Weekly Updates

Friday, September 25, 2026

Our week started busy and kept going from there! This week was filled with our themes of Fall (leaves and squirrels in particular) and Families.  Our Religion lesson was “My Family Cares For Me”.  We discussed what families do and how every family is different, but special.  We shared our family picture project during morning meeting time.  We each stood up, showed our picture, and talked about what our families like to do together.  We said who each member of our family was. It was a great sharing time!  Afterward, we put all of the pictures together to make a class family book!  We watched the read-aloud Little Critter- This Is My Family.

Speaking of Religion, I am amazed and so proud of how fast the children are learning our prayers-Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Angel of God, The Sign of the Cross, and our Prayers before eating.  Ask them to show you “prayer hands,” and please continue practicing prayers at home!

We continued with our Fall theme.  We learned about Johnny Appleseed when we watched a read-aloud story titled Johnny Appleseed, watched a short educational video titled “Johnny Appleseed FolkTale Time”, and listened to “The Johnny Appleseed Song”. We made Johnny Appleseed hats for art.  We learned about the changes that come with Fall, especially for the trees and the animals.  We read the book Hello Autumn, and watched the read-aloud versions of the books Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn, and Hello Fall.  We learned really big words like MIGRATE and HIBERNATE.  We used fall-colored tissue paper and glued it onto leaf-shaped cutouts, which we hung on our windows. We practiced tracing on a leaf tracing page, too.  We made our own “Colors of Fall” book, and we did a super job at following the directions to color the correct color!  Then we “read” our books like BIG kids!  We made really cool trees, too!  The trunk and branches were made by tracing our arms and hands.  We colored them brown, and then to make our