May 2016

Inspiring young minds.

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Director Reflections…

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Happenings A Newsletter for Parents and Families

Excitement and anticipation are filling the air as the children work on gifts and cards to give to their moms for Mother’s Day. As I listen and observe it’s very evident that the children know this is a very important activity. They take great pride in creating the perfect Mother’s Day gift; even though the gifts may be over glittered, blobbed with paint and have enough glue on them for five gifts, each mom will open theirs and tell her child how beautiful it is and how much she loves it because she knows it’s important to them. Those handmade gifts and scribbled cards will mean more than any store bought gift because they were made by those little hands with love and that’s what makes them so beautiful. Being a mom is not always easy and as a mom myself I have second guessed some of my decisions in parenting more than I care to admit! Of course we want what’s best for our children and more often than not the best is not the easiest thing to do. It’s those harder times when you look at your child and know that what you’re doing is for them and in the long run will help them to be happy, self-sufficient, productive, caring people and as moms isn’t that what we all want for our children? Enjoy those beautiful gifts and heartfelt cards and have a very, Happy Mother’s Day! ~Kerri

strawberries, blueberries & blackberries

avocados

Roots And

Wings

sweet potatoes

director’s reflections

class review

class review

quoted

Inside

reminders

recipe of the month &

article on play May’s Harvest

roots and wings preschool :: inspiring young minds Issue 21:: May 2016

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our class review

gardening…colors… fieldtrip… goats…juice… sunflowers…

Hummingbird class – Diana and Kristen A fun activity we did this month was plant sunflowers. We started with the seeds and talked about what we needed to do to help the seed grow. After much discussion the children all agreed that they need water, sun and dirt to grow. When we planted the seeds Olivia said, "I push it down" (into the dirt). Every day we watered the freshly planted seeds and made sure that they were in the sunshine. The children were excited and couldn’t wait to find their plant each day and see if they had grown. Many were delighted when the plant started to break through the soil and began to grow out of the ground. We discovered some of the children have quite a green thumb! We also had fun exploring oranges and lemons. Counting, patterning, touching and smelling these citrus fruits gave us many opportunities for learning. At one of our group times, we decided to make orange juice and lemonade and asked the children if they knew how these fruits grow. Callie said, “from a tree" and Audrey said, “from water". Then we asked, “How do you open it and get the juice out?” Aiden said, "Peel it off and put the peel in the trash can". While we were making our juices you could hear the children say, “mmmm, squeeze it and cut it!”. Elijah said, "Squeeze it like that and it comes out!” After it was all made we sampled our juice. The children were very excited to taste their work and asked for more. Several children said, “It's yummy for my tummy!".

roots and wings preschool Issue 21:: May2016

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Dragonfly class – Hope and Tammy With spring in full swing and our trip to the goat farm, our daily adventures have been centered around farm animals, babies (animal, plant and human), growing, and caring for things. You will notice our environments reflecting those ideas that we continue to explore. As the month of May continues we will be setting up more animals families, discussing what baby animals and their parents are called to grow our specific vocabulary. We will also be exploring the caring aspects of animal husbandry and gardening throughout our outdoor and indoor environments. Gardening plans from the children include trying to root more plants on our rooting window. We had some things grow while others did not. The children discovered that when things rot they stink! We will also be making rows of corn, carrots, radishes, beets, and parsnips. Hopefully our potato plants will grow roots so we can plant those as well. If your child asks you to save something to root please feel free to bring it in. It is a great hands-on science experiment. We are also looking for tree seeds to plant in pots. Caring for animals has been a bit more challenging to explore. We have started with the birds, lizards, and insects on our yard. Our hope is that during this month we will look at our play yard and create some real habitats for ‘roly polys’, ladybugs, slugs, and snails. Remember that learning about these critters sometimes is realizing that they can be a pest, but we encourage and empower the children to explore these insects as they feel comfortable. The last thing we are discussing is caring for others, especially Moms and Dads. Linking our learning back to our families is crucial at this age and helps create life long learning!

