A few daily schedule changes

Parents of the Red Room:  We have made a few changes in our day that we wanted to share with you.  We are picking jobs on Monday and Tuesday mornings for our part-time students and your child will have the same job for the week.  We thought that it might be better for them to do the job for the entire week so they can work on doing it independently as they learn how it’s done.  We also changed gym/playground and music time and that has been very successful.

8:30 In class – We gather in our classroom, talk, and put away our belongings.

Bathroom – We have a bathroom break.

AM Choice- The children can play until morning welcome. On Monday/Tuesday the children pick their job for the week.

Clean up-When all the children have been to the bathroom we clean up play area.

8:50 Morning                Welcome- We gather on the carpet, sitting on the floor, and we do the Welcome Song and give hugs for those what want them.

9:00 Breakfast-We go up to the cafeteria for breakfast.

9:30 Gym/Playground- We play in the gym/playground or the sensory room.

Circle –We go to the carpet with our chairs and get ready for circle time.  We start off the year with a short 5 minute circle and we’ll gradually increase that as the year progresses.   I write a morning message that we all read together, we do our calendar and we’re graphing the weather each month, and we read a book.

Bathroom –We have a bathroom break.

Center Time-We have several centers available and the children can move freely from one to another.  Our centers include playing in the play area, art, computer, sensory table, puzzles, cooking, and working individually or in a small group with one of us.

Clean-up-We all clean-up the play area.

11:30 Music-We have music in the circle area on the carpet.  We wash our hands before lunch.

12:00  Lunch-We have lunch in the cafeteria

Red Room-We come down to our room and have a relaxing time with a video that one of our students chose for the day.  As the children are watching it with a stuffed animal if they so chose, we pull them out to brush their teeth and go to the bathroom.

1:00 Nap-Some children take a nap at this time.  Our non-nappers do a variety of activities such as go to our school library where we have books, a puppet theater, and games, go to the playground, sensory room or we do a group activity in our classroom.

Bathroom-We have a bathroom break.

2:00 Snack –We have a snack at our table in the classroom.

2:30 Home-After snack we sing a goodbye song and dismiss for the day.

Circle S Farms Field Trip on Thursday, October 6, 2011

Brooks-Yates School Field Trip

Circle S Farms

Thursday, October 6, 2011

We will be spending the day at Circle S Farms.  They offer: hayrides, a pumpkin, a fun barn, a corn maze, a sunflower maze, a petting zoo, a scarecrow bale cave, and a donut and apple juice for each of our students.  The cost of the trip is $6.50 which includes all of the above. We will leave the school at 9 in the morning and return at 2 in the afternoon.  We won’t be here for breakfast so please make sure your child has breakfast before they leave that morning.  Please pack a totally disposable lunch that we will eat at Circle S Farms.  If you want to see what Circle S Farms is all about in Grove City you can visit their website at circlesfarm.com or call 614.878.7980?.

Support Team Luke!

Join one of our families at Brooks-Yates Preschool as they Walk Now for Autism Speaks. You can click here to support Team Luke! The walk is on October 9th and if you can't walk that day you can still support him with a donation.

New Support Group on Facebook for Special Needs Children in Pickaway County

Elizabeth, one of our parents, would like to tell everyone about an online support group she started on Facebook. It's for parents and caretakers of special needs children in Pickaway County--just a place for us to connect on a personal level...

The group name on Facebook is 'SN Parents of Pickaway County' and it's a closed group, so it's not open to the general public. All parents and caretakers of SN children and/or adults are welcome to join.

If anyone has questions they can email me here at yahoo!

Elizabeth McPherson [elizabeth_mcpherson@yahoo.com]

or via Facebook (Elizabeth Preston McPherson)

Thanks for your help! :)

Elizabeth McPherson

Snacks for this week

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday McDonald’s
Letter and Number Crackers, bananas and juice	Cooking: make individual pizzas on an English muffin Snack: Wheat and cheese crackers and juice	Smorgasbord- Clean out the leftovers!	Fruit Snacks, Popcorn, and juice

McDonald's Trip

     We will be walking to McDonald's this Thursday, September 29 at around 11:00. We'll order our food, eat, and then play in the playland.  We'll start heading back around 1:30-1:45, have snack at school and then dismiss at 2:30.  This is always a very fun trip and you're welcome to join us if you can!  Please get your permission slips in by this Tuesday!

Field Trip/Events Schedule for the School Year

We have many field trips planned for the school year.  We love to go on outings and provide our students with as many opportunities as possible to be involved in the community.  Please feel free to join us at anytime for any of these trips!

• September 29 McDonald's
• October 6 Circle S Farms
• October 12 School Pictures
• October Fall Harvest Party at school
• December 10 Breakfast with Santa
• December 20 Holiday Party at school
• January 19 World of Bounce
• February 15 Valentine's Party at school
• April 26 AHA Museum 
• May 15 Columbus Zoo
• May 23 Preschool Graduation
• May 24 Swim and Picnic at the YMCA and Mary Virginia Crites-Hannan Park-last day of school.

