fun interacting with you and watching you play all of the halloween games!

Scenes from the Bakery

We really enjoyed our trip to the bakery last week. John and his staff gave us a great tour and served us some cupcakes and fresh baked cookies! The students were troopers walking all the way there (or hitching a ride on our wagon train). Thanks to Aliki (Leo's mom), Louise (Archie's Mom) and Alana & Diane (William's mom and grandma) for joining us!

Bakery Trip

This note will be sent home on Monday:

October 26, 2015

Dear PreK Parents,

We have been learning a lot about cookies and baking in PreK. The kids have really enjoyed baking cookies, icing them, and reading books about the topic. To support their learning, we have decided to go on an excursion to our local bakery. We will be going on Wednesday, October 28. It will be a simple tour of the bakery, and then we will sit down at the tables there and purchase some donuts or cookies for the kids to eat. We will be walking to and from the bakery. We plan to leave the school around 10:00, tour the bakery at 10:30, eat snack there at 10:45 and start our walk back around 11:00. We would appreciate the help of a few parents to walk with us. If you are available to join us, please contact Mrs. Kitchen at the school (306-542-2546) or through the Remind messaging system. If there are any families that have wagons they could bring with them, or lend us to use, we would also appreciate a few of those. It’s a long walk, so having a wagon or two for stragglers might be helpful.

Please let us know if you can help by volunteering or providing a wagon.

Sincerely,

Mrs. C. Kitchen

Inclusion

Our school, our town and our country are inclusive places. Sesame Street has put together some excellent videos about children with autism that are easy for kids to understand. Find them here if you are interested. Including students with disabilities is a priority in our school. It is important to us that kids learn to be accepting, caring an respectful to others as early as possible.

http://themighty.com/2015/10/have-you-watched-sesame-streets-autism-videos-yet-because-theyre-terrific/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Mighty_Page&utm_campaign=AUTISM

Family Resource Center

We are so lucky to have had the family resource center added to our community. For those of you who drive in from out of town and want somewhere to go, or those of you with younger kids that you would like to have interact with others, this is the place for you. The attached photo has the currently scheduled drop in times on it. Please take advantage of this

program.

Thanksgiving

As I hit the road for Thanksgiving, I want to thank all of the families in our class for their wonderful support so far this year. We had 12/16 families come out to our family time in our room today and/or attend the school's 100th birthday party. And most of those families who were unable to attend have booked alternate times to come in to meet with us. Families are an integral part of our program, and we are so thankful for you! We would also like to welcome Archie, Jaelynn and Brooklyn who will be joining our class next week! I will post some pictures when I am back from a restful thanksgiving. I hope you enjoy a few days at home with your families.
Mrs. Kitchen

First Week

We have completed our first full week of PreK, and the kids are doing awesome! We have enjoyed time in the classroom, the gym, outside and the library. With so much to do at school, we don't have much down time- we are WAY too busy PLAYING! Here are a few pictures of what we spend our time doing. Be sure to check out other pictures on the display board in the hallway and in our classroom. 

Family Friday

We had an awesome first Family Friday on the 25th! Families came and enjoyed many activities together. Body image tracing, pounding nails, paint stamps, playdough, and even "smores" by the fire! Thank you to all of the families who attended. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! If you weren't able to make it this time, stay tuned for information on our October Family Days!

First day for the First timers!

The new students in our class had a great first day at school today. The "squishy, slimy" waterbeads in the watertable were a hit, and Quin and Liam thought it was quite funny when one popped out of Mrs. Kitchen's fingers and flew across the room. Joel enjoyed predicting which cars would fit through the cardboard tubes and testing out his predictions. Natalie enjoyed building some towers with Mrs. Salahub and playing in the sand. Cailey had fun drawing, playing in the kitchen and exploring the water table. Quin and Liam were busy serving their teachers lunch at their own restaurant! Best service I have had in a while ;) All in all, the first day of preK was A OK!