Rumney Preschool
Ms. Murray's Classes
Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
This week was so fun. The Mon/Tues class are building their classroom community, although it is small! The Wed/Thurs class is continuing to build their classroom community, and enjoying playing together as they are starting to pick up on each other’s similar interests. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, we enjoyed a ton of time out on the playground. Swings were a big hit! It was great to see how excited they got to get pushed super high on the swings. On Tuesday, we let the butterflies go! It was so exciting for the kiddos to bring out a butterfly at dismissal and show it to their grown ups as we let it go. We took pictures of the butterfly and I printed them out to hang in our classroom to promote conversations. Speaking of photos, on Thursday of this week, the kiddos enjoyed using an instant camera to learn about photography. They were patient while learning how to use the camera, and enjoyed taking photos of what was important to them. Some photos of note were: a ball in the gym, their friends, many photos of Crystal (we love Crystal!), and a castle they built. We will be learning more about photography in the next week or so (in both classes). Please be on the lookout for a new display of learning on the bulletin board in the hall once we wrap up this project. Check out the slideshow pictures at the bottom of the blog to see some pictures of them taking pictures! It was fascinating to see them learn how to use a camera, and then explain how to use it. Below are some quotes on how to use the camera: “You push it up first then you look at it. You press the button to take the picture. -Scout” “First, you pick it up. Then you look in it. You look in the little spot to see what you want to take a picture of. You press the button and it takes the picture. The picture comes right out. -Ali” We enjoyed the gym on Thursday. While I love to get out in the rain, it was coming down pretty hard during our outside time, and they absolutely love the gym. I brought our climber down and set up some mats for tumbling and doing yoga. I overheard one friend running by me saying, “This is the best day of my life!!!!” They had a blast! Ask Your Child: Mon/Tues: What did you do with shovels on the playground? Wed/Thurs: Did you use a camera? How does the camera work? How do you get the picture to come out? Enjoy the first weekend of fall! Deanna
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Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
Thank you so much for stopping in for Open House! It was our first open house since 2019!!! It was wonderful to see folks back in the building again. Your kiddos really enjoyed showing you around the classroom and school. In both classes this week, we played with some shaving cream and cut up pool noodles. They used the shaving cream to work as an adhesive to see how high they could stack the pool noodles. Some pretended they were frosting a cake or some pretended they were apples and they were stacking them on top of one another. Speaking of apples — the W/Th crew had a blast collecting bags of apples on the playground yesterday. They collected apples, sticks, mulch, and dirt. They had a blast! In both classes, they spent some time looking in mirrors and making some silly art faces that I put on the bulletin board. Next time you drop off your child, be sure to check out the bulletin board and scan their QR code to see a quick video of your child! On Thursday, Ms. Honi, who many of you know, dropped off some GIANT sunflowers for us to use! They enjoyed measuring themselves and counting how many blocks tall the sunflowers were. They also spent part of the afternoon getting the seeds out to collect and take home. This class sure loves collecting! It’s been lovely to watch your children start to build strong connections with one another, or build upon a connection from last year. I am looking forward to watching your children grow up together! Ask Your Child: Were there a lot of apples on the playground this week? Do you think there will be more next week? What color were the apples? Thanks, Deanna Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
Another week in the books with my favorite pals! They had a great week of exploring and playing. