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.

Themes this Month

• Art and stories by Dr. Seuss and Eric Carle
• Weather
• Colors
• Bugs and Plants
• Spring Vacation is March 23-27—No School, enjoy your week off.

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

Dress in these colors on these days:

Monday, March 16-RED

Tuesday, March 17- GREEN, we will have a green zone party!

Wednesday, March 18-BLUE
Thursday,March 19- YELLOW
Friday, March 20-PURPLE and ORANGE
You may have heard our students talk about the blue, green, yellow and red zone.  These are part of the Zones of Regulation, a program that PPS uses to help kids identify feelings and help self-regulate behavior.  Our students are learning part of this program in a fun way and working toward a green zone party!

The zones, are lessons and activities designed by Leah Kuypers, a licensed occupational therapist. Here is some information about the zones, from Leah Kuypers. Self-regulation can go by many names, such as self-control, self-management, and impulse control. It is defined as the best state of alertness of both the body and emotions for the specific situation. For example, when a student plays on the playground or in a competitive game, it is beneficial to have a higher state of alertness. However, that same state would not be appropriate in the library. The lessons and learning activities are designed to help the students recognize when they are in the different Zones as well as learn how to use strategies to change or stay in the Zone they are in. In addition to addressing self-regulation, the students will gain an increased vocabulary of emotional terms, skills in reading other people’s facial expressions, perspective about how others see and react to their behavior, insight into events that trigger their behavior, calming and alerting strategies, and problem solving skills.  For example, “This is really frustrating me and making me go into the Yellow Zone. I need to use a tool to calm down. I will take some deep breaths.” The students are doing a great job recognizing when they are in the green zone as well as strategies to help guide them back if they are in the red!

 

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 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 cancellations after June 1. If you need to switch your days during camp week, you can, as long as space is available.

After-School Classes

Beginning March 30th, we will be offering some new after-school classes!  Monday- a new movement class, Tuesday and Wednesdays- continue as Northwest Children’s Theater and Spanish, and Thursday-Soccer Shots! All of the afternoon programs are enrolling for spring term.  If your child attends school in the morning, you can sign up for soccer with Soccer Shots and Spanish through the Portland Early Learning Project.  For Monday’s Movement class and Tuesday’s NWCT class, please sign up through Hands On.  Afternoon preschool students are automatically enrolled in NWCT and Soccer. 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 Andrew, Margo and Kathy. Our older group works with teachers Jennifer and Julie.

Here’s Teacher Andrew’s report: “The younger group circle time goes with the flow from day to day. Sometimes we need to wiggle, sometimes we’re excited to practice sustained learning time! We always follow the theme of the month by sharing stories and playing games related to the season, Holidays, or historical figures we’re learning about as a school. Recently we’ve started most circles with a chant-and-move train game, where the group repeats “Fish and Chips, Cheese and Crackers, Meat and Potatoes, SOUUUUP!” as they mimic the turning gears and train whistle. We stop off for supplies (More coal! Refreshing water! Valentine’s cards for our friends!) and make journeys related to other circle time topics. We use rhythm sticks regularly, playing games that teach early literacy through tapping syllables in our names and giving the children a chance to share creative variations of “Going On a Bear Hunt.” We’ve been discussing the four zones of regulation and sharing stories about our own experiences (“Once I was in the blue zone when I couldn’t find my favorite stuffy before going to school…”). We keep track of the changing seasons with our calendar, and also report on the weather by opening the window near circle time and examining it, talking about how it feels when the outside air comes in, and what we can see going on in the trees and in the sky.”

Our older group moves so quickly through their calendar, weather, number and letter pal 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 each teacher can 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 a 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 there are total.

 
Thanks for reading, happy spring, and don’t forget to wear green on March 17th!