Owl class – Carmen and Jamie Here we are in the spring season and as we all know spring is the beginning of many new and beautiful things. This has led to so many topics of interest in our classroom. We began with planting and observing the growth of our sunflowers, which then led us into talking about rain because rain is one of the important things that our plants need and talking about the different types of weather that we have in the spring. Ethan shared that we have fog in the spring. Nova said, "We have sunny days." Jack said, "It rains!" While Emily added, "Then we get rainbows!" which of course led to the discussion of how a rainbow forms in the sky. Emily told us, "When the sun shines through the rain we get a rainbow with all the colors." Then we began to talk about all the beautiful colors of the rainbow. The children decided that the colors come from the light that comes out of the sun, it then goes through the rain and it makes a rainbow. After our discussion on rainbows Ethan and Emily started creating a rainbow mosaic at our beautiful new mosaic table. This also inspired Ethan to create a rainbow at the light projector using various colored rings. The children have proven to be very creative in the ways they have re-created rainbows in the classroom. Another fun activity was our fieldtrip to the Chivas Farm. The children learned that the farms makes soap with the goats’ milk. They really enjoyed being able to cut the soap bars with the guitar string soap-cutting tool. At school we talked about their favorite part of the field trip and the children decided that it was the soap making shop. We talked about how much fun it would be if we could make our own soaps. Therefore, we made a list of ingredients that we may need to begin our new project. We decided that we would create our own essential lavender and rosemary oil. We did this by cutting a bunch of lavender from our garden and then we got to work. This project will continue throughout the month. We will see if we can create our own beautiful Lavender and Rosemary, 'Roots and Wings Soap Bar.' Please stay tuned till next month and we shall see how they turn out. One thing we do know is that no matter what the outcome is, we will learn and have fun in the process.

roots and wings preschool :: inspiring young minds Issue 21:: May 2016

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“Quoted,, Young, inquisitive minds in action.

Peyton, age 4 "My tower is 3 inches tall."

Fine motor skills, math &

expressive language

Aria, age 3.5 “This looks pretty.”

Exploring light and nature,

expressive language

Lucca, Jack, and Emilee age, 3

Working together to make a 24-piece

floor puzzle.

Cade, age 2.9 "Ya 6 lemons!”

Leyla, age 2.9

"Lemons!”

sensory exploration, counting & expressive language

Aspen, age 3

“I love bare feet but put my shoes on my

feet.”

Sensory experience, self-help & language

Kiara and Stella, age 4

“We are painting together. We are using

the same colors.”

Social interaction, comparison, expressive

language

roots and wings preschool Issue 21:: May2016

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Reminders

Morning Reminders

Please label jackets

and lunch box containers with your

child’s name

No candy at school

or in lunchboxes.

Sign in sheet is

OUTSIDE on patio table after

8:45 a.m.

Make sure to check your child’s cubby

daily.

Important Dates

Help us follow our daily schedule by:

• Arriving between 8:20-8:30am.

• Signing in and out (important!)

• At 8:45 morning meeting begins inside. Doors will be closed and you must wait until a teacher greets you. Please, do not interrupt meeting time!

• May 6th- Moms & Muffins

• May 25-27 & June 15-17

• Parent & Teacher

conferences

• June 9th – Parent Ed. Night

• June 24th- End of school year celebration

• June 29th – Last day of school year

• June 30th – School Closed: Staff Dev.

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Recipe of the month… Healthy Beet Brownies

• 8 ounces red beets, whole, unseasoned, precooked & peeled

• ¼ cup canola oil • 2 lrg. Eggs • 1 box fudgy brownie mix • 1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 13-by9-inch baking pan. In food processor or blender, puree beets & canola oil until smooth. Add eggs and box of brownie mix. Puree until very smooth, stir in chocolate chips, pour into pan. Bake 25 min or until toothpick comes out almost clean. Cool completely, cut into 1 ½ inch squares.

Things Every Parent Should Know about Play Children learn through their play. Don’t underestimate the value of play. Children learn and develop: cognitive skills – like math and problem solving in a pretend grocery store physical abilities – like balancing blocks and running on the playground new vocabulary – like the words they need to play with toy dinosaurs social skills – like playing together in a pretend car wash literacy skills – like creating a menu for a pretend restaurant Play is healthy and reduces stress. Play helps children grow strong and healthy. It also counteracts obesity issues facing many children today. Play helps your children grow emotionally. It’s joyful and provides an outlet for anxiety and stress. Play is more than meets the eye. Play is simple and complex. There are many types of play: symbolic, sociodramatic, functional, and games with rules-–to name just a few. Researchers study play’s many aspects: how children learn through play, how outdoor play impacts children’s health, the effects of screen time on play, to the need for recess in the school day. Make time for play; play and learning are intertwined As parents, you are the biggest supporters of your children’s learning. You can make sure they have as much time to play as possible during the day to promote cognitive, language, physical, social and emotional development. Play and learning are intertwined; think about them as a science lecture with a lab. Play is the child’s lab. Trust your own playful instincts. Remember as a child how play just came naturally? Give your children time for play and see all that they are capable of when given the opportunity. There’s a lot to learn about play. There’s a lot written on children and play. Here are some NAEYC articles and books about play. David Elkind’s The Power of Play (Da Capo, 2007 reprint) is also a great resource. By Laurel Bongiorno, PhD© National Association for the Education of Young Children