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, it was a pretty small crew. They enjoyed playing all sorts of things together — matching games, at the water table, swinging outside. In both classes we started doing a directed drawing of an apple. While I tend to appreciate process over product art, directed drawings can be helpful for many skills such as: following directions, taking turns, identifying colors, fine motor skills. They enjoyed doing their apples in both classes! Sometimes our directed drawings are on big paper with watercolor paint and some are on small papers with paint sticks. On Wednesday, we welcomed our grown up Haley back after her wedding! Some kids met her for the first time and some knew her from the end of last school year. Also on Wednesday, they used shovels on the playground to move mulch under the swing sets so they could reach the swings without any adult help. They love to work! Many kiddos on Wednesday and Thursday decided to climb the rock on our playground. I think of this rock as a rite of passage for a Rumney 4 year old. It is a great climbing rock but is really tricky to climb as a 3 year old. They all patiently waited in line and took turns climbing it with my help. After each child got to the top, I asked them the same question: Do you feel strong and brave? Everyone said yes! If you happen to be on our playground on a weekend or not school day, ask your child to show you how they climb it! Pete the Cat books and Jabari Jumps have been some class favorites this week! In Jabari Jumps, Jabari is nervous to climb the tall ladder to jump off the diving board. He works through being scared with the help of his dad, and we talked about how we are all scared sometimes. Something else special about this book is the illustrations. One page shows what it looks like from the top of the diving board from Jabari’s perspective — they learned that big word “perspective” and noticed different people’s perspectives throughout the book. Attached to my weekly email is a PDF of fun family events happening over the next few weeks. There is also the Montpelier Food Festival happening this weekend. While it is not a specific child event, it does seem like there will be something for everyone! Ask Your Child: Tell me your favorite thing to do on the playground. Why do you like it? Thanks, Deanna Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
What a fun week! The Monday/Tuesday class had an awesome first two days of school. They are a lovely little group. The four of them had a lot of fun exploring the classroom together and learning about one another. On the playground this week, the Mon/Tues class found a cecropia caterpillar! I had never seen or heard of one before — they are huge! They watched it crawl on our playground and climb up a tree. There is a photo of just the caterpillar in the slideshow at the bottom of the blog. Both classes enjoyed hearing Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes. This is a fantastic story for retelling. After reading it, we listened to the author, Eric Litwin, read it to us as well. Later, they finger painted 4 shoes to retell the story: one red for the strawberries he stepped in, one blue fir the blueberries, one brown for the mud, and one white for stepping in water and washing all the colors away. They loved it! Another fun activity each class did this week was something called “Me and My Preschool Friends”. I printed out a class set of pictures for each child, cut out for the 3 year old group, and uncut for the 4 year old group. After they were cut, they glued them onto a sheet of paper. They loved seeing each other in the pictures and this activity assisted in learning all the names in the classes. The Wed/Thurs class enjoyed another week of collecting apples on the playground! They filled them up in trucks and buckets. The Mon/Tues class also loved loading the apples into trucks. Our caterpillars are starting to get pretty big. Thank you for bringing in some milkweed! They have all been very interested in watching them and sharing the knowledge they know about caterpillars. Ask Your Child: Mon/Tues: Did you do any painting this week? How (on the easel, at the table with a big piece of paper, using dot markers) Wed/Thurs: Did you go to the gym on Thursday? What games did you play? Have a great weekend, Deanna Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
We had a fantastic first two days of school! The Wed/Thurs class picked up right where they left off in June. We have some new and old faces, and friends who were in different classes last year getting to know each other. It was really sweet to see them be so kind to one another and gently ask, “What’s your name?” or, “I really want to play with…. her!” They are already working hard to build their classroom community. On Wednesday, we read a fun story called Bark, George by Jules Fieffer. It is about a dog named George who keeps making different animal sounds. The vet ends up pulling many animals (cat, duck, cow, etc) out of George! It’s a fun story to read on the first day of school that isn’t about the first day of school. Outside on Wednesday and Thursday, they were excited to start collecting apples. We shook the tree and they collected them and made apple pie, apple cake, and other apple goodies! On Thursday, they enjoyed using dinosaur stilt buckets. These take a lot of mental and physical energy to do! I was so impressed watching them try, fall down, and try again. We also played with a fun new toy called Joinks (picture below). They are wooden dowels with silicone connectors to build and create. They had a blast with those! Every Friday I will send out a blog post just like this one to let you know what your child did at school to give you a glimpse into their school life. There will be a slideshow of pictures at the bottom to see how much fun they are having! I will also add something called Ask Your Child at the bottom of each post. This will be a question about something we did to promote conversations. If you have any questions about anything at all, please email me! I look forward to meeting the Mon/Tues class on Monday! Ask Your Child: 1. Did you cut out pictures of what is in and what is not in your classroom? What is in your classroom? 