Swimming Schedule for the School Year

Swimming Schedule for Preschool

2011-2012

All of our swim dates, except for the last date in May, will be from 12:30-1:30 at the YMCA.

Ÿ          October 13

Ÿ          November 3 and 17

Ÿ          December 8

Ÿ          January 5 and 26

Ÿ          February 9 and 23

Ÿ          March 8 and 22

Ÿ          April 19

Ÿ          May 10

Ÿ          May 24 This is our last day of school and we will have the entire school swim at the Y from 10:30-11:30 and then we will go to the Mary Virginia Crites-Hannan Park on 188 for a cookout.

We love to have parents involved so please join us anytime you’re available!  If you have any questions please contact me at hwinner@pickawaydd.org, at school 474.1124, or on my cell at 740.497.7182

Swimming

     We will be swimming tomorrow so please send in your children's swim suit, towel and swimmies if needed.

Snack Menu and a New Theme

     We are starting to learn about opposites this week.  This is a fun unit as we read many books about opposites.  The Pickaway County Library has a great collection of books by Lisa Bullard about opposites in the animal world and that's where we'll start reading this week.  If you have a chance, point out as many opposites as you can think of around your home or when you're out and about. It's fun to give your child a word and see if they know the opposite.


Here's a short list to get you started!

• beginning and end
• start and finish
• top and bottom
• on and off
• empty and full
• new and old
• little and big
• whisper and shout
• hungry and full
• open and close
• light and heavy
• in and out
• short and tall
• happy and sad

 And that's just a short list of opposites....it's fun, once you get started you'll think of a lot more!  Have fun with it!

Snacks 

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday Swimming
Nutrigrain Bars, apples and juice	Popcorn, yogurt, and water	Fruit Loops and milk	Pudding, vanilla wafers, and water

Field Trips and a few other things!

     Abby is working on a letter to send home about our field trips for the school year.  Just so you know this is what's happening for the rest of this month:

• We will be swimming next Thursday on September 22.  You already filled out permission slips in your school packet so we are set to go there.  I will send out a reminder on Wednesday to be sure to pack suits and towels.
•  We will walk to McDonald's on Thursday, September 29 and have lunch there and play in the play land.I will send out permissions slips on Monday.

We are continuing to work on the initial letters of our names so that the children can begin to recognize their names and the names of their friends.  Today we will be cutting out pictures from magazines that start with the initial letters of our names.  We made a big poster size letter for each of these letters:  B, E, J, L, T, and X.  The children will glue their pictures to it and in that way we'll start learning the initial sounds of a variety of words.

We made goop this week which consists of cornstarch and water.  Just add a little water at a time and see what happens.  It's a great mixture to play around with.  You can shape it into a ball and it retains its shape for a few seconds and then it turns to liquid again....it's a great sensory activity that you can do while you're cooking in the kitchen.  You can get out another bowl and let your children play in goop while you talk and cook!.  We're also learning about healthy eating while we're cutting up our watermelon and cantaloupe this week.

Open House/Ice Cream Social

Come and enjoy a sweet treat with your new Superintendent, teachers, Service and Support Director and Administrators.


It's from 6:00-8:00 this evening at the school!  We hope to see you there!

Snack Menu

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
Cereal and Milk	Cooking: Cut up watermelon Snack: Watermelon and Vanilla Wafers	Cooking and Snack: Peanut butter and banana sandwiches	Cooking: Cut up cantaloupe Snack: Fig Newtons and cantaloupe

More Research Information

Please click here for more information on the research opportunity that we have with Ohio State University.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Tuesday, September 6

     We had a lot of fun making our letter pretzels today.  The children took turns mixing up the ingredients, stirring, kneading the dough, and then shaping the dough into the initial letter of their name.  We then used the pastry brush to brush an egg on our pretzel and we added some coarse salt and gave them to our cook, Elisha, to bake them in the oven.  We ate them at our snack time with a little cheese sauce for dipping!

Snacks This Week

September Cooking and Snack Menu-First Week

Monday 5th	Tuesday 6th	Wednesday 7th	Thursday 8th
Labor Day	Cooking: Whole Wheat Letter Pretzels Snack:  Letter Pretzels with Mustard or Cheese Dip	Nutrigrain Bars, Apples and Juice	Josie’s Birthday Party

Our Activities This Week

     This week I learned that we like to cook!  We made banana cream pudding and chocolate pudding for our snack one day this week and we enjoyed making it and eating it!  We also grated our carrots for our snack yesterday.  Each child had an opportunity to grate the carrots and they did a great job.  I will definitely plan more cooking activities for next week!

This week we played in the water tables with cups for pouring, boats, and water wheels.  We also took a walk and observed what's happening outside in the summer time.  We'll be learning about seasons and how they change throughout the school year.  We saw many green trees and we discussed the colors of the many beautiful flowers that we saw on our walk.  On our walk we take wagons so the children can ride part of the time and part of the time, they walk with us holding our hands.  

Labor Day Reminder

     We will be closed on Monday, September 5th for Labor Day.  Enjoy your weekend!