This month's newsletter topics

March – Themes This Month – The week of St. Patrick’s Day is color week! –  Tax Time – Fall Preschool and Summer Camps – Visitors and Afterschool Classes –

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March

March is an exciting month!  It is starting to feel like spring and we are enjoying our time outside on the playground.  Our class will start learning about plants and insects and we will start our own seeds inside the classroom.  We start off March with a group of students from Japan that will visit our class and we will enjoy several musical guests during the month.

Themes this Month

• Weather
• Colors
• Art and stories by Eric Carle
• Bugs and Plants
• Spring Vacation is March 25-29—No School, enjoy your week off.

The week before St. Patrick’s Day is color week!

Dress in these colors on these days:

March 11-Monday dress in Red

March-12-Tuesday dress in BLUE

March 13-Wednesday dress in YELLOW

March 14-Thursday dress in PURPLE and ORANGE

March 15-Friday dress in Green

February

Last month our class had fun celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentine’s day! What a fun and festive month! Thank you to all of the families that contributed to all of the events. We also loved all of our special guests. We enjoyed cooking our lunch with Loann, a Spanish Story time with Jessica from Portland Early Leaning Program, and music with Aaron Nigel Smith.  We have missed most of our school conferences because of snow so their will be a new sign up sheet by the door for families that would like to reschedule.  And a sign up sheet for snow make up days.
 

Tax Time

To help you with your taxes here is our official name and tax ID number:

Hands On Art & Play Inc.
EIN # is 20-5503578

Fall Preschool and Summer Camps

Thank you Hands On families for choosing our school! Your children are a joy to see each day! Our summer camps and fall preschool classes are filling up. Here is more information about our summer camps:
Hands On summer camps are open to all children even if they do not attend our preschool in the during the school year. Children in preschool and going into kindergarten are welcome to join. You may sign up for as many camp days as you like. You may add days or sign up during the summer, so long as there is still space available. Each day is $40; siblings that attend together will receive a discount. Summer camps are available 1,2,3 or 4 days a week. No cancelations after June 1. If you need to switch your days during camp week, you can, as long as space is available.

Special Guests

Next Tuesday, March 5, students from Senzok Junior College of Childhood Education in Kanagawa prefecture, which is close to Tokyo, will be visiting Hands On. This is the 4th year this program has joined us.  The Japanese students are learning early childhood education in college and work in local kindergartens and daycare centers.
Their visit provides our students with a wonderful opportunity to participate in singing, dancing and story-telling with young people from another culture. We are delighted to have this cross-cultural exchange. It is a unique time for both children and students.
They will visit us in the morning, from 9 AM-11:30, and if you would like to be a part of this experience and join us that day, please let me know.
We will also enjoy music classes with Chuck Cheesman March 13 and Tallulah’s Daddy March 19.

After School Classes

Our after-school classes have been so successful this year, and many are nearly full.  All of the afternoon programs are enrolling for spring term.  Please let us know if you have any questions about these classes.

 

Circle Time News

Each day our class has two circle times.  One with the whole group where we sing as a group and welcome the day.   In this big group we talk about our daily plan and a little bit about what we are learning.  Then we break up into two groups.  The older kids have snack while the younger kids do their listening and learning circle and then we switch places.  This way our students can work at their own pace to do their jobs as well as focus more on what we are learning during the month in a smaller group. Our younger group works with teachers Jillian, Lexi and Kathy. Our older group works with teachers Jennifer and Julie.

Here is a quick report by teacher Jillian;
This month we talked about Valentine’s Day and what the holiday means. We talked about ways we can show the people around us that we love them.  Our group came up with some great ideas, such as to say nice things, play with your friends, give hugs and share. We also took turns telling the group what we love about our friends and family.  Additionally, we have kept up with our calendar and the students are getting so much better at remembering the order of the days of the week!

Here is a quick report by teacher Jennifer:
Our group moves so quickly through their calendar, weather, number and letter pals jobs that it leaves us extra time for fun!  We have been breaking up into two groups once our regular circle time work is done.  This is fantastic because Julie and I can each have a group of 6 or so kids.  It is nice to start working on kindergarten readiness skills with a very small group.  We work on math and reading skills in these groups. We have a stack of beginning reader books that are all the same.  Each child can hold one and the teacher reads out loud as the kids follow along in their book, then we read them all together.  It is so fun to see them start to recognize the words and be able to read some of the pages.  Another game we have been playing is Popcorn! We have pretend popcorn box full of pretend popcorn and each kernel has a letter on it. So the kids take turns popping the popcorn and picking out a letter. Then they need to tell the group what it is and a what words start with that letter.
 
We have been learning to count by 10’s to 100 by using beads that are sorted in groups of ten. And we are working on adding two numbers together to figuring out  a total.  We do this with fun games like bees in a hive. First the child identifies the number in the hive and fills it with the same number of bees, then they put the two hives together to see how many bees total.

We also focus on one letter a week in the alphabet, learning the name of it what is sounds like, what words start with the letter and how to write it.   We will have made it from A-Z by spring vacation.  When we come back in April the kids will be excited and ready to solve our mystery words and work on kindergarten sight words.  We will also start our  “ladybug” math  unit.