2. Did you collect any apples on the playground? What did you do with them? Have a great weekend, Deanna Hi Families! First and foremost, thank you so much for all of the support this year and for sharing your lovely kiddos with all of us at school. They are thoughtful, funny, and kind. We had a blast this year! We sure packed a ton of things into the last week of school. The MT class did their tie dying and really enjoyed it. Both classes loved doing the tie dye. It was great to see their individual personalities come through on their shirts based on how they dyed them and what colors they used. Monday of this week was Rumney Reads day. Aly, our school Librarian, set it all up. In the morning time, we had a guest reader come to our classroom — ours was our Math interventionist, Matt Pelkey. He told the story of Anansi the spider and the magic rock They acted it out. It was awesome! Some kiddos were hippos, some were birds, some were cows, some were snakes, and Matt was Anansi. I will add some questions to the Ask Your Child section about this. After that, we saw a fire truck! Ms. Honi in Kindergarten arranged for a fire truck to stop by. Some pals hopped right in. Later that day, the 6th graders came by to read to us. They each paired up with one or two preschool pals and read for about 25 minutes. It was wonderful to see the 6th graders make some great connections with the preschool kids. What a busy day! We took some class pictures this week, which is always a challenging and funny task with a group of preschool aged children. It’s really hard work to get everyone looking and smiling at the same time! On Wednesday, they had a very large tree/branch that they all carried around the playground and worked together. They brought it into the house and said they were going to use it to “make some bacon”. On our way inside from the playground, we found some wild strawberries on the hill. They spent about 5-10 minutes searching for them. They were so excited to find so many! They looked for some again on Thursday, but I’m fairly certain they got them all on Wednesday. We had a last day celebration in each class with some ice cream. It was also the end of the ice cream shop unit — perfect timing. They each got one pretend dollar and ordered their ice cream. I asked them if they wanted sprinkles, whipped cream, and a cherry, since those were the options in our pretend ice cream shop. They loved it! Thank you for donating pints of Ben and Jerry’s. Below is information for summer fun! Here are some fun ideas for over the summer to support math and literacy: If you would like to expand on your child's knowledge over the summer, the best advice I could give is to read! Reading at night, reading during long car rides with older siblings, and talking about reading! Counting is always a great and easy way to incorporate more learning into summer play. For example: "How many grapes are we taking for the picnic? Let's count them!" A great kindergarten skill is counting on. For example: "We have 12 toys here and 4 more over there. Let's start counting to see how many we have all together. (start with 12) 12, 13, 14 , 15, 16.” Here are the phrases/sayings we use in preschool to promote equity, understanding, kindness, and the social-emotional well being of all kids. These can be used at home/play dates/etc:
Ask Your Child: How much was the real ice cream at the ice cream shop? Did you get sprinkles and/or cherries and/or whipped cream? Bonus AYC for Mon/Tues: Can you tell me about the Anansi the spider story? What happens when the characters said “That’s the strangest moss covered looking rock I’ve ever seen!” What happened at the end of the story? Did Anansi keep the food? I hope you have a fantastic summer of camping, eating, swimming, and being outside. I hope to see you out and about! Thanks for a great year, Deanna Hi Pre-K Families, Announcements:
