Welcome, Teacher Shaina!

As some of you know, Teacher Maria Nava is leaving Creative Minds at the end of this month and going back to school. I wanted to introduce Teacher Shaina, who will be the lead teacher in Purple Room starting in March. Shania has her bachelors degree in creative arts teacher preparation from San Jose State University and has worked with toddlers and early preschoolers. She will start from next week and overlap with Maria for two weeks to start transitioning. Thanks for your support during transition period. Please give Teacher Shaina a warm welcome to our Creative Minds family!
We wish Maria all the best and she will be missed by all of us!
Some snippets from the last couple weeks:)








Sarah talked about Chinese New Year, the year of snake. She taught the kids a song, read a book and made lucky money envelopes :) We love our parent volunteers! Thank you!








Also lots of hard work went into Valentine's Day cards and frames. I hope you heard lot of conversations and it gave us an opportunity for learning to read and write our friends' names.








I learned something new this week. I offered to read a book called Z is for Zamboni
(since teacher Maria was losing her voice). Please ask your child about it (clue for you: it was a sport-related theme).
Sports are still going strong. They are making their own jerseys now.....more on that in my next blog.
- Teacher Richa

It's A Team Effort!

Purple Room's interest in the San Jose Sharks hockey team has easily transitioned into an interest in Sports in general. After the Niners Superbowl loss on Sunday, children had entered school the next day communicating to one another how the Niners had lost the Superbowl. They even had showed empathy toward them losing by apologizing to both their peers and Teachers about it.
We discussed the variety of sports that people play and pointed out the similarities and differences between the sports. The word Teamwork had been brought to our attention. The class talked about how sports players use teamwork in their games. Teamwork could be applied to our classroom, such as how we work together during clean up time just like players work together to have a successful game. The Purple Room is a team. We have to help each other, respect everyone, look out for one another in order to have a successful day.



Children even brought in shares to help explain the point and importance of sports gear for players.



Soccer games have been a huge hit during our outside play. Rules have even been communicated and established between the children before beginning games.

Besides our exciting exploration of sports, Purple Room has also had activities focused on our letter of the week.












For instance, we made Jell-O for the letter "J" week. We got to try the flavors orange and apple. We even put some fresh peaches in the mix!







We got to celebrate our friends 4th birthday with pizza and juice! What a party!



We were very creative with our classroom toys by discovering new ways to use them. Such as making a comfy chair for our pig friend....


...or creating a drum set using our play kitchen pots and pans.






We even got to enjoy our yummy snacks on a nice sunny day. It was a great way to end a day!