Monday, August 26, 2013

Upcoming changes...

Hello Purple Room families,

As some of you know, I live in and commute from Gilroy every day to Creative Minds. I have commuted to San Jose to work for years. It has become increasingly taxing on me physically and mentally, as well as on my family. After long hours of consideration, I am extremely sad to say, I will be leaving my Creative Minds family. My last day will be Friday September 6th. I will be continuing my work as a preschool teacher closer to home. It has been a pleasure working with your children and building relationships with each one of them as well as all of my wonderful Purple Room families. I thank you all for welcoming me into your lives with open arms. This has been a wonderful learning and growing opportunity for me. I can honestly say I will miss each and every one of you. I assure you that your children will be in wonderful hands.

Please do not hesitate to ask questions. I understand that this can be a confusing and upsetting time. I encourage you to talk with your child about this change. We will be doing the same in class over the next few weeks to help smooth the transition.

I appreciate your support and understanding during this time.

Warm regards,
Shaina


Sunday, August 25, 2013

Career day

Happy Sunday Purple Room Families,

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend!

Good news! Our class book is complete! It will be sent out this week to get laminated to help it last. We are very excited to share it with our families. It will stay in our classroom, but it will open to everyone for reading.

After talking so much about stories and characters and playing through dress-up, I thought it would be fitting to do a short unit on careers. I'd like to talk about what each child would like to be when they get older. I'd like to discuss the gifts or talents each student has and the ways that those gifts can be used. We will be researching in depth some of the common professions and discuss the ways that those professions help our community. My hope is that each child will understand the important role they play in our society. Each job is special and important to helping our society run successfully. We will, of course, have fun crafts and activities planned throughout the week. To end our summer program, I would like to have a picnic lunch on Friday. Lunch will goes as usual, only outside.

For one of the crafts this week, I ask that each student bring a paper bag to school. Please bring in all bags by Wednesday.

Looking forward to this week. See you all tomorrow!

Warm Regards,
Shaina



Monday, August 19, 2013

Saying Good-bye and Hello

Hello Purple Room,

My apologies that this email is coming so late. I was not able to get to a computer over the weekend. This week we will be finishing up our class book. We will be discussing what it means to be an editor. We will be going back through our story and editing our work (adding to it, taking away, altering in some way). By Friday our book will be done and put together. It's so wonderful to read our story and know that the ideas and images present were all created by our Purple Room kids. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it.

It's hard to believe that our summer program is coming to an end. We've had to say goodbye to many good friends over the past few weeks but are excited for their new adventures. Good luck to all our Purple Room friends who have moved on or are moving on soon to Kindergarten and Junior Kindergatern. We will miss you!

We will start our fall program the first week of September. We will be focusing in on the alphabet, reading and writing our names, recognizing our sight words, as well as recognizing shapes, colors, and numbers.

Enjoy the rest of your Monday.

Take care,
Shaina



Monday, August 12, 2013

A quick note

Hello Purple Room families,

A few parents have been asking about having a separate share day for those kids that are not scheduled on Wednesdays. So, if your child does not come on Wednesdays, he or she can share on Thursdays. For those children that are regularly scheduled on Wednesdays, Wednesday is your only day to share.

Also, Friday we will be painting with balloons, so please send your child with a bag of clothes that you don't mind getting paint on. Old shoes would also be wise to bring.

Thank you!

Shaina

Friday, August 9, 2013

Works in progress

Hello Purple Room Parents,

Happy Friday! I hope you are all enjoying your day so far.

This week we have been working very hard on our class book. It is not complete yet, but is coming along great. Our students have really stepped out of box and shown their creativity throughout this process. It's been so wonderful seeing their imagination grow through their great ideas and contributions. We have also been working hard on our illustrations for our story. I had no idea we had so many great artists in our class!

We will be continuing our class book project through next week. Once our book is done I will be putting it all together so that parents and students can read it. I am looking forward to seeing where our students' imagination will take us next in our story.

Lastly, some of you have been asking about what will happen after our summer program ends. Starting September 1st we will begin working on the alphabet, our names, numbers, shapes, and colors more closely. Teacher Jennifer is also working on a summary of the standards your child should know before going off to kindergarten. As soon as we have the final form, it will be sent out. We will be trying to achieve these standards in class, however, it is always a great idea to work with your child at home as well. This helps reinforce what we are learning at school. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Enjoy your weekend! See you all next week.

Shaina

Friday, August 2, 2013

Writing a book

Happy Friday Purple Room!

Our students have had so much fun with our fairytale unit! On Wednesday we discussed what a story map is and what things/parts make a story. We discussed title, author, main characters, supporting characters, setting, beginning, middle (sometimes known as the problem) and the end or the solution. We then made a very brief story together. The kids loved coming up with their own story as class, so this week we will be starting our very own class chapter book.

My goals for this unit are:
* practice class collaboration
* show the importance of each student in making our story a success
* learn that books and stories are not just for our entertainment, rather they hold meaning and there are lessons to be learned from everything we read
brainstorm about what we want our story to convey; what do we want the audience to learn?
* put meaning into our artwork. In this unit our artwork will need to convey what the text says in order for our audience to follow and understand our story
and most of all HAVE FUN!

On a separate note, after discussing with my co-teachers we have decided to limit shares to one day each week. Our share day will be Wednesdays. I would also like to bring intentionality into our sharing. I ask that each student bring a share that is, in some way or another, educational. We would like to steer away from sharing toys such as Disney themed items, toy cars, stuffed animals etc. These are wonderful items for home, but not for the classroom. I encourage and challenge my students to find a share that can teach our class something. Books, pictures, and drawings make wonderful shares, for example. Any share that can help us learn as a class is a great share to bring. Also, shares that reflect our unit or theme that we are working on at the time make great shares.

Lastly, I wanted to touch upon parent involvement in the classroom. As you all know, we have an open door policy at Creative Minds. This means, if you ever have a free moment to come by our class and help out or just watch, you are always welcome. We love parent volunteers and of course the kids love to have their parents involved in their daily school life. I absolutely love to see parents come into our classroom and dive right in with the kids. It makes for a fun environment!

We are looking forward to next week. I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Take care,
Shaina