Can you believe the year is winding down?! Next week is our last week of school and the kids are getting excited for summer. Many of the kiddos that will be going to Kindergarten next year have been sharing their excitement with one another. It's so great to see them grow. Next week, your kids will be coming home with all of their extra clothing and anything else. This week, they came to school to find that our dramatic play turned into a scoop shop! They have all enjoyed taking orders, scooping ice cream, and adding all the extra stuff on. We have an order form that asks if they want the ice cream in a cup or cone, 1, 2, or 3 scoops, and if they want cherries, whipped cream, or sprinkles on it. If you can believe it, they usually want 3 scoops with everything on it! On Monday and Tuesday, they enjoyed playing outside and throwing balls through the basketball hoop. They came up with a great way to reach if they aren't tall enough -- standing on a bucket! It was wonderful to watch them share the balls with one another and cheer everyone on. The Wed/Thurs class tie dyed shirts this week with the help of Jen Campbell (the art teacher) and Shauna (Maverick's mom). Jen & Shauna, thanks for all the help! The kids were amazing. I have to admit, I was a little nervous on how it was going to go but they rocked it. The Mon/Tues class will do theirs on Monday. I am not 100% sure if the shirts will be ready to take home by Tuesday, and if not, I will leave them in the office for you to swing by and pick them up. On Thursday, we played in the rain and in the gym! It was great to see them playing in two different environments. We played a game called Mud Dinosaur where I was the dinosaur and had to chase them in the rain. They were pretty fast and slippery! On Thursday, the kiddos going to kindergarten got to visit the K class. They loved it! The upcoming K kids in the MT class will do that next week. While we do not know who will be the kindergarten teacher yet, I hope that info will be available shortly so you can start to prepare your child. In both classes, we did some ice cream themed math games such as ice cream patterns. They watched me make a pattern with ice cream scoops, then they had to replicate it. After that, they had to color in the pattern on a printed out ice cream cone with a ton of scoops. They rocked extending their patterns. On Tuesday, we had ice cream words with ice cream themed paper. They enjoyed writing the words and making them into books. Both classes have read some fun ice cream related books such as Should I Share My Ice Cream by Mo Willems and The Sweetest Scoop: Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Revolution by Lisa Robinson. We will celebrate the end of the school year and the end of the ice cream fun by them eating real ice cream on their last day (Tuesday for MT, Thursday for WTh). I think they will enjoy it because they will "buy" it through the scoop shop in the dramatic play. I am planning on getting Ben & Jerry's Phish Food. HERE is a link to their website with the ingredients. Please let me know if your child cannot have this flavor and I will get an alternate flavor. If anyone wants to donate a pint of Phish Food, please let me know (and thank you)! Ask Your Child: Tell me about the ice cream shop. Were you a customer and a worker? Which did you like better? What's your favorite kind of ice cream? Have a good weekend, Deanna Hi Families! Announcements:
We’re almost there, folks. The kids are certainly ready to be let loose for summer break! They are all eagerly waiting for hot days to swim and have a cold treat. With only one day for the MT class, there aren’t many pictures, so I apologize for that! On Tuesday, they were enjoying mixing different colored water. One friend asked for black watercolor paint and they were amazed as they poured the black and it mixed with the other colors, looking like squid ink. Also on Tuesday, we had an unscored CLASS observation. CLASS is an evaluation tool that the state uses to rate the effectiveness of interactions between teachers and children. The observer, Sandy, stayed for a few hours on Tuesday morning. She watched us through our day and then met with me after the kids went outside with Crystal. Sandy shared some great feedback and noted that everyone seemed so happy. During the observation, she witnessed their favorite morning meeting greeting: the shoe greeting. Everyone takes off a shoe and puts it in the middle. One person grabs a shoe without looking and has to guess who it belongs to, then they say good morning to them. They love it and ask to do it a lot! On Wednesday, we went out to the rock garden and to our surprise, we found slugs and snails! They were over the moon. They collected them and helped each other find more. On Thursday, we made play doh donuts and had to add sprinkles on them with cards that told us how many yellow, blue, orange, and purple sprinkles. They worked on using pressure to roll the play doh into long snakes, turn it into a circle, and pinch it together to make a donut. Lots of fine motor work going on there! The MT class will do this on Monday. There are some great events happening around the area this weekend. Camp Meade will host Bee & Friends Ballet tomorrow (HERE is a link to tickets) and Montpelier is having it’s first (I think first!) pride fest. I hope to see folks around town! I hope everyone has a great weekend full of fun! Ask Your Child: Mon/Tues: Did someone visit your class this week? What do you think she was doing there? Wed/Thurs: Did you make play doh donuts? What did you have to add to them? Deanna Hi Families! Announcements:
