Seasons Greetings! The children have been practicing their holiday songs in preparation of our Holiday Concert and Party. The parties will be held upstairs in the church.
Mrs. Mione’s and Mrs. Lyons Monday/Wednesday/Friday and 5 Day classes, Mrs. McArdle’s and Mrs. Wilkinson’s class and Mrs. Flaherty’s and Mrs. Truax’s class will have their party on Wednesday, December 21st. There will be no school for the other classes. Mrs. Mione’s and Mrs. Lyons’ Tuesday/Thursday class, Mrs. Zizza and Mrs. Aldrich’s class and the Kindergarten will have their party on Thursday, December 22nd. The other children will not have school that day. Both parties begin at 9:30 a.m. Please park in the parking lot and enter the building through the back door. Children should arrive by 9:00 a.m. so they can get ready for their musical debut. Everyone is welcome to attend – Moms, Dads, Grandparents, brothers, sisters, etc. Be sure to bring your camera! I don’t think there’s snow in the forecast but, just in case…please note, if the Milton Public Schools are closed because of snow, the party will be canceled. There’s a sign up sheet at school for party goodies.
School vacation begins after the parties and will continue until Tuesday, January 3, 2012.
Children’s evaluations will be sent home before the December break. If you have any questions about your child’s please see his/her teachers to set up a conference at a mutually agreeable time.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Thanksgiving feast. The children had an eating good time!
Many thanks to Susan and Chris Collins, Maggie O’Donnell, and Deirdre Pulgini for organizing and assembling the baskets for the Holiday Basket Raffle. We’d also like to thank everyone for contributing to them. They will be displayed at school before our holiday parties. Chances are $2.00 each or 3 for $5.00. You can take chances at school until Friday, December 16th, or at our Holiday Parties, December 21st and 22nd. Winners will be drawn at the Holiday Parties (four each day). Let’s go green…seems like we all have baskets at home that are not used. If you win one at the Holiday Party and have no use for the basket, take the contents and bring the basket back to school. We’ll use it next year.
We haven’t had any snow as yet but I’m sure we will be having a storm before too long. If the weather is really bad on a school day, listen for “no school” announcements for the Milton Public Schools. If Milton cancels kindergarten, elementary grades, or all grades, we will not have school. If Milton has a delayed opening time, preschool children will not have school. Kindergarten students only will have a delayed opening time of 9:30 a.m.
As the weather gets colder please remember that we try to take the children outside every day. Please send your child to school with a warm jacket, hat and mittens. When your child wears snow boots to school, please send along a pair of shoes or slippers for him/her to wear. Boots can get very hot when worn indoors all morning. You might want to leave a pair of slippers at school for cold, snowy mornings.
News from Mrs. Mione and Mrs. Lyon’s Class
As the days got shorter and the nights longer, we started November off by reading books about night time. We then learned about hibernation and which animals hibernate in the winter months.
It’s hard to decide which was more fun…making our cornbread or sharing it with our friends at our feast. A favorite activity during November was “Mr. & Mrs. Turkey went out for a walk.” We also learned lots of turkey songs.
We finished the month with one of my favorite authors, Frank Asch.
Happy birthday to Ben!
December News from the 4’s – Mrs. McArdle’s and Mrs. Wilkinson’s Class
The children are preparing for the Christmas Show and they sound wonderful. Mrs. Stoyle is doing a great
job with them.
As we prepare for the holiday season the students are learning stories about holiday traditions.
We learned a bit about Vincent Van Gogh and painted his Starry Night. The children did a great job.
Of course we continue to work on basic skills with the students. Every child is different and learns at his or her own pace. With lots of love, patience, and kindness your child can do anything. That’s what we believe.
Anybody interested in Mystery Reading? If so let us know!
Your child’s evaluations will be sent home before Christmas break.
If you have any questions or concerns about your child please contact us at school.
We look forward to spending the rest of 2011 together.
Happy Holidays!
How We Remember November in Mrs. Zizza’s & Mrs.Aldrich’s Class
We started November with the letter B and did B patterning, paper bag puppets, paper bag turkeys, and read a Big Book entitled Black Dots by Donald Crews. Then we did a project to see what we could make with black dots.
Olle’s dad visited and told us about his recent trip to Nepal. We enjoyed learning all about his trip and learning how to count and say hello in Nepalese. Mr. Lundgren gave each of us a key chain from Nepal for our backpacks. Thank you Mr. Lundgren!
Shannon celebrated her 4th birthday with us during B week.
Then we started our Pilgrim Village and learning about the letter K. Juliette said her pilgrim house would cost $1,000,000,000 to buy. We voted for pizza for snack on Election Day. Libby answered the question, a key can open?
