May Newsletter

Dear Families,

April showers bring May flowers…we are hoping that the warm weather has arrived, and is here to stay! Hopefully over the next month we can enjoy the spring weather. We will be playing outside more, going for walks, watching for bugs and birds, watching outside our classroom door, and admiring all that is going on around us.

As the weather begins to get warmer, we are asking you to go through your child’s bin to make sure that the clothes inside it are weather appropriate, and still fit. We are also asking for you to bring in a bottle of labeled sunscreen. We will be applying this when we are outside.  During the month of May, we will honor our Mothers by talking about how special our mommies are! We will be reading some wonderful stories and making special crafts for our mommies. This month we will with painting with water be painting color paints, sponge painting with paint, and making some more hand and footprint crafts. Our themes for this month will include: Just like Mommy, The Color Purple, Farm Animals, and Construction.

Summer is just around the corner and we are gearing up for our summer schedule with many planned activities outside. Some of the areas of focus are nature, science, language and fine and gross motor development. The kids will enjoy collecting rocks, sticks and feathers. We will be taking a close look at nature and its changes. The kids will expand on new experiences through language and dramatic play to reflect the interests of the children, allowing several opportunities for open-ended exploration and spontaneous discoveries. The children have been a busy little bunch engaging in many learning experiences outside. We have two new water tables that I will put different sensory things in once a week to explore. This month we will explore dried beans and sand. We will use measuring cups, shovels and sand toys. Please keep in mind that sometimes we do get a little dirtier, so please make sure to have extra socks in your child’s bin and their rain boots kept here daily.

We also enjoyed “Kid’s in the Kitchen hands on” cooking experiences such as making cake, where the children are engaged in mixing and blending ingredients together as well as practicing “turn taking”; which, as you know, for toddlers can be quite a challenge.

We are ready to begin our next step in “Zoo Phonics.” 26 animals (corresponding to the 26 letters of the alphabet) have been introduced with the sounds for each letter. We will now begin to slowly introduce the idea that each animal has a special letter that matches each animal’s sound. I will introduce one lower case letter each week, and will do other letter activities that correspond to that sound each week as well. Once all lower case letters are introduced, we will begin to match them with the capital letters. Lower case letters are introduced first because they are the letter children see most frequently in books.

Love,

Miss Becky