Sproutlings Newsletter: Week of January 11

Reminders and Upcoming Events:

• Sproutlings is closed this Monday, January 18 in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For a printable list of all closures, please visit our website under “calendar.”
• At Sproutlings, we believe in celebrating the little joys in childhood and always have enjoyed observing different traditions, holidays, and birthdays together as a community. COVID has taken so much from us and we want to ensure we are still giving our children the experience of these simple joys. However, we need to ensure we are doing it safely and in compliance with state regulations.
  • Birthdays can be celebrated in the classrooms but families must bring in pre-packaged, sealed nut-free treats. Some favorites are packs of Little Bites muffins, individual packs of mini-oreos, or sealed boxes of store bought mini-cupcakes. Teachers will make sure these are distributed with gloves and in compliance with all state regulations.
  • Please notify the teachers at least 24 hours in advance if you will be bringing in a treat for the class so that teachers can notify parents ahead of time.
  • Baked goods from home and non-sealed treats for class distribution are not allowed at this time. 
• New Jersey strongly discourages all non-essential interstate travel at this time. Please be sure you are following the most updated travel restrictions. https://covid19.nj.gov/faqs/nj-information/travel-and-transportation/are-there-travel-restrictions-to-or-from-new-jersey
• As always, please provide documentation whenever your child receives a vaccination. New Universal Health Records are due at your child’s annual physical each year. If you need a copy, please email Kerry at sproutlings.info@gmail.com

Peapods

This was a very exciting week in the Peapod rooms. Some of us are now pulling themselves up! For some of us we are doing tummy time with our new friends. It’s always fun to do things with friends .Our musical instruments are always fun to play with, sometimes we play along with the music.

We are always finding new ways to move about our room. We love crawling through our shelf and coming fast around the corners. We never know what we will find. Ms Lu waved her magic bubble wand and some of us are learning to pop the bubbles too. Ms Melissa helped us sing our song this week, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and Ms Lu read our book of the week The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel.

Seedlings

The Seedlings had a great week! We loved going outside when it wasn’t too cold for us! We enjoyed be able to run around. We love going down the slides. When it’s too cold, we are very fortunate to be able to use the indoor playground. It’s a great room to use up our energy.

We are getting really good at recognizing our letters. We have an fantastic time identifying the letters and get most of them right. We’re pretty proud of ourselves! The Seedlings had a thrilling time exploring what happens when you mix blue and yellow together. We were amazed that it turns green! During circle time, we read Otis Loves To Play by Loren Long and sang “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Little Sprouts

What a busy week we have had!  Our Little Sprouts started off this week finger painting with textured paint to make melted snowmen! It was a fun sensory experience. We also introduced the tower building blocks back into the play area. We have been using them to work on team work and sharing! Our book this week was Snow Friends by M. Christina Butler and Tina Macnaughton. We also did a color sorting activity with crayons. We worked on identifying our colors, sorting the crayons, and we strengthened our fine motor skills by picking up the small pieces.

We have been loving the weather this week and have been enjoying the sunshine on the playground!

Beanstalks

This week in the Beanstalks, we wrote letters to our favorite animals. We learned about the different sounds that winter animals make. We listened carefully to the noises and tried to identify what animal went with each noise. We loved learning about the Artic fox, musk ox, and narwhals. If you ask us, we think narwhals look a lot like dolphins!

We also loved learning about snowy owls. Our favorite book this week was Little Owl’s First Snow by Divya Srinivasan. At circle time, we practice our days of the week and we each take a turn reporting the weather outside. We all agreed this week was cold!

Saplings

What an exciting week we had in our classes this week as we welcomed our class pets Finley the Beta Fish and Fishy Fishy the Goldfish to our rooms. All the children enjoyed helping to choose names for the fish and then observing them as they settled into their new homes. Some even drew pictures of the fish. We began our pet study by talking about what animals make good pets and if we had a pet at home or not. We made paper chain snakes, fed a rabbit number carrots and practiced our pre-writing skills when we did our Hand Writing Without Tears page. Next week we will continue our pet study and learn more about our pet fish.

PreK 4

This week in Pre K 4 we began an investigation into Arctic animals. The children learned of the many different kinds of animals that live in the Arctic, what they like to eat and how they stay warm.

The children used Arctic themed mini erasers to to sort and count. We focused on concepts such as “one more” or “one less” of a given number. The children also used the erasers as a form of measurement. They stacked them to see which Arctic animal picture card was larger. We worked on shape recognition and graphing as well.

This week’s language and literacy concepts were focused on upper and lowercase letters as we made matches using clip cards. We worked on beginning letter sounds using Arctic animal themed picture cards. The children enjoyed the story of Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester. After reading the story, the children participated in a group discussion. Our HWT letters this week were Y and Z. This concluded our “Starting Corner Capitals.” We will begin letters next week that start in the center or “Center Starters” such as C, O and Q.

In connection with our study of snow and how ice crystals are formed, we conducted a science experiment where we grew crystals on our own handmade snowflake. The children made predictions as to what they thought would happen as we mixed our ingredients together. The next morning they enthusiastically talked about the experiment in anticipation of seeing the results, which was a snowflake full of crystals!

The children can look forward to learning about polar bears next week and how they compare to penguins.