News & Events
Pre-School Monthlies - Rain Forest Room
Ms. Jerez & Ms. McCarthy
April 2008
Hello Rainforest Parents!
First, we are very happy to welcome our newest inhabitant, Jake, and his family to the Rainforest Room. Jake has moved to Marin from Scotland, and spent six weeks in Mexico with his grandma on the way! We are looking forward to many exciting and enjoyable days together. Please introduce yourselves to Jake and his mom, Rebekah.
Where did March go? How is it possible that we are already in the month of April? Yes, March just flew by and kept us hopping right until the end! The inhabitants are blossoming just as beautifully as all of the plum trees in our neighborhoods and they surprise us every day with how observant they have become. They are beginning to make wonderful connections, linking new ideas with their own experiences and you may have noticed that their negotiating skills have improved immensely as they use thinking skills to solve problems and reach a compromise. We are so proud of all our inhabitants and we often suggest they give themselves a gentle pat on the back! They truly care about each other and recognize the feelings of others.
Some of the special activities that kept us so busy during March: a visit by the Marin Conservation Corp (we made beautiful treasure boxes out of recycled materials), Teacher Kari danced a Flamenco for us during our visit to Spain with Teacher Vanessa, Sada brought in yummy green cupcakes to help us celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (thanks Sada and family), we went to the United Kingdom to visit the queen with Teacher Bernie, we also went to Germany with Katrine (Owen’s nanny) and we had our very special alumni readers Ryan B., Lily M. and Corey W. What amazing readers they have become. Thank you so much for inspiring the emergent readers in the Rainforest Room! Most exciting of all was our wonderful Bake Sale. The children could hardly contain themselves and were so proud that their hard work paid off and we were able to reach our goal and therefore buy the items we wanted for the classroom. Thank you for being such good sports and for your bake sale donations.
In the Language Arts Area we introduced the letters/sounds:
R for rocks and rockets
S for snakes and stickers
T for tape and tissues
U for underwear and umbrellas
V for violets and volcanoes
The inhabitants are definitely beginning to use their emerging reading skills to make meaning out of various forms of print they find in the classroom environment. They are all writing recognizable letters and many are attempting to write phrases and even short sentences. We have started a word wall in the writing area where we will display commonly used words that the children use frequently in their writing activities. This empowers them to “write” independently and feel proud of their accomplishments.
We are continuing to practice our listening and interpretation skills during story time and we have followed up with some very thoughtful projects. We thought about what peace means and added our dictation to a watercolor painting about peace. We are also practicing recalling events in stories in the correct sequence. This is hard to do unless we listen very carefully to the story!
Sharing Tuesday continues to bring with it an endless supply of creative items to represent each letter of the alphabet while Teachers Vanessa and Bernie do their very best to draw pictures of them for our class alphabet book! We only have four letters to go. Can you believe it? Thanks to all of you for returning our library books and folders on time because the inhabitants love to pick out their new books each Friday. We hope that you are enjoying reading these books together at home.
In the Art Area we have been busy drawing, painting, pasting, molding and constructing while expressing our own ideas, improving our fine motor skills and developing creativity by exploring and using a variety of art materials. Some of our interesting projects included rockets, painting a solar system, popcorn cherry blossom trees, spiral snakes, spice painting, paper tie-dye ties, family trees, clay and toothpick 3-D creations, a totem pole, umbrellas, bunny baskets, painting our bake sale sign and making labels for our baked items. Our classroom looks so wonderful with all of the inhabitant’s artwork on display. Thank you to Justine (Kalen’s mom) for helping us with our Rainforest mural and congratulations to all of our artists!
In the Mathematics Area we are continuing to practice 1:1 correspondence when we count the inhabitants each morning and we are able to recognize most of the numbers from 0 – 20. We made special bookmarks to celebrate the 100th day of school and we are getting very skillful at counting in 5’s. We measured our height with a tape measure and marked it on the wall with chalk. We are growing so fast! We made geometric designs with toothpicks and clay and we used our thinking skills to figure out how to build so that our creations would not fall down. We also used our math skills when following recipes to make goodies for our bake sale.
In the Science area we explored the meaning of reduce, reuse, recycle and rot following our trip to the Marin Recycling Center. We explored the seasons/weather and talked about the coming of springtime and all of the wonderful things that happen during this time of the year. We learned about the solar system, our five senses and how different foods change when they are cooked. We have also been keeping a close watch on our caterpillars as they form their cocoons before their marvelous metamorphosis! We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our butterflies. Check them out with us in the morning and let us know if you notice any changes.
Our Social Studies activities have taken us to Spain with Teacher Vanessa, the United Kingdom with Teacher Bernie, and Germany with Katrine. Our passports are getting full already and we love to travel to different places. We are learning so much about cultures that are different from ours and we would love to learn more. If any parents would like to take us on a trip to another country please let us know and we will start packing! We usually travel on Thursdays at about 10: 30am.
Wow! March really was a busy month and we would like to take this opportunity to thank our wonderful and thoughtful parents for all of the wish list items you have donated and to our parent volunteers who are working very hard behind the scenes on our “Art From The Heart” project, our year book and our monthly calendars. Thank you all, we could not do it without you!
Until next month, take care and be joyful!
Vanessa and Bernie.