We made a 1620 bead project and set up a Wetu. Maya, Jessica, and Jaden loved going into the Wetu. We also made tepees that Julianna, Sasha, and Christopher enjoyed making. Alexander really liked making his Mayflower boat.
We cooked for the Thanksgiving feast. Rebecca loved making the corn and banana muffins and all of our friends in the other classes enjoyed eating them!
After we feasted with everyone at our big thanksgiving feast we brought home our special Thanksgiving projects to share with our family. We gave thanks for all of our family and friends.
We are now preparing for our Holiday Concert.
What’s Happening in Mrs. Flaherty’s and Mrs. Truax’s Class
Books we read this month
- Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book by Lauren Child
- Bat Jamboree by Kathi Appelt
- Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
- But Excuse Me That Is My Book by Lauren Child
- Barn Dance by Bill Martin, Jr.
- Boogie Knights by Lisa Wheeler
- I like Myself by Karen Beaumont
- I Like Me by Nancy Carlson
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- One Monster After Another by Mercer Mayer
- I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll
- If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff
- Strega Nona’s Harvest by Tomie DePaola
- A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting
- Three Little Pilgrims by Janet Craig
- My First Thanksgiving by Tomie DePaola
- P is for Pilgrim by Carol Cane
- It’s Thanksgiving by Jack Prelutsky
- Arthur’s Thanksgiving by Marc Brown
- Countdown to Thanksgiving by Jodi Huelin
- ‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey
We began November by meeting letter B. We cut brown bear B wearing a blue bow for reading & literature to develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letterforms. We cut out and decorated foam bats for visual art. We combined ingredients to bake blueberry bread and explored ways materials can be changed. We completed a Bat Jamboree math book to relate the theme of the book to personal experience and number awareness. Children illustrated and named in a barn cutout who would be at their barn dance? We beaded bracelets for a simple lacing activity. We wrote and illustrated “bat” for our Wordbook.
We then met letter M. We glued strips to form a monster M. We illustrated and described something we like about ourselves. We painted puzzle pieces for our classroom door for visual art and wrote and illustrated “me” for our Wordbook. Before reading, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, we traced our hands for antlers for our moose puppets, and baked mini mouthwatering chocolate chip muffins to relate the theme of the book to personal experience.
Then we met letter K. We glued strips to form a kooky K. We wrote and illustrated “kite” for our Wordbook.
To build upper body strength and stability to gain controlled movement of our shoulders we stamped our names (embossed) on leaves for our classroom board.
We then began preparing for Thanksgiving by constructing a Pilgrim / Native American village, decorating weetoos (round houses), and making Native American canoes. We made and ate Native American corn cakes. We combined ingredients for friendship clay, molded and painted the clay into Native American pottery. We counted 16/20 Indian corn beading activity for number awareness and made cranberry sauce as a Thanksgiving gift. We illustrated and described our favorite thing to eat at Thanksgiving, cut turkey feathers, and discussed what we were thankful for. We laced and beaded Dream Catchers for physical development to use hand eye coordination, visual perception and visual tracking to do simple weaving activity. We celebrated our Thanksgiving with a wonderful feast. We prepared apple crisp and green beans for our meal. Thank you Mrs. Keady for cooking us your amazing turkey! It was delicious!
Thanks to all our parents who made such generous and thoughtful donations to our Thanksgiving feast! We’re very grateful to all of you!
We enjoyed music with Mrs. Stoyle and movement with Mrs. Wilkinson.
Happy Birthday to Jack, Declan S., Zoe, and Declan P. who celebrated their birthdays this month!
In December we will prepare for our Holiday concert to be performed on Wednesday December 21, 2011.
Kindergarten News – Mrs. Sweeney and Mrs. Keady’s Class
Kindergarten began the month of November with a study of Eric Carle. After reading many of his books
We carefully examined his artwork. We used the same technique to do our own artwork and then wrote stories about them. They were quite impressive!
During November the kindergarten learned about the Pilgrims and their voyage to the New World by traveling back in time to the court of King James. We pretended to be children leaving England to sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Each child had to decide what to pack in one small trunk and what would have to be left behind. It was crowded on the ship and many were seasick, especially during the storms. We learned that hardtack is not our favorite food and we were so happy to finally spot land. Through Squanto and Samoset we learned about the Wampanoags, and the skills we needed to survive. We celebrated our friendship and survival with a great feast. How thankful we are to have warm homes and enough food!
We continued to learn new literacy skills over the past month. We wrote about our adventure in our Mayflower journals every day. Activities with our “word wall” are helping us to recognize sight words and teaching us to use those words to write new ones. We added books to our book boxes to read at home. We are so proud of our emergent reading skills!
Our math this month included lots of work with manipulatives. We played math games, continued practicing our addition skills and added to our math journals.
It has been a very busy and fun month in the Kindergarten!