St. Mark Preschool’s
Newsletter - March 2019
March
March 1……….. National Peanut Butter day
March 4 -8………………..Dr. Suess week!!!
March 8………………..Scholastic Book orders are due!
March 15……………......Spring Sing Social Event at BRASS BEAR!!!
March 18………………Day after St. Patrick’s Day (wear green!)
March 25 – 29…..……. Spring Vacation - School Closed
April
April 24 & 25……………Pre-K Conferences
April 19……………….. Munch with Men
Read Across America Day (Dr. Suess Week!)
Students at St. Mark will join millions of children across the world for the first week of March to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Read Across America is a reading awareness program created to motivate children to celebrate reading. Some of us will sample Green Eggs and Ham, decorate Cat in the Hat hats and we will read many other wonderful stories. It always great fun introducing the children to Dr. Suess and always nice to revisit the classics.
Come read with us!!
Kindergarten Assessment
Miss Patty and Miss Franny are conducting spring Kindergarten Readiness Screenings. The screenings take place during the next two months. The assessment primarily focuses on the progress made in each of the learning domains: social, emotional, language, cognitive, physical, and creative development. This assessment includes a kindergarten readiness checklist designed to evaluate specific skills, such as color, letter, and shape recognition; visual discrimination, following directions, social/emotional skills, and gross and fine motor development.
Parents will have an opportunity to meet with Miss Patty and Miss Franny to review the kindergarten screening results. A sign-up sheet will be located in your child’s class next month.
If you are in the younger classes, we normally schedule your conference in the fall. If you would like to have an additional spring meeting with your child’s teachers, please let them know and they can set up a special time for you now.
Learning Genie
Our teachers are currently training and exploring an assessment app called Learning Genie, It’s a very valuable tool our teachers will be using on their ipads to collect evidence, observations and pictures of the children to share with you next Fall during our Parent Teacher conferences. Our lead teachers have ipads thanks to the Quality Counts program in which we set forth a plan each year to further the quality of the care we give to the families we serve. Our fundraising chair, Jen, has also agreed to pay for 2 more ipads so that our Dragonfly and Busy Bee classes could have one more.
Lost and FoundThis is your last chance to grab any missing items sitting on the bench in the breezeway. On March 8, all items will either be added to our St. Mark extra clothes box or donated.
Late Tuition Fee Reminder
Tuition is due on the 1st of each month as stated in your parent handbook, payments received after the 10th will be charged a late fee of $15. Thank you!
Summer & Fall Enrollment
Thank you for completing the registration application to reserve your child’s placement for summer and fall. If you have not turned in your form yet, please do so ASAP. They are due now. Tuition adjustment occurs only when you are leaving for the entire summer. Please note, we do not adjust for a one to two week vacation.
Looking ahead at the summer calendar:
Summer Session
June 7………....Pre-k Graduation and Last day of classes
June 10-14…….school is closed for summer prep and professional development
June 17………..August 9 summer session
July 4………….school closed for Independence Day
August 12-16….school is closed for fall prep and professional development
August 19……..first day of 2019- 2020 school year
Let’s Get Greener!
The Earth is in need of our love and care, a big discussion at school has been how we can help. I’ve had the opportunity to sit and plan with the children ways we can be a bit more “green” in our school. You’ll notice this month we have started using weekly sign in sheets for your class, one small effort to create less paper waste within the school. Our school is also recycling paper, plastic and can products. We’ve also been busy preparing the garden for planting in the spring by turning the soil and exploring the plants and insects too. We’ve also been tasting celery, parsley and lettuce that is growing.
Hooray for WORMS!
While exploring the soil in our gardens, the children helped me in deciding that we needed more worms in our garden. We had only found a few during the last few weeks which was disappointing for some and so I order some worms from Nature’s Little Recyclers. The children anticipated the worms arrival via MAIL. On Thursday Feb. 28th they finally arrived! I walked into the yard with the box and the children instantly asked if the worms were in the box. So, we walked to the garden and opened the box. Inside was newspaper, a brown bag and 3 note cards. One card had directions on how to care for the worms, so we read that together then opened the bag of worms into the middle of the garden box. We took a few minutes to watch as I asked questions like “Are they alive?”, “How do you know”? After watching a few minutes we decided that the worms were alive. So I put a small pile of worms in front of each child, we talked about how to take care of the worms and we even sang Happy Birthday to them, counted them, touched them and shared stories about what costume the children would want to dress their worm in. It was a successful lesson which will continue for a long time.
Have a wonderful month of March, thank you for your Warm welcome!
I am so Happy to be your new Director!!