We are in the home stretch! With only 3 weeks left of school, it is absolutely amazing to think back and reflect on how much your children have grown over the course of the year. They have built two extremely strong classroom communities where they love and care about each other. On Monday of this week, we went outside to the sidewalk and they found their names written down. They traced their names with a piece of chalk and then “painted” their name a paint brush and water. Later on in the day, the U32 band and chorus students came to put on a performance. There were wind instruments, string instruments, and singing. One friend leaned over and said to me, “This is my first concert, it is so fun!” On Tuesday, the kiddos went on a the same shape treasure hunt that the Wed/Thurs class went on last week. They enjoyed making pirate hats and using their treasure maps to find the treasure! On Tuesday & Wednesday, both classes “made” beehives with counting cards, yellow pattern blocks (honeycombs), little bee pictures (bees), and pom poms (pollen). The cards said something along the lines of “3 honeycombs, 4 bees, 2 pom poms,” and they had to count all of them out and design their beehive! On Thursday, we did a similar game but with smoothies. I had red pom poms (strawberries), blue pom poms (blueberries), and some cut yellow felt (bananas). They had to figure out what numbers were on the cards and make a smoothie! An example is: 4 blueberries, 3 strawberries, 7 bananas. We all “tasted” the smoothies after. Some friends were getting deep into the play saying that their smoothies need more banana or have too many blueberries. It was fun! In addition to “making” smoothies on Thursday, they also enjoyed playing rounds of animal bingo with Crystal. A few of them were very interested in making hats with dinosaurs on them so we helped cut out dinosaur shapes and taped/glued them onto hats we made out of construction paper. They had a blast and were so excited to show all of you. Preschool screening was lovely! It was great to meet new kiddos who will be coming to school in the fall. If anyone moves into town and has a preschool aged child, please put them in contact with me. Ask Your Child: Did you make a beehive? How did you make it? Were there number cards? What did you use to make them [yellow pattern blocks, bee pictures, yellow pom poms]. Have a great long weekend, Deanna Hi Preschool Families! Announcements:
How is it possible that we continue to have so much fun week after week? This week was so fun and your kiddos did tons of learning through their play. On Monday, they were very interested in writing letters and putting them in envelopes. We wrote letters to other friends and grown ups in our school and walked around the deliver them while someone wore the mail uniform from the dramatic play. They learned about where stamps go on an envelope and where their name and the letter receivers name goes on an envelope. On Tuesday, we had a bike, trike, and scooter day! They got to school and there were bike related activities on the tables such as bike/trike/helmet/scooter patterns, and coloring in their own scooters. Later that day, we went outside to the tennis courts and spent a long time riding around. Crystal and I were impressed with their control! It was also sweet to see them let each other have turns on whatever they brought in from home to ride. We rode in the gym later in the day. The weather this Thursday prevented me from planning this for the Wed/Thurs class. We will do this once there is a nice weather day! On Wednesday, we had a fun long time on the playground! On Thursday, we enjoyed playing on the playground, but then it started to rain so we went to their favorite place ever: the gym! I don't know what it is about the gym, but they love it. We took out balls and we rolled and kicked them back and forth for a very long time. They were all exhausted after. Later in the day on Thursday, we made pirate hats and they all received a treasure map. The map had different shapes on it that we needed to find throughout the school. First, they traced the lines on the map with their fingers and named what shapes they were looking for. They searched throughout the school and found all the shapes, which led them to the treasure! The treasure were coins (made of construction paper) and they had to find the one with their names on it. They were over the moon! Ask Your Child: Mon/Tues: Where did you ride? Did you try to ride anything different (balance bike, trike, scooter, bike?) Wed/Thurs: Were you a pirate this week? What did you have to do when you got the treasure map? Tell me the shapes that you found. Was there treasure at the end? Have a good weekend, Deanna |
Welcome!Hello and welcome to the Rumney Preschool blog for Ms. Murray's classes! You will find information about what we do every day in preschool along with important announcements. *Photos on the Blog*
If you would like family members to see pictures of your child playing at school, please email me and I will add them to my weekly email list. These photos are not permitted to be posted on social media. Thank you! Archives
June 2023
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