January News – January 13th and January 20th

Important Key Card Entry Information

Please make sure you have your keycard to enter the building. For security purposes the keycard registers who is entering the building. If you have mislaid your card, please let us know so that we can deactivate it and issue you a new one. There will be a $15 charge for new keycards.

Please do not hold the door open for anyone that you do not know.

Friendly Reminder – we are closed February 14 and February 17 for Staff Development Day and President’s Day!

2025 Holiday Closing Dates 

Our 2025 Holiday Closing Dates can be found on our website using the link below.

https://sproutlingschildcare.com/calendar/

Peapods

Peapods

It’s been a pretty exciting couple of weeks! We now have a walker and a new crawler.
Watch out, we’re on the move!
We really enjoy playing in the sensory table. We love grabbing, feeling, playing, and of course, chewing on the items in it. It’s always fun playing in our tunnel and popping bubbles, we’re getting good at popping and catching the bubbles.
One of the books read to us was Frozen Noses by Jan Carr. We thought it a pretty appropriate book this week. We also were shaking our maracas and dancing to La Cucaracha.

Peapods II

We can’t believe that January is almost over already! Peapods 2 has been enjoying our time together with our new friends, everyone is well adjusted and doing fantastic! We have been practicing our sign language skills and we have excelled in saying “please” and “more”. The last two weeks we have talked about mittens and arctic animals. We used dot paint to decorate mittens, which you can see hanging up in our classroom. We also had the opportunity to explore some snow in our sensory table, at first we were a little unsure about it but then we discovered that we can put it into buckets and dig in it. We are so proud of our class and we can’t wait to see what February brings us!

Seedlings

The Seedlings have been having so much fun!! We learned about Arctic animals and how they live in cold places. We put some arctic animals in the snow to dig them out and had fun just burying them in the snow. The Seedlings kept telling us that snow is cold!

We also had fun making handprints mittens, dot art mittens, and fork painting a polar bear’s face! It was different to paint with a fork but we really enjoyed it.

We’ve been working really hard on our fine motor skills by peeling stickers and putting them on our classroom paper.  We also think it’s tons of fun to peel them off the paper and put them on ourselves. We have been thrilled to have magnet tiles for our room and the children have been having a great time exploring with them. There are so many things you can do with them!

During circle time, we read Never Touch a Polar Bear by Rosie Greening and sang Dancing like “Arctic Animals”.

Little Sprouts

Little Sprouts had so much fun learning about friendship and arctic animals! Some of our favorite centers were play-dough, books, trains, and watercolor. Little Sprouts had lots of fun making a friendship tree and coloring polar bears. During circle time, we sang our Good Morning Song, talk about the weather, and dressed up our weather bear. We sang the days of the week, our ABC’s, and numbers and read Just My Friend and Me by Mercer Mayer and Never Touch a Polar Bear by Stuart Lynch.

Beanstalks

What a wonderful two weeks we’ve had here in Beanstalks. Last week we discussed snowflakes and snowmen. We were so excited to get to see some real snow while we talked about all the different things we can do in the snow. We really enjoyed reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and singing The “Snowkey Pokey” song. This week we are learning about Arctic Animals. We loved talking all about the different ways that arctic animals stay warm. We used forks to paint our very own polar bears. Our favorite book this week was Little Penguin Gets The Hiccups by Tadgh Bentley and we really got a kick out of singing “5 Little Penguins”. We hope you all have a safe and happy weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Saplings

We have loved learning about snowmen and arctic animals over the last two weeks. Last week we discussed snowmen. We talked about how to build a snowman and after reading the book Snowmen at Night, we discussed what our snowmen do at night. We also painted snowmen, matched snowmen numbers, and made snowmen using letters in our name. Our favorite books from this week were Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner and How to Catch a Snowman by Adam Wallace. This week we have been learning about arctic animals. Throughout the week we have learned what animals live in the arctic, sorted animals that do and don’t live in the arctic, and measured if we were taller than an emperor penguin. Also, throughout the week we have painted an igloo with legos and practiced number and letter recognition. Our favorite books from this week were Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester and Little Penguin by A.J. Wood. We are looking forward to learning about Chinese New Year, Mittens, and Groundhogs Day in the next two weeks!

PreK 3

Pre-k 3 has had a wonderful time these past few weeks learning about arctic animals, where they live, hibernation/migration and other ways they survive the winter!

We’ve had fun putting together narwhal crafts employing our “just a dot, not a lot” strategy  with glue, fork painting polar bears so they look like they have fur, and strengthening our fine motor skills as we continue scissor practice and working in our fine motor journals.

Some of our favorite books have been Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee, Wendell, the Narwhal by Emily Dove, Arctic Animals by Jennifer Szymanski, Immi’s Gift by Karin Littlewood,  and Cozy by Jan Brett.

As always, number fun and letter recognition continue to be part of our days! And we always have a great time with our music teacher, Miss Lisa, as well as our Stretch and Grow coaches, Miss Diane and Miss Linda!

PreK 4

 In Pre k 4 this week we have been talking about snowflakes, snowmen and Arctic animals. The children have enjoyed books such as The Lonely Snowflake by Patrick Stamp, Snowman At Night by Caralyn Buehner and Poles Apart by Jeanne Willis.

In our Handwriting Without Tears workbook we have been working on writing lowercase letters. The children have begun incorporating the letters learned into their journal writing. We continue to work on recognizing lowercase letters and letters sounds.

Our math focus has been on numbers 11-20, recognizing the number and counting quantities. In addition we have been practicing patterns and graphing.

The children enjoyed painting and coloring winter scenes and polar bears. Next week we will be talking about Penguins and continuing with Arctic animals.