February 9, 2011
It was nice to see some of you at the Grammar School Open House this past weekend. What a nice crowd of visitors we had! I always enjoy the opportunity to show off the preschool and all the wonderful projects your children are engaged in these days.
With just five days until our Valentine’s celebration, our attentions have turned to pink hearts, red hearts, purple and blue hearts – and the children have been creating fabulous Valentine artwork. On Monday we will have our annual get-together with the kindergartners, celebrating Valentine’s Day with some special games and activities, stories, and healthy treats that we will create ourselves. Yummm! All children are welcome to join us for the morning even if it’s not your scheduled attendance day. We’ll exchange Valentines just among ourselves (preschoolers – not kindergartners), and children should be making these at home with your help. Here’s a list of all 16 children that are currently in the preschool:
Katherine Niavh
Ben
Chip
Isabelle
Natalie
Sadie
Maxine
Charlotte
Caroline
James
Hannah
Aiden
Ginger
Teddie
Margaretta
With the addition of all the snow lately, we’ve been enjoying our sliding hill on the playground. We dug some tunnels into the snow banks, and shoveled around the swings, too. It’s fortunate that the children are able to walk on top of the snow and can get around on the playground. (I have to watch out not to hit my head on the swing set’s top bar!) We are planning an animal tracking outing with the kindergartners soon. There are usually a variety of prints along the stream area near the garden. We’ll let you know what we find!
The self-portraits are nearly finished, and we are about to start on our individual biographies. These will include interesting information unique to each of us: where we live, whether we have brothers and sisters, how old we are, and more.
Our daily specials (Art, Music, Library, French, and PSD with the kindergartners) continue to be special occasions that preschoolers eagerly look forward to. We recently switched French (now on Thursday) with Library (Ponnie now comes on Wednesday) to give more preschoolers exposure to these specials. We’ll try to do the same again when the schedule makes it possible, perhaps this spring.
Our seed chart has been filling up, thanks to the interesting seeds that children are finding in their lunch items, or bring from home. We now have kiwi, clementine, apple, pear, pickle (!), banana, strawberry, and grapefruit seeds – and Katherine brought in an avocado seed that we are trying to sprout! We’d love to have more seeds – here’s a great opportunity to talk about what seeds your child might like to bring from home.
We are fortunate to have two enthusiastic and professional substitutes who will begin to spend some regular time in the preschool as Leelee assumes her responsibilities for the upper school musical production this time of year. If you don’t yet know Samantha and/or Emily, I hope you’ll take a moment to introduce yourself and welcome them to the program when you have a chance.
Reminder: winter vacation is coming up – February 21 – 25 (no school!)
Thanks, as always, for your continuing efforts at filling our Food Collection Box in the hallway. We’d like to make another delivery to the Putney Food Shelf before our weeklong winter vacation starts (Feb. 21).
Thanks for your enthusiasm and support for the Grammar School Preschool. And thanks for letting us care for your terrific children.
--Ken and Leelee
