Photos from P & Q!

We have had loads of fun over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I will only be able to touch on a thing or two from each week. I hope your child enjoyed our activities as much as i did!

We had a blast during P week with Pajama Day, Pirate Day and Participation Day. On Pirate Day we made a treasure map and played a game of X Marks the Spot. We also had a treasure hunt in class, ate Pirate Booty and made eye patches! Here are a few pictures from Pirate Day.















For Q week we made a class quilt in which every child decorated their own cloth piece to go on our quilt. The quilt is still being made. I hope to have it finished in the next few weeks. How fun would it be to have a picnic on a quilt made by our very own students? We also made quesadillas, which were a huge hit! Here are a few pictures of Q week.

Recipes!

Good afternoon Purple Room parents,

Next week is R week. We have a lot of fun things planned. We are going to start the week off with Radical Red Day on Monday. We encourage students to find everything and anything red to wear to school on Monday. We will be taking pictures of our red attire for our blog. Aside from this, we will make rectangle robots, rockets, rain sticks, discuss rainbows, classify rocks by shape, size and weight, make Rice Krispy treats, discuss recipes and make our own recipe books.

Our recipe book will require parent participation. I ask that each child bring a recipe to school by Wednesday April 10th. It can be a family recipe or simply a recipe found online, cook book, etc. I will take all of the recipes and put them together to make a book in which the students will decorate and take home. Each student will have a book of recipes provided by everyone in the class. My hope is that this book will be an easy reference for recipes that you and your child can do together in the future.

Alongside our recipe book we will be making a recipe for a good student. This will be done as a class and will include all the ingredients needed to make a good student. ( i.e. good listener, helpful, involved in class activities, etc.) Please discuss this idea with your child and help them come up with some ingredients to make a good student. We will brainstorm as a class and bring all of our ideas together to make a complete recipe.

On a separate note, classroom behavior has improved this week. We are not quite ready for shares, however. So, please keep shares at home. When they are brought to school they are too much of a distraction for students. If classroom behavior continues to improve, we will incorporate shares again. I am considering having designated days for sharing. When we get to that point I will let you know what days of the week we will have shares.

If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to email me.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Take care,
Shaina

Questioning Q

Hello Purple Room parents,

First off, I would like to let you know that we did not have our picnic on Friday. We will try again when we can all find our listening ears, walking feet, gentle hands and kind words.

Secondly, because of classroom behavior over the last few weeks I have chosen to stop doing shares for the time being. Sharing must be earned and unfortunately, we are not at a place where we have earned that privilege yet. Please do not bring shares to school until notified. They have become too much of a distraction for the children and a problem in the classroom. My hope is that soon we will be in a place to start sharing again. In the meantime, I encourage you to discuss with your child the idea of walking feet, gentle hands, kind words and listening ears as well as help them practice at home. As a class, we will do the same.

As for this week, we will be focusing on the letter Q. Many of our students are still learning the difference between questions and comments, so for this reason we will be learning about the 6 types of questions (who, what, where, when, why, how). Each day we will have a "question of the day" which we will discuss as a class as well as reflect upon in our journals. Some of the other fun things we will be doing this week are: q-tip art, making a class quilt, discussing queens as well as making a queen craft, learning about quarters and other coins, and making quesadillas.

We are looking forward to the fun activities planned. I hope you and your families had a wonderful weekend!

Warm regards,
Shaina

Fun With the letter O!

As some of you may know, I am new to the blogging world. It has been a while since the last blog, so we have a lot to cover! The Purple Room has been very busy this month! In the last few weeks, we have celebrated birthdays, made lots of fun crafts, and made yummy food! We talked all about the ocean for letter O week. We learned about the different sea creatures that live in the ocean and even made our own ocean in a bottle! We experimented with the color orange. We made orange juice as well as grilled cheese sandwiches that were a hit!

We celebrated two birthdays! Allison turned 5 and Shreya turned 4. We read stories together and ate pizza and fruit.


















Letter O week:
We used red and yellow to make the color orange. Messy, but so much fun!








We made oceans in a bottle! Cool!





We made an Octopus. We decorated his tentacles with Cheerios to make the suction cups.






We made orange juice and grilled cheese sandwiches! Delicious!






























And as always we had loads of fun outside!


















We are looking forward to P week and all the fun that lies ahead!

Shaina

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!