St Patrick Preschool - stpatpreschoolanamosa

I am so sorry for the delay in activity on our preschool site.  I had some technical difficulties as I joined another teachers shutterfly account and it changed the password for me on the preschool account as the administrator.  I couldn't get in to add or change anything.  Shutterfly has helped me out and I can now get in to add/change items.  I've posted the January lunch menue and I will post our newsletter.  I also have several pictures of the new centers and I will add new pictures of these.  Sorry for the lapse in information, hopefully this will not occure again.  Ms. Peggy

The children enjoyed a busy morning going to Kroul's Pumpkin Farm.  I've up loaded all the pictures of the field trip please feel free to look over these and add pictures that others may have taken.  Again thank you all for your wonderful response to this trip.  The pumpkins we received at the farm will come home as soon as we've completed our Pumpkin Reports.  

We continue to be busy and learning.  Today we explored all our small group games/activities further fishing for friends, counting birthday candles onto cakes and working with play-dough to make the letters in names.  We had pictures taken today so we shared the story Pig, Pig and the Magic Photo Album.  In this story Pig, Pig goes into the pictures when he says "cheese" after some pretty crazy adventures he finally returns home mess and determined not to say "cheese" for another picture again.  It's a funny story and the kids find it interesting with picture day upon us.  We also had our book buddies come visit today.  We shared several stories with them.  We have been exploring some new toys that some of our classroom friends (the Whitson family) donated to us.  If anyone is cleaning out toy rooms/boxes please think of us here at school we are always looking for toys as they get broken and lost.  We have also been exploring our ramps and balls making different tracks and trying different ideas.  I've down loaded some new photos of the ramp exploration and our visit from our book buddies.  Friday we will be sending home a snack packet with snack calendar and information about the state guidelines we follow.   If you need another copy there is a pdf of our snack calendar on the home page.  

We have been very busy here at preschool.  We have completed our first round of small groups which went well.  We sorted our open house pictures to make a graph on the white board telling us which number of guests was the most popular, we also could see who brought the most guests and who had some individual time with a special parent.  Along with counting and graphing we did some letter and small muscle work we made play dough snakes and filled in name cards with our blue play dough.  We also cut and glued to make fish which we will be painting this week.  Our last small group was fishing for friends. Which was very popular and helps the children learn their friends names.  There are pictures of these group on the picture page along with snap shots of us enjoying our fun snack last Friday when we went fishing, using pretzel rods, soft cheese, and gold fish crackers.  The kids had fun fishing and all of them eat a great snack.  Last bit of news our butterfly came out of the chrysalis today it emerged right away this morning and this afternoon we let it go free.  There are pictures of some friends watching the butterfly in our tank and other of the release.  Don't forget if you want to order books all paper orders and money need to be in by Friday morning and online orders need to be completed by Friday as well.  

We had a wonderful turn out for open house Tuesday.  Thank you to all who endured the heat and came to visit us.  If you have items yet to drop off you can do that all this week or bring them in on the first day of school.  Again if your child will be with us all day please make sure we have a towel or blanket for them to rest on, the state requires us to offer any child in all day programming a minimum of 20 mins. rest time.  If children fall asleep we will let them sleep for 1 hour unless otherwise instructed.  Thank you again for all your help and patience with this new and exciting process.   

Several families were able to sign up for the fall home visit at registration.  If you were unable to arrange a home visit at registration please contact the school office to see what times are still available, or send an email to pgoltz@stpat-anamosa.pvt.k12.ia.us to arrange a time.  

Tuesday, August 9th from 4:00 to 6:00 pm registration for preschool will take place at St. Patrick School.  Please stop by and register your child for preschool and sign up for a home visit time.  Mrs. Goltz will be there to answer questions and help set up home visit times.  

We had so much fun today.  We decorated gift bags for the community trail mix.  We shared the story Under my Hood I have a Hat and played a game working on memory, language skills and positional terms  with the hood of Ms. Peggy's jacket.  Then we went outside and built snow people.  See the photos of our snow people in the 3 year old picture tab.  What a busy and great day.  

We have been working on getting back into the routine of the day.  We have been having a great time in our classroom playing with the tools and snowplows.  The children have been exploring snow.  We made magic snowflakes, snowflakes out of cotton swabs, and explored various snowman story elements.  Today we counted buttons for snowmen working on number recognition, rote counting, and building sets.  We sent home new snack calendars for the remainder of January, February and March.  Please make sure to make note of upcoming events such as our Mardi Gras Carnival.  The carnival is a soup supper with a free will donation and then various carnival games that families can play.  

