Klahanie School: October 2014 Newsletter

Klahanie School

October 2014 Newsletter

“Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”

Mr. Fred Rogers

September 2014 Reflection

What a fun way to begin our school year! Thank you Klahanie parents for all the warmth and opportunity to educate and nurture your children! They are lovely people and as a group we have had such fun observing all the new friendships. Our circle time is spent enjoying singing “getting to know each other” songs, days of the week, finger plays, movement and stories to help the children adjust back to the school environment and routine. They are doing amazing learning and remembering how to move in the classroom and what fun seeing the children pair off into new friendship play or concentration. We are diving quickly into engaging lessons in language, math, zoology and botany as well as storytelling and poetry. We began reading poetry and will continue this throughout the school year by classical poets Edward Lear, Christina Rosetti, Robert Frost to name a few as introduction to how fun and meaningful language play is for expression and language use expansion. I will continue to introduce Sand Paper Letter lessons to the children. This is s a wonderful phonetic and sensory lesson of the alphabet as well as indirect aim to work on speech development using engaging steps to make the concrete, sensory experience fun. The children have loved the garden playtime and many have helped harvest and eat from the garden and play imaginative play as campers or explorers. Some core words we use daily in class are inclusion, compassion, helpful choices: to ourselves, environment and class group, permission, concentration, independence and connection.

October Curriculum Topics

· Spiders (arachnids) and Bats (mammals): looking at their life cycle, parts of the bodies, habitats and how they help the earth.

· Pumpkins, Gourd family & Apples: life cycle, parts of the plant and sensory games, songs and food preparation and tastings.

· Friends: What makes a friend

· Neighbors: Peace practices (invitation to play, concentrate together) on how to be neighborly and available for help when asked.

· 3 Part Card Introduction to Weather and Land Forms: A language and earth education lesson that focuses on picture and word matching and earth vocabulary introduction.

· Garden preparation for winter: Winter crops and soil care for winter preparation.

Reminders/Thank Yous

· Parent Volunteers Needed to help take a class picture and make a monthly batch of play dough, please contact Emmy if interested.

· Halloween: children are welcome to wear costumes if easy to remove, move around in and warm for outside time.

· Sharing: Children are welcome to bring one item from nature or item that starts with a letter sound (“a” for apple, etc.) or something cultural each Thursday. Please make sure the sharing can fit in the cubby. Parents are welcome to call and schedule with teacher if child wants to have a family pet visit class for sharing.