Preschool Highlights

If there was a green folder sent home with your child with their work, could you please return them the following week. We will be using these to send home work or other important information each week!

This week we start learning about life cycles of plants, specifically the flower. We first talked about everything we know about flowers, followed by the parts of a flower and how the life cycle of a flower occurs. We finished off the week with rolling up our sleeves, getting our hands dirty and doing some gardening ourselves!

At the beginning of lessons like this we like to make webs on what we do know, so that we can work off of that and expand on either what we do know or focus in on what we want to learn. After we talked about what we did know about flowers, we started to learn about how they grow, what they need to have to grow, and how we can represent that in the class.

We went over with the students how the life cycle of a flower works and what are the steps that are involved with it. We learned that we start with a seed, then with some sun, water and nutrients, it is able to grow roots in the soil, sprout into a stem and then grow into a beautiful flower! We had the students be able select which ones they need first, second, third and last and represent the stages with color and their own designes.

We did a scavenger hunt for different things in spring. We found Flowers, Grass, Pinecones, Leaves and Petals. The students were able to make the list with us, checked off each item and used their senses to investigate them!

After talking about the life cycles, we got to experience the beginning of the life cycle of a flower. We planted seeds, learning how a seed goes into the ground, how to bury it and water it to make it grow and where in the classroom to put them. We voted and we decided that the best place for them to get the sun is the window ledge.

Just some friendly reminders about student safety and please share with babysitters and others who will either be dropping off and picking up your child...

• If LATE, used front entrance and check in at the office.
• If coming EARLY, check in at the front office and a staff member will bring your child to you, unless other wise.
• If picking up a sick child who is located in the nurse office, check in at the front office and then pick your child from the school nurse.
• Please have your child sit and buckled in their car seat.
• Always feet first going down a slide (on their bottoms or on their stomachs with feet first.)
• Holding on with two hands on the swings or monkey bars.

Young children have strong feelings about what they want, and they may feel strong disappointment when they don’t get it. Adults may be tempted to give children what they want when they are disappointed, but it is important for children to understand that they can’t always have what they want. Slow belly breathing helps lower blood pressure and heart rate, which calms the body. In contrast, noisy, fast breathing and breathing from the chest can cause children to feel more upset.

In the large photo the student in the purple wanted to sit next to the teacher but was not able to sit next to the teacher. The objectives and learning concepts in this lesson supports children to do...

• Demonstrate belly breathing.
• Demonstrate the Calming-Down Steps in response to scenarios

• When you don’t get what you want, you can feel disappointed.
• Belly breathing calms down strong feelings.
• Belly breathing pushes the belly out when you breathe in.

May

12th - Grandparents Day

23rd- Spring Family Picnic (combination of Mother's Day and Father's Day celebrations)

24th - District wide kindergarten visitation

26th - Early Release - Professional Development Day for Teachers

29th - No School - Memorial Day

Preschool Classroom Teacher at Julian Curtiss Elementary School. Paraprofessionals in the classroom are Ms. Kristen and Ms. Julie

Mr. Alex's Classroom Ext. 3348

Email: alex_redmond@greenwich.k12.ct.us
Website: https://www.greenwichschools.org/teaching-learning/preschool
Location: Julian Curtiss School, East Elm Street, Greenwich, CT, USA
Phone: 203-869-1896