Pre K Parent News February 20, 2013

Hi Everyone,

There was love gushing all around the Preschool classrooms this week.  The children had great fun making Valentine collages with hearts cut from a variety of paper, doilies and stickers.  They made Valentine hats and decorated Valentine bags in which to bring home their Valentines.  When they arrived on Thursday morning, everyone was invited to “mail” their Valentines and deliver them to the proper Valentine bag.  The children were so excited when they opened their Valentines!  Their smiles were enormous.  Many took great care in printing the names of their classmates and making their Valentines.  Thank you to everyone who sent in supplies and treats for our party.  Everything was delicious!

We hope that you received your Valentine surprise in the mail on time, too!  Mrs. Kruse helped the children put their envelopes through the postage machine in the faculty mail room.  Everyone carefully placed their letters in the outgoing mail bin for Mr. B. to bring to the Post Office.  I also made a special trip to the Post Office on Thursday afternoon.  We placed all of Neal P.’s Valentines in an envelope and we mailed them to India.  We hope he is surprised!

In addition to celebrating Valentine’s Day last week, we made purple, green and gold masks for Mardi Gras on Tuesday.  We used paper plates, markers, feathers and glitter glue.

On our weekly venture to Letterland, we visited Red Robot with his roller skates and red remote controlled race car!  Red Robot is a robber, as he takes things that belong to others and carries them away in his red sack.  He likes to growl his “rrr” sound as he rolls around with a radio and a rose.  There are Robins, rainbows, rubies and rubbish in his world!  Red Robot tries to trick us when he is in his capital form, but we all recognized that rascal!

Working at separate times, but seemingly together, the Kindergarten, Lower School and Middle School children rolled giant snowballs and created a huge snow fort on the playground.  The children are having great fun climbing on the walls and playing inside of it.

To wind the week up, we took a winter walk on Mike’s Trail Friday morning.  The sun was shining, it wasn’t too cold and the trail had been tamped down by something such as a snowmobile.  Every once in awhile, we would stop and listen to the Earth talking.  We could hear the wind blowing through the trees, water trickling in the stream and the chickadees calling to one another.  We also watched the icy water running under the ice which had formed over the stream.  Every so often we could see a hole in the ice and the water flowing under it.  Around one corner, we spied a tree with a giant trunk.  Mrs. Cooke suggested that it might be a grandfather tree.  We all gave it a good hug and thanked it for giving us all of the little trees.  We also spied some rabbit tracks, as well as deer tracks.  On the final leg of our journey, we stopped at the Middle and Upper School’s “Gaga Pit.”  There are rules posted how the game is played, but the Preschool children just had fun climbing over the small wooden wall and playing inside the small arena.