Heather Smitley
Newsletter - March 2019
March
March 1……….. National Peanut Butter day
March 4 -8………………..Dr. Suess week!!!
March 8………………..Scholastic Book orders are due!
March 15……………......Spring Sing Social Event at BRASS BEAR!!!
March 18………………Day after St. Patrick’s Day (wear green!)
March 25 – 29…..……. Spring Vacation - School Closed
April
April 24 & 25……………Pre-K Conferences
April 19……………….. Munch with Men
Read Across America Day (Dr. Suess Week!)
Students at St. Mark will join millions of children across the world for the first week of March to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Read Across America is a reading awareness program created to motivate children to celebrate reading. Some of us will sample Green Eggs and Ham, decorate Cat in the Hat hats and we will read many other wonderful stories. It always great fun introducing the children to Dr. Suess and always nice to revisit the classics.
Come read with us!!
Kindergarten Assessment
Miss Patty and Miss Franny are conducting spring Kindergarten Readiness Screenings. The screenings take place during the next two months. The assessment primarily focuses on the progress made in each of the learning domains: social, emotional, language, cognitive, physical, and creative development. This assessment includes a kindergarten readiness checklist designed to evaluate specific skills, such as color, letter, and shape recognition; visual discrimination, following directions, social/emotional skills, and gross and fine motor development.
Parents will have an opportunity to meet with Miss Patty and Miss Franny to review the kindergarten screening results. A sign-up sheet will be located in your child’s class next month.
If you are in the younger classes, we normally schedule your conference in the fall. If you would like to have an additional spring meeting with your child’s teachers, please let them know and they can set up a special time for you now.
Learning Genie
Our teachers are currently training and exploring an assessment app called Learning Genie, It’s a very valuable tool our teachers will be using on their ipads to collect evidence, observations and pictures of the children to share with you next Fall during our Parent Teacher conferences. Our lead teachers have ipads thanks to the Quality Counts program in which we set forth a plan each year to further the quality of the care we give to the families we serve. Our fundraising chair, Jen, has also agreed to pay for 2 more ipads so that our Dragonfly and Busy Bee classes could have one more.
Lost and FoundThis is your last chance to grab any missing items sitting on the bench in the breezeway. On March 8, all items will either be added to our St. Mark extra clothes box or donated.
Late Tuition Fee Reminder
Tuition is due on the 1st of each month as stated in your parent handbook, payments received after the 10th will be charged a late fee of $15. Thank you!
Summer & Fall Enrollment
Thank you for completing the registration application to reserve your child’s placement for summer and fall. If you have not turned in your form yet, please do so ASAP. They are due now. Tuition adjustment occurs only when you are leaving for the entire summer. Please note, we do not adjust for a one to two week vacation.
Looking ahead at the summer calendar:
Summer Session
June 7………....Pre-k Graduation and Last day of classes
June 10-14…….school is closed for summer prep and professional development
June 17………..August 9 summer session
July 4………….school closed for Independence Day
August 12-16….school is closed for fall prep and professional development
August 19……..first day of 2019- 2020 school year
Let’s Get Greener!
The Earth is in need of our love and care, a big discussion at school has been how we can help. I’ve had the opportunity to sit and plan with the children ways we can be a bit more “green” in our school. You’ll notice this month we have started using weekly sign in sheets for your class, one small effort to create less paper waste within the school. Our school is also recycling paper, plastic and can products. We’ve also been busy preparing the garden for planting in the spring by turning the soil and exploring the plants and insects too. We’ve also been tasting celery, parsley and lettuce that is growing.
Hooray for WORMS!
While exploring the soil in our gardens, the children helped me in deciding that we needed more worms in our garden. We had only found a few during the last few weeks which was disappointing for some and so I order some worms from Nature’s Little Recyclers. The children anticipated the worms arrival via MAIL. On Thursday Feb. 28th they finally arrived! I walked into the yard with the box and the children instantly asked if the worms were in the box. So, we walked to the garden and opened the box. Inside was newspaper, a brown bag and 3 note cards. One card had directions on how to care for the worms, so we read that together then opened the bag of worms into the middle of the garden box. We took a few minutes to watch as I asked questions like “Are they alive?”, “How do you know”? After watching a few minutes we decided that the worms were alive. So I put a small pile of worms in front of each child, we talked about how to take care of the worms and we even sang Happy Birthday to them, counted them, touched them and shared stories about what costume the children would want to dress their worm in. It was a successful lesson which will continue for a long time.
Have a wonderful month of March, thank you for your Warm welcome!
I am so Happy to be your new Director!!
Heather Smitley