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Greetings 121 Pre-K Families,

Just when we were getting back into the swing of things, we get two snow days! I hope that over the past two days you’ve been able to do fun things inside and have only had to go outside if it was necessary! Over the past two days I have been working on assessments and goals for the 2015 year for the children, and also preparing myself for my International Baccalaureate training coming up in February!

This year I am on the Primary Years Programme Implementation Team (PYP). I am one of ten teachers that will be helping to roll out the three year process for our PreK-5 grades to become “IB Certified” in the PYP Programme. If you haven’t already researched or looked into what all “IB” and “PYP” mean for you and your family here at Peirce, please take a look at this great introductory video that shows you the foundation of this program at the bottom of this post. We do many of these ideas and concepts in preschool, but now it will be looked at in a much broader sense stretching throughout grades bands from PreK-8 in our school. This is an exciting time to be at Peirce, and I am so glad you have joined us for this amazing journey in your child’s education.

Stay warm! I hope to see you all tomorrow (Friday)! Please keep your ears and eyes peeled for weather updates as the day continues. Don’t forget that our first field trip is on Monday, January 12th!!!

http://youtu.be/2Z5Bquzkvys

Happy New Year to all of you! I hope that you had a relaxing and fun holiday season with your preschooler! I enjoyed spending the holidays with my parents down in Florida. It was a great time spending two weeks with my parents and our family dog Pedro the chihuahua!

Looking into this first week back, please make sure your child is coming to school with warm clothes! It will be pretty chilly this week, and we will NOT be going out for recess based on the early weather predictions. As stated in December’s newsletter, we recommend that you write your child’s name or initials on their tags inside their jackets, hats, scarfs, boots, etc… so there is not any confusion on what belongs to each child. This also is a good week to send in some EXTRA WARM CLOTHES for your child’s cubby bin. 

With keeping in mind of wearing warm clothes to school, it is now boot weather!!! In an effort to keep out classroom clean and slush free, we ask the children to take their boots off outside of the classroom door. We leave their boots out in the hallway to dry off and get warm again before we put them back on to go outside or to go home. Due to having them take off their boots before coming into the classroom, we ask that your provide a pair of slippers or shoes in their backpacks. The children are free to keep these slippers or shoes in their cubby bin all winter long so that you don’t have to keep remembering to put the shoes or slippers in their backpacks everyday. The children LOVE wearing their slippers in class during the winter, and I think it’s a fun little treat for them. Thank you for your help with this in advance!

These first two weeks back will go by very quickly. We will be reviewing our daily routines and rules. We also will be preparing for our field trip to the Chicago Children’s Museum at Navy Pier on Monday, January 12th! We will be taking 4-5 parents from each classroom for a total of 10 max. For this field trip, parent chaperones will be required to take a small group of four students around the museum. During the field trip we will ask you to interact with the children to help facilitate their play, ask guiding questions, observations, and move them throughout the museum. The Chicago Children’s Museum is awesome in giving us set schedules on what to visit and when to visit the exhibits. If this is something you are interested in doing, please email me by Thursday, January 8th!

Miss Santiago and I are looking forward to a productive second half of the school year with the children! This time of the school year is the most exciting for us, as this is when the children really spring board with their cognitive skills and begin to grow rapidly in their language, critical thinking skills, and problem solving skills!

Our unit of studies this month will revolve around the weather changes going on around us. Snow, Ice, Liquid to Solid, Cold/Hot, Wind, etc… We also will introduce the children to arctic animals and see where that takes us. We will be doing a lot of science experiments this month in class! So keep your eyes peeled and ears listening to new experiences your child has in class!

Enjoy some pictures of my family and winter fun!

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On Friday, December 19th before Winter Break started, we had a school wide “Pajama Day”! It was a lot of fun, and the children enjoyed seeing each other in their pajamas. We also had themed learning centers which revolved around “The Gingerbread Man”. Throughout the week leading up to Pajama Day we read five different versions of The Gingerbread Man. We enjoyed listening to one of the stories at our Listening Center, created our own gingerbread people at the Gingerbread Play-dough Center, re-enacted the story at our housekeeping/dramatic play center, painted our favorite characters from the stories at the art easel, and even decorated our own gingerbread person at the art table! Earlier in the week we had our “official” gingerbread man cookie taste test! We had lots of fun graphing which part of the gingerbread cookie we took a bite of first! We also used our five senses to investigate a gingerbread cookies! In our math center, we used marshmallows to sort and count on our number mats. The children were excellent counters! We ended our week with hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy cane stirs! A good time was had by all!

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We are very excited here at Peirce School to be one of the 130 elementary schools in the Chicago Public Schools to be deemed a Level 1+ school! There are 664 schools citywide in our district. This is a huge accomplishment for our school community and neighborhood. All of our hard work, perseverance, and efforts are finally being recognized. I found this article in the Chicago Times about the explanation of these new tiers in our evaluation system. Please click on the link below to read it. It was made to better help you to determine which schools are the best for your child to attend! What great news that you have an excellent neighborhood school to stay at! I am so proud of our students, and I hope you are too. We are moving mountains here at Peirce School, and we hope to continue to. Thank you for your support!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chicago-school-rating-update-met-20141203-story.html

Good Afternoon Preschool Parents!

