October News: Week of October 16th and 23rd
Halloween Parade
We will hold our annual Halloween parade on Tuesday October, 31st at 9:30am, weather permitting. Parents, siblings and grandparents are invited to watch as our children show off their costumes and parade around the Sproutlings parking lot. The parade will be very low key and take no longer than 20 minutes as it can be very overwhelming for some children. We will take lots of photos and videos for those who cannot attend.
For Halloween costumes, please keep the following in mind:
- Please limit costumes to something that can be worn to school in the morning and that children will be comfortable in. Children can be changed from their costumes after the parade if parents provide an alternative outfit. **Costumes that can be worn over regular clothes are preferred!**
- Please leave all accessories at home as it is difficult to keep track of them and we do not want them misplaced. Hats are ok but no masks please.
Friendly Reminder: Sproutlings closes at 5:00pm on Tuesday October 31st.
Annual Flu Vaccine
Children who are over 6 months and attend a licensed child care or preschool facility in NJ are required to have a flu vaccine no later than December 31st of each year.
Please bring proof of vaccine to the office. Thank you.
2024 Holiday Closing Dates
Our 2024 Holiday Closing Dates can be found on our website using the link below.
https://sproutlingschildcare.
Peapods
Peapods
We can’t believe that it’s almost November! Time sure flies when you’re having fun and that’s exactly what’s happening in Peapods! We are growing and learning so much. We love exploring our surroundings and playing with all of our friends. We continued to practice are signing skills so we are able to communicate with everyone. We are taught how to say “more”, “please”, “thank you” and our most favorite sign, “all done”. As we quickly approach Halloween Ms. Lu read us a spooky book entitled Five Black Cats by Patricia Hegarty. We can’t wait to see what the rest of October will bring for Peapods!
Peapods II
And just like that another two weeks have flown by! Peapods 2 is loving these sunny October days. We’ve been getting as much outdoor time as possible before the winter season sneaks in. We’ve been getting ready for our Halloween parade next week and talking about all the spooky things! We love looking at the bats we made that are hanging up on our door. We’ve been exploring pumpkins of all sizes and colors over the last few days. Who would’ve thought that a pumpkin would be our favorite toy! We can’t wait to see what the rest of October has in store for us as we get ready to welcome November!
Seedlings
It’s been such an exciting time in the Seedlings’ room! We really can’t get enough of Halloween and we’ll be sad when it’s over next week.
We have been doing lots of art projects in the Seedlings room. We have sponged painted pumpkins, made a giant Candy Corn (Miss Paige’s favorite), colored Halloween sheets, and made handprint ghosts. We were really thrilled to use molding clay for the first time and loved how our ghosts turned out!
During circle time, we read Don’t Feed the Pumpkin by Rosie Greening and sang and danced to “Halloween Freeze Dance!” We really love shouting “Boo!” at each other.
We would love to give Miss Hailey a warm welcome to the Seedlings room. She’s a great addition to our room and the kids already love her.
Little Sprouts
Little Sprouts had so much fun learning this week! We enjoyed using color pencils to make Halloween bats and fingering painting paper to make handprint pumpkins. We also used markers to color Jack-O-Lanterns and ghosts. Our favorite center this week was play-dough! Little Sprouts loved picking out what face to draw on our class pumpkin, and watching Ms. Emmy and Ms. Thiana carve the pumpkin. We loved passing around the ziplock bag of the pumpkin guts! Little Sprouts enjoyed dancing to “The Pumpkin Song” and “Monster Boogie” by The Laurie Berkner Band! We loved reading Ten Orange Pumpkins by Stephen Savage and Llama Llama Trick Or Treat by Anna Dewdeny.
Beanstalks
What a great two weeks we’ve had in Beanstalks! With the weather starting to turn chilly, we’re jumping into autumn activities, which for this newsletter means: Pumpkins! Last week we talked about how and where pumpkins grow and made our own paper pumpkins that we then turned into jack-o-lanterns. We looked at different shapes, sizes, and colors of pumpkins, and then played a pumpkin themed shape matching game.
This week we’ve been loving getting our hands on a real pumpkin! We’ve given it a good washing, scooped it out, and painted it with so many bright colors! We had an absolute blast when Ms. Lisa came in and taught us a few new songs, and we’ve been singing them all week! We can’t wait to see what the next two weeks will bring. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you all on Monday!
Beanstalks II
Last the Beanstalks II week we focused all on leaves. We read books that included Leaves David Ezra Stein and My Leaf Book by Monica Wellington. We did some fun activities which included creating our very own leaves used broken up leaves that we had collected and we also made our very own leaf book. We practiced counting and our number recognition. This week was all about Halloween. We talked about our costumes and have been counting down to Halloween everyday. We read some silly books like There was an Old lady who Swallowed a Cactus by Lucille Colandro and Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane. We scooped out our pumpkin and gave it a face!! We focused on our numbers this week and created our very own Halloween project. We had a special guest this week as we welcomed Ms. Lisa our new music teacher and she taught us some new songs! We are so excited for Halloween and can’t wait to tell you all about it next time!
PreK 3
The past two weeks Pre K 3 has been spending our time learning about Apples and Pumpkins!
Last week we tried three different apples (green, yellow and red). We also got to taste apple sauce – Yummy! We matched shapes on an apple tree and also matched letters. We baked up some apple pies. The best art project was making apple prints and painting with apples.
This week, Pre K 3 talked about pumpkins. We got to paint a real, tiny pumpkin to take home. We carved a giant pumpkin to decorate the classroom and we all got to see and touch the insides of the pumpkin which is now a jack-o-lantern. The children created a pumpkin patch with the letters of their name and matched letters to make a whole pumpkin.
PreK 4
These past two weeks in Pre-K 4, the children learned about nocturnal animals and Halloween. We focused primarily on bats and spiders, but we learned about many animals that come out at night. We learned about the life cycle of a spider and about the parts of a bat! We learned that bats can echolocate and spiders can spin webs. Our favorite books were Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and Walters’s Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood.
Over the last two weeks we have learned many letters! We learned how to write the letters L, U, V, and W using the Handwriting without Tears curriculum. We have worked on number sense, creating patterns, sequencing, and more. We have enjoyed getting ready for Halloween by doing a candy science experiment. With our writing prompts, we wondered where bats sleep and what you would do if you were a nocturnal animal. We are so creative with our responses!
We enjoyed all of our fun activities like gymnastics and Stretch and Grow. This week, we also started music with Elefante Music. We loved it! Enjoy the unseasonably nice weekend!