Sproutlings Newsletter: Week of March 1

Reminders and Upcoming Events:

• Upcoming New Providence Community Food Drive
  Saturday, March 13th in the Sproutlings’ parking lot
  Drop off times from 1:00 -3:00 pm
  This will be a drive-thru drop off, so please have items ready to hand to a volunteer through the window or be ready to open your trunk to a volunteer to collect the items. Masks required! The goal is to collect items to fill “pantry boxes” with everything from breakfast to baking, snacks to spices, along with basic household items for 20 families served by the NP CSA (Community Service Association). If you are interested in donating items, please sign up HERE. We are hoping to get a good turnout from Sproutlings families!

  A reminder of the state sick policy regarding COVID 19:

• “Children who meet the following criteria should be 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 prior to their return.
  • At least two of the following symptoms: fever, chills, 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. If a runny nose is the only symptom, a negative Covid-test is not required to return. Thank you for your help with this!
• When making vacation plans, please be sure you are following the most updated travel restrictions which may require quarantining and/or testing. 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

We had such a exciting week. We are thriving! We are grasping the balls and even pushing them. We are also practicing stacking the blocks.

Some of us are starting to “creep” and move around a bit. It is so exciting. Some of us are getting up on our knees and starting to rock. We are eager to catch up with our older friends. We also had a fun time with our tummy time water mat. It’s so much fun hitting it and watching the fish move around. Ms Lu read our book of the week The ABC Book by Dr. Seuss. Ms Marisol helped us sing our song of the week, “I’m A Little Tea Pot.”

Peapod II

This week in Peapod II we’ve been having lots of fun! We’ve been reading Dr. Seuss books and kicking off “March Is Reading Month.” Since the weather has begun to get warmer, we got to venture outside to the playground and feel the warm sun on our faces! We’ve been reading Highlight Hello, Hop on Pop, Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, and The Foot Book. Sensory this week has been lots of fun with Mr. Frog the bubble machine and our oatmeal sensory bin. We also had a new friend start! We’ve been coloring with crayons and doing mess free finger painting. Our new sign this week is “book”.

Seedlings

The Seedlings had a fantastic this week! We were so happy to go outside! With the weather cooperating, we’ll be able to do that more often.

The Seedlings really enjoyed their art projects this week. We had more fun with the sticker art. We love free coloring and seeing what our little creative minds come up with. We also had a fun time painting shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day!

During circle time we read Fox In Socks by Dr. Seuss.  It was funny to listen to all those tongue twisters. Then we sang “Old MacDonald Had Farm”.

Little Sprouts

What a colorful week in Little Sprouts! We worked hard on two different types of rainbows. One was leading to a pot of gold and others were coming from sunshine! We also enjoyed the sunshine outside and loved getting to run around in the fresh air! With moods boosted we introduced a tent castle that tested our agility and teamwork skills. We cannot wait for warmer weather and the start of spring!

Beanstalks

What an great week we had in Beanstalks! We started off the week with a super fun filled day to celebrate Read Across America! We read so many books like Green Eggs and Ham, The Foot Book, and There’s a Wocket in my Pocket. During Circle Time, we took a class vote on everyone’s favorite Dr. Seuss book, it seems as though the winner was The Grinch! After some fun literature, we dove into some mathematics. This week, we counted coins and talked about money. We discussed what the value of each coin was as well as a dollar! This was very new for everybody and we loved learning about this. For art, we made some beautiful hand printed shamrocks in preparation for St. Patty’s Day. We are looking forward to putting a new art center in our classroom and can’t wait to make more beautiful art work. We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and we can’t wait to see everyone next week!

Saplings

It was an exciting week in the Saplings rooms! This week we did a lot of fun activities to celebrate Read Across America! To kick off Read Across America week we made Oobleck with corn starch and water! The kids had a blast using their senses to play with the Oobleck! We read Cat In The Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Wacky Wednesday, Fox In Socks, and Green Eggs And Ham, by Dr. Seuss. The kids used their fine motor skills and glued red and blue tissue paper on fish. They also used letter stamps to spell their names on socks!

On Wednesday, we celebrated Wacky Wednesday by coloring underneath the table and finding wacky things in our classroom! Our letter we learned to write this week was the letter “Ii”. The kids had a great week of learning! Next week we’ll be starting our study on building!

Pre K 4

What a fun week we had in Pre K 4 as we recognized National Read Across America week! The children really enjoyed the Zoom visits from our mystery readers. Thank you so much to those of you who volunteered to read.

We celebrated Dr. Seuss ‘s birthday with cupcakes and juice. His books influenced our activities this week as we graphed goldfish and stacked cups for a STEM challenge. We matched green eggs and ham upper and lowercase letters and wrote about all the place we would go. And of course, we practiced our rhyming words! These activities coincided with the books  One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The  Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham , My Many Colored Days and Oh, The Places You’ll Go! 

Next week the children  can look forward to learning about the weather.