Sproutlings Newsletter: Week of January 18

Reminders and Upcoming Events:

• A staff training day was originally scheduled for Friday, February 12th. In an effort to help our families, we will be open for care from 7:30 am to 12:00 pm on that day.  Pick up will begin at 11:00. Children will not eat lunch at the center. At 12:00 we will close for our teacher training. We will be closed on Monday, February 15th for Presidents Day.
• 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
• A reminder of the state sick policy regarding COVID 19:
  “Children who meet the following criteria should be promptly isolated and excluded from the facility for at least 10 days from symptom onset, are fever free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication and symptoms have improved OR they have a negative COVID-19 test result which is submitted to the childcare center.
  • At least two of the following symptoms: fever (measure or subjective), chills, rigors (shivers), myalgia (muscle aches), headache, sore throat, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, congestion or runny nose; OR
  • At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, new olfactory disorder, or new taste disorder.”
•  While we understand that children will still get colds, we greatly appreciate parents keeping children with very runny noses home for a day to recover. This keeps both the teachers and other students in the class healthy and prevents colds from being passed around the room. Thank you for your help with this!

Peapods

This week we were busy in the Peapod rooms. Some of us are perfecting stacking the blocks and we are doing a really good job.  We also like to “talk” of the phone. Sometimes we “talk” to each other. Climbing the large ramp is great exercise. It gets us up and moving. Some are trying new foods. We don’t always like them but we will keep trying. We’re getting in our tummy time and even reaching for the toys. Ms Lu read our book of the week Just You and Me by Aliee King and Ms Melissa helped us sing “Down by the Bay.”

Seedlings

The Seedlings are so lucky that when we can go outside that we have the indoor playground to ourselves. We have so much energy that we burn off in that room. We love having races, riding bikes and scooters, and playing with balls.

We have started getting ready for Valentine’s Day by decorating hearts. We used paintbrushes and sponges to paint them. We always have a great time using sponges for our artwork.

During circle time, we read This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen. The Seedlings can’t get enough of his Hat Trilogy series and we’re constantly reading them. We sang “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.”

Little Sprouts

What an awesome week we had in Little Sprouts! We kept ourselves busy with lots of crafts. From Valentine’s fish to Valentine’s bears, we are preparing for a February filled with love! When making the bears, we were able to practice our fine motor skills by gluing small pieces of tissue paper to make the bears’ fur. We have also been working hard on our cleaning skills and helping others! Everyday this week we have gone marching with the dinosaurs and practicing our roars with the song “We are the Dinosaurs” by Laurie Berkner.

We cannot wait to see what next week brings us!

Beanstalks

We had a wonderful week in Beanstalks. We started off the week with a group discussion during circle time about several Arctic animals. Everyone gave great answers and we really enjoy listening to the sounds each of them make. During our small group work, we practiced tracing our letters and also arranged winter animals from biggest to smallest. We practiced the math concepts of “bigger” and “smaller.” We also did a matching arctic animals puzzle that everyone really liked. This helped us with our spatial awareness. We read about many different stories about snowy adventures. The class favorites this week were Little Owl’s Snow and Peek-a-boo Penguins. 

Everyone is looking forward to Valentine’s Day and we will be doing so many fun activities the next few weeks! We hope everyone has a nice relaxing weekend and we can’t wait to see everyone next week.

Saplings

It has been a short but busy week in Saplings.  We continue with our study on pets. This week, we discussed the characteristics of pets. We started the week with birds. The children used lots of feathers to made bird collages that you may be able to see flying above in our pictures. Next, we went into the water to graph and count color fish. Our Sapling friends then found all the letters of the alphabet under the pieces of a turtle shell. This week in Handwriting Without Tears, we practiced tracing vertical and horizontal lines. Next week, we start tracing and talking about letters. We will learn the correct formation of each letter.

In large group we talked about different pets and their characteristics. We looked at close up pictures of animals and guessed which animal belonged to each picture.

PreK 4

Pre K 4 is learning all about arctic animals and this week we are focusing on polar bears. The children were exciting to learn all kinds of fun facts about these creatures. Their favorite was that polar bears skin is actually black even though they look white because of their white fur.

The letters of the week were C and O. We learned how to make these letters with Handwriting Without Tears. The children practiced while tracing, using play dough to create the letter with roll-a -dough and with the stamp and screen.

The children worked on their math skills with a mitten match activity which allowed them to practice one to one correspondence. Another fun activity the children completed was sorting artic animals. Lastly, they used artic animals to create patterns.