Posted by Mr. Olsen, Director of Advancement –
When a parent enrolls their child(ren) at All Saints Catholic Academy, they are entrusting us with the most precious person in their life. As a school, we know that strong communication is important to parents. There are a myriad of things to communicate with you from upcoming events to schedule changes and beyond; while we aren’t perfect at it, we do our best and are continuously improving.
One of the most important lines of communication is between parents and their student(s) teacher(s). This allows parents the opportunity to support what is being taught in the classroom. One such example is the weekly summary emailed by Mrs. Flaherty to parents of our Pre-Kindergarten students. Below is one of her recent installments to illustrate:
Dear Families,
We had a lot of fun outside this week enjoying some of the warm and sunny days. We also had a great week of learning.
Saxon Theme of the Week: How Do We Communicate with Friends and Family?
Literacy and Language:
Our letter of the week was K/k. We brainstormed words that start with the letter K/k and made a letter K/k word soup together. We also sang a letter K song to the tune of “Rock-a-bye-baby.”
We practiced rhymes this week and explored rhyming words. Give your child a simple one syllable word, such as “bat” and ask him/her to give you as many words as s/he can think of that rhyme with it. Made-up words are fine!
We read and acted out the book, The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. We also sang the “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
We played a new upper and lowercase letter bingo game. The children are doing a great job learning all their letters and numbers up to twenty. Once we all master up to the number 20, we will start working on higher numbers!
We worked on rhyming words by playing with our Rhyming Word Bingo game.
On Tuesday, Dot Reeve from the Morristown Centennial Library visited us. She read two books, Mouse Mess and Mouse Paint and she gave the children a mouse picture to color. They loved having a guest reader! She will visit us once a month.
Some of our favorite books: The Many Ways to Say Hello, The Very Busy Spider, Llama Llama Red Pajama, and Today is Monday.
Math, Science, Social Studies and Theme or Art-Based Learning:
Our Saxon lessons this week centered on how we communicate. We talked about talking and listening, reading and writing, and gestures. We practiced making letters using sign language. We also planned a party for our 4th grade reading partners. We made a list of what we needed for the party and we made invitations to deliver to them. On Friday, we had our party, complete with music and a light up disco ball! The children loved this! Since Grace was out sick on Friday, we are going to have another party during our snack time this coming Thursday.
Math this week included numbers and shape bingo. We also explored geoboards and made straight shapes with them (triangles, rectangles, squares, etc.). We then used the boards to make our own designs. The children enjoyed this hands-on activity and we will use the geoboards again this coming week.
We explored spider webs and made our own web using paper plates and yarn. This fine motor activity was challenging but the children worked hard on their webs and I loved how they asked for help when needed instead of giving up.
We learned and practiced how to say “hello” in Spanish – “hola.”
On Friday, we attended an assembly to recognize Veterans Day. Mrs. Wilson talked about what it means to be a veteran and why we honor our veterans. When we got back to our class, we tied this back to why we say the “Pledge of Allegiance” to our American flag. The children were excited to receive a flag from the veterans who visited us!
French
We continued to work on learning the following colors in French – black, white, orange, green, yellow, blue, purple and red. We also started to learn how to say cake, ice cream and tomato. We also continue to sing the ABC song in French each day.
Music and Movement:
Our movement concept this week was FOCUS. We learned about how we can focus with our five senses. We played “Simon Says” and we did the “Spaghetti Dance” focusing on single-focus and multi-focus.
Religion:
We learned about what a crucifix is this week and we made one. We also finished our last story in our book, Bible Stories for Children. We will start a new book next week.
Social/Emotional Learning:
We watched a Howard B. Wigglebottom video about belonging and we talked about how it feels to be left out. The children are doing a nice job of playing together and not leaving friends out. We continue to work on taking turns and sharing.
Notes and Reminders:
- Grandparents’ Luncheon is on Thursday, November 17th. Pre-K seating is 11:00-11:45am.
- I will be out on Friday, November 18th at a training seminar with the Vermont Agency of Education. Lee Lee Robinson will be subbing for me.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Kindest regards,
Laurie Flaherty