We've been working on colors and counting sharing the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Today we measure to see how many plastic pumpkins tall the children were most were 5 or 6 pumpkins tall.  We also used an I spy bottle with rice and pictures of each character in it.  The children shook the bottle and then told what they saw, like in the book.  We then colored the characters to match what we saw in the bottle.  It was a great way to see how well the children knew their colors and fun also.  We'll continue to work on colors and explore bear books next week.  

Today we shared the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  We will be doing some work with colors and counting over the next couple weeks using this book as a theme.  The children enjoyed the repetitive nature of the book and joined in with the reading of this story.  We have added several new centers and changed out some of our toys and puzzles.  Check out the pictures of our pumpkin pounding center as well as the fire station dramatic play area.  We have also begun to sing some Halloween songs.  These songs include Mr. Pumpkin and I'm a Jack-o-lantern.

We introduced our helping hands today.  These are hands that moved to various classroom jobs with the children's names and pictures on them.  The jobs include line leader, caboose, cup helper, napkin helper and fish feeder.  Each day the children rotate to a new job so they take turns doing the various tasks around our classroom.  We do have a substitute incase someone is gone and a day off job so there maybe days your child comes home saying I didn't have a job today.  We continue to work on our daily routine and adding components to that as the children are ready.  We shared a story about a mouse coming to school today and talked about how we are all special.  One thing we talked about was that we all have birthdays and we have 5 birthdays coming up in the next 4 to 5 weeks.  We there for made sprinkles for on top of our birthday cakes today.  The children practiced sniping/cutting skills making small pieces of colorful paper to place atop our paper cakes with pretend frosting.  Check out the pictures of friends cutting and placing "sprinkles" on their cakes.  Thanks so much for everyones help and a big thank you to Leah's family for the wonder toy donations.  We enjoyed playing with our new Little People farm, house, and airplane today.  Thanks so much for thinking of us.  If anyone else has toys or garage sale items such as toys/tricycles please let us know I am always shopping for new additions.  Enjoy the cool weather.  Peggy

Today at 3 year old preschool we played with blue play dough using scissors and rollers to manipulate the dough and work on hand muscles.  After tub toys we went to the carpet area for morning meeting where we added bears to our calendar and counted to see how many days to our friends birthdays.  We have three birthdays this month in 3 year old preschool.  We enjoyed playing outside and then came in to an exciting snack.  At snack today we went fishing.  Check out the pictures of us using pretzel rods and cheese spread to catch gold fish crackers.  The children had fun with this snack adventure.  We then read the book "Wheels on the Bus"  we talked about how this was a city bus rather then a school bus because it went all over town and people got on and off while the school bus either picks up and drops off at school visa versa.  We then enjoyed center time playing and coming over to our small group area to finish our school buses.  Another busy day at preschool.  Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Ms. Peggy

We started the day off with some sad friends, but no one stayed sad for long.  We played with blue play dough today.  We rolled snakes and used scissors to cut them into small pieces, some of our friends called them dog treats.  We also pushed the dough out of toys making different shapes.  All these activities really worked our hand muscles, see the pictures of us at work.  After playing we had morning meeting where we sang about frogs.  We sang 5 Green Speckled Frogs but we had 7 and the second time we had 4.  After bathroom breaks we played outside on the swings and slide talking about up and down.  We then enjoyed a snack of gold fish crackers and apple juice.  We shared the story "Hello, School Bus" talking about where the bus and children were.  We then had center time playing in the house, block area and various centers.  During center time we took turns coming over to the small group area to paint a bus.  On Thursday we will work on our buses again.  

Wow what a great turn out for the three year old group!!!  Mrs. Cook and I were so excited to see all our new friends.  Thank you so much for tolerating the heat and allowing us to meet your  families.  We will start preschool next week Tuesday, August 30th.  Programming is 8:15 to 11:15 we do ask that parents/caregivers who are picking up come to the side door and wait by the office area.  Due to the size of our group we want to ensure that our other school friends are not disturbed.  Mrs. Cook and I will bring the 3 year old preschoolers who are picked up down to the office area at 11:15 if you need to drop off school supplies or speak with staff we can go back to the classroom on an individual need basis.  Thank you for your assistance in making our preschool program so successful and all your help with this new endeavor.  Ms. Peggy

We will be having preschool registration on Tuesday, August 9th from 4:00pm to 6:00pm at St. Patrick School.  Please stop by and register your child for preschool.  If you have any questions I will be there to answer questions.  

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