Our Classroom Saint is
St. Teresa of Calcutta
(Mother Teresa).
Each day we ask her to "Pray for Us" and to help us be kind like her.
“We are a Catholic School family dedicated to nurturing and celebrating a love for Jesus Christ and educating the whole child with academic excellence.”
Weekly News:
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"Star of the Week": Gracie H. was "Star of the Week" in the AM Class!
Reading: We read the book The Farmer's Away! Baa! Neigh! this week. We begin each story time with songs about the parts of the book (Front cover, back cover, title, and spine!") and how to read and write ("Top to bottom, left to right, left to write!"). We beginning to predict what will happen next in each book. We also are learning what the Author and Illustrator do for each book.
Writing: We learned that when we color, we should hold the crayon with a grip that seems like an alligator chomping down on the crayon or a crab's claw. Eventually, it will become a three-point grip. We need to keep the students from using a fist grip. We talked about how we only color on the paper and that we have to use "little strokes for little folks" and not scribble with big lines. We need to use different colors on all our pages, because the world has lots of different colors in it. Finally, we need to color in the lines and color in all the white space.
We cut straight lines, made "snakes" and "worms" with play dough, and colored an apple red this week. We also used dry erase markers, liquid glue, push pins, scissors, glue sticks, markers, puzzles, peg blocks, mini erasers, feathers, and play dough this week to strengthen our hand muscles. All those things will help us to build those muscles and pincher fingers so we can hold our writing utensils correctly.
Math: We introduced the color RED and the shape CIRCLE this week. We used a red crayon to complete our apple assessment page using "little strokes for little folks" to stay in the lines the best we could. We used our pincher fingers to hold a push pin to poke holes in the shape of a CIRCLE as our "Push Pin Art". We learned special poems/songs to remember how to make a CIRCLE and what things are RED.
We count the classmates in our lines every day. We compare the lines using the words "bigger/smaller", "more/less", etc. We counted the letters in our names while working on our Crayon Box craft.
Alphabet: We started our formal lessons about letters. We do not learn them in alphabetical order. In our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum, we begin with letters with straight lines, then we move on to those with curved lines, and finally we learn about the ones with diagonal lines. This week, we introduced the Letter "F". We read the book The Farmer's Away! Baa! Neigh! We found the letter on our walls, learned the sound it makes, and wrote it in the air. We guessed the items that start with "F" in our "F Tub". We used our little pincher fingers to place Feathers on our "F page". During Small Group Learning and Free Play Centers, we used Farm puzzles, Farm Felt pieces, Farm animals, Farm magnets, and Firefighter and Farm Little People.
We will continue to work on the letter we've already introduced: L.
We are learning to identify our names that our parents and God gave us. We are recognizing that everyone's name starts with a different letter and each name has many different letters in it. We worked on a craft that used the letters in our name written on crayons, we placed them in the correct order, and glued them into a crayon box.
Religion: Our formal Religion lesson was "I Can See" this week. We talked about how God made each one of us special. God gave us our eyes to see everything in the world. We use them to learn, to stay safe, and to find things.
We are practicing to make the sign of the cross correctly. We learned three prayers (beginning of the day, before snack, and end of the day). Following our prayer, we ask our classroom saint -- St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) -- to pray for us and to help us be good friends who are kind to others and who love Jesus. We bless ourselves with Holy Water as we leave the classroom at the end of class each day. We are focusing on asking God to help us make good green/thumbs up choices as we bless ourselves.
Science: We sing our "Weather Watcher" song and our "Seasons" song during Calendar Time. We learned that the weather helps us to identify which of the four seasons we are in: "Fall" typically has chillier weather when we have to wear a jacket and the colder weather brings a change of color to the leaves on the trees. The leaves also FALL off the trees during autumn!
Social Studies: We learned the Pledge of Allegiance Friday and will continue to stress how we have to thank God for allowing us to live in this great United States of America.
Social and Emotional: Since this may be the very first time many of us have been away from our families and caregivers, separation anxiety is a daily struggle and is very typical. We are trying to ease our little cutie pies' fears and allow them to feel those feelings without making them embarrassed or shaming them. Our goal is make every student feel safe, loved, and heard. We are also working on our listening skills and trying to follow directions throughout the class time. We need to respect our new friends by keeping our hands and feet to ourselves as well.
Music and Songs: We sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" to reinforce "Green and Red Choices" lesson. Green Choices keep us safe and happy! We began practicing our October song: "Five Little Pumpkins!" All the words to our songs and prayers are located on one of the tabs on this website.
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Our daily schedule is displayed in our classroom so the children can make the connection when it is dismissal/"home time."
(All 2025 - 2026 School Year Dates are TENTATIVE.)
Orchard Field Trip -- Wednesday, October 8 : Students and one chaperone attend. No siblings, please. There is NO SCHOOL for us that day!
Halloween Parties: Students can bring in something to share for Halloween, but it CANNOT be any food, treat, snack, or candy. Think about small goodies such as pencils, stickers, tattoos, bubbles, crayons, coloring books, etc. Their Halloween bags are not very big! More information will be coming home soon.
Contact Information:
Mrs. Lisa Marcopoli
lmarcopoli@stlawrenceparish.com
586-731-0135 x251
Teacher Aide:
"Ms. Martha" Pickett