Many of you have been curious as to how we decide whether or not we go outside for recess during the winter months. I decided to copy and paste the Office of Student Health and Wellness guideline for the Office of Early Childhood and Chicago Public Schools. Below are the guidelines we follow.

Please make sure you write your child’s name in every article of clothing he/she brings to school so we know they don’t get mixed up. Also, if you would like to keep a pair of slippers or shoes in their cubby this winter, that would be great! This way if your child wears boots to school, they can change into slippers or shoes once inside the building.

This also is a good time to send in some extra change of clothes that are appropriate for winter time. Many of the clothes in their bags are for the summer or spring time. Please send in long sleeved shirts, long pants, and an extra pair of pants!

Thank you for your help in advance!

Office of Student Health and Wellness

Cold Weather Guidelines

Cold air does not make us sick, germs make us sick. Make sure students are getting outside for recess/gross motor time at your school! Outdoor recess time allows children to get fresh air, provides an opportunity for children to engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity, and gives students more activity options than most indoor spaces. The Office of Student Health and Wellness recommends using 20 degrees F with or without wind chill as the threshold for keeping students in for recess. Please see the following CPS cold weather guidelines for outdoor recess:

Cold Weather Guidelines:

• Above 32 degrees F with or without wind chill: Recess should be held outdoors. 
• Between 31 degrees F and 15 degrees F with or without wind chill: Principal discretion. 
• Below 15 degrees F with or without wind chill: Recess should be held indoors. 

On Wednesday night, our school hosted the annual STEM Family Night for our Peirce Families! What does STEM stand for? Well, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math! We had the Museum of Science and Industry, Mad Science, Loyola Partners, and other local groups come in and show different science, technology, and engineering concepts and experiments. In the cafeteria, many grade levels had LOTS of fun math and science games for the students to participate in with their parents!

Our Preschool Team had a station where we had the children practice substizing numerals 0-10 using ten frames in a mitten match! Sound complicated? Not at all! We are building the foundation for your child to gain skills in understanding the value/amount each number holds. Take for instance the number 3. How much is three? We want them to be able to look at three beans, or three markers, or any set of three and know that means three and that it is connected to the numeral three.

THANK YOU to all of our families in Room 121 who came out for STEM Family Night!!! We had an awesome turn out with our class!!! It was also fun to see many of my former students who now have a younger sibling in my class! It truly shows how close our school community is! It takes a village!

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Our AM class sent our friend Grady off to the Washington D.C. area on Wednesday! We will miss Grady and his family so much! The children put together a memory book for him with pictures and words about what they love about Grady. We sang all of Grady’s favorite songs and had a music jam out with instruments to Che-che kule! We will miss you Grady!!!

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Attention all families that have children going into Kindergarten NEXT academic school year (2015-2016)!!! It is that time of year again that the Options for Knowledge Applications are due.  Any family that has a child going into Kindergarten for the 2015-2016 school year and lives OUTSIDE of the Peirce School boundaries MUST re-apply to be at Peirce from K-8 by the December 12th, 2014. If you have any questions or concerns please contact The Office of Access and Enrollment at (773) 553-2060 or oae@cps.edu.

https://apply.cps.edu/– This link will take you directly to the Options for Knowledge online application process .

November 3-7 we were busy finishing up our pumpkin study with our pumpkin small groups. Students counted out pumpkin seeds, created pumpkin mini books, and designed/created their own paper pumpkin by sponge painting, tracing, and using art supplies (pom poms, foam shapes, green paper, markers). They are currently displayed in our classroom in front of the windows! Please check them out during parent/teacher conferences!

On Wednesday of last week we began our “Table Manners” mini unit! We have been have great difficulty with many of the students in cooperative play/role playing in our house keeping area. Using words like, “please, thank you” and the concepts of sharing have been quite tricky with both groups this year. Miss Santiago and I decided to do a mini unit on Table Manners and manners in general with both groups. So far it has begun to help. We started with how we use tableware correctly and how to set a table. We discussed the names of many items we could see on a kitchen table. Each child created their own place setting and are hanging up throughout the classroom. We are encouraging all of our families to help with this unit by allowing your child real life lessons and experiences in the kitchen by allowing them to help set the table, and cook with you. The best way to learn these skills is with you! We will be sending home a little letter explaining more about how you can integrate life lessons at home at the dinner table. Keep your eyes peeled!

Friday, October 31st was definitely a SPOOKY day with all the snow and sleet? The kids were beginning to think Winter was here! We had a fantastic day with our “Spooktacular” learning centers and our afternoon parade that many of our morning students came back to participate in. Thank you to all of our moms who volunteered to help run a center for our themed Halloween centers! Evan Thomas who is the father of Grady was kind enough to share some of the images he took of our class at the Halloween parade! Thank you for sharing these Evan! To see more of his work, please visit his website at http://ce4.studiothomas.org/. If you have pictures to share, please email them to me, and I will post more!

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