Sproutlings Newsletter: Week of November 23

Reminders and Upcoming Events:

• Sproutlings will close early this Wednesday, November 25th at 4:00 and we will be closed Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th for Thanksgiving weekend. For a list of all Holiday Closures, please visit our website.
• All students are required to get a flu shot no later than December 31st. Please bring documentation to Sproutlings or email us with a picture.
• If a child visits any of the states on the New Jersey restricted travel list, they are required to stay home for 14 days prior to returning to Sproutlings. Quarantine begins on the first day a child returns to NJ after travel. Please keep this in mind while planning for the holidays. Parents are required to check the most updated list before leaving New Jersey.

Peapods

As usual we are always very busy. We are discovering new places in our room to play peekaboo, crawling around corners and through chair legs. There is always something to see and discover. We also like to look out our door and watch the passing cars and trucks. We played with all our different blocks and we’re learning the different ways to play and build with them. Ms Melissa helped with our song “Five Little Turkeys” and Ms Lu read Dinosaurs Thanksgiving by Liza Donnelly.

Seedlings

The Seedlings had an exciting week!  We had a great time making turkey hand prints and we were so proud of how they came out. We had the biggest smiles! The Seedlings had fun building towers and figuring out our puzzles. During circle time we read I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. We can’t can enough of this story!  We also sang “ 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.”

Beanstalks

This week in Beanstalks was a blast! With Thanksgiving just around the corner, everyone loved talking about what they are going to do and why they love Thanksgiving. We talked about who everyone is most thankful for. We had a lot of answers like parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. We even wrote our very own “thankful notes” to our loved ones that we’ll be sending home right before Thanksgiving!

In literacy, we’ve been focusing on the letters of our names. We also started looking at bigger numbers, counting past 10 and we learned two new shapes- a pentagon and octagon. We had some new book favorites such as Curious George Thanksgiving and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. During music time, we also have a new favorite that everyone really likes, “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.” We can’t wait to see everyone next week with Thanksgiving just around the corner and can’t wait to do more fun activities next week!

Beanstalks II

In the Beanstalks II classroom we had lots of measuring each other with blocks, creating a special Thanksgiving gift for our families and decorating tail feathers for our class turkey. Our favorite books of the week were 10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnston, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Turkey by Lucille Colandro and Run Turkey Run by Diane Mayr. We spent lots of time building and creating with wooden blocks, bristle blocks and Duplo blocks. Using our imaginations to create towers and buildings is one of our favorite classroom activities. In the pretend center, we learned how to set a table and then we had fun “baking” and “cooking” for each other.

Saplings

How do trees change? This was our focus question for the week. We learned that trees make chlorophyll, which is what makes the leaves green. We also learned when fall is approaching the leaves stop making chlorophyll and that’s why the leaves start to change colors. As a group we talked about how trees start as a seed and grow into a seeding, then a sapling and then into a big tree. Our stories we read this week were When The Monkeys Came Back by Kristen L. Franklin and Trees, Trees, Trees by Nancy Noel Williams.

In small group this week we continued working on our handwriting skills. We recognized and identified basic colors and two-dimensional shapes. We used our fine motor skills by cutting leaves that we collected outside. The kids had a fun time looking for leaves to cut! We counted which spot had more and less buttons using egg cartons. This is a great activity to try at home!

In art we used bubble wrap to make corn and made hand turkeys to get in the thanksgiving spirit!

PreK 4

We had a very busy week in Pre K 4 this week. The children worked on advancing their math skills by counting the dots on dominoes and matching the dominos to the correct numbers. Using dice the children did a Roll It, Count It, Write It math activity, using small erasers as counters. The children were introduced to the concept of decomposing number during a large group activity. Focusing on our HWT number of the week 7, the children used crows and a scarecrow to understand how many more or less crows were needed to make the number seven. Lastly, we incorporated our scissor skills to cut crows out and glue onto a fence in numerical order.

We worked on our upper and lowercase letter recognition by matching them and playing Bingo. We also have been working on our beginning letter sounds. Using a grid of pictures and Scrabble letters, the children matched the letter to the corresponding picture beginning with that particular letter. During our large group activities this week we focused on two literacy activities we there children were asked to recall the story in sequential order. The children enjoyed the stories The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves by Lucille Colandro.   The third story we read was called The Scarecrow’s Hat by Ken Brown. The children needed to identify the problem each character in the story was having and then recall the solution for each.

Our HWT letter was the letter H. We have now finished our frog jump capitals and we are now working on our corner starting capitals.

Next week is a short week and the children can look forward to a turkey themed week as well as our Feast With Friends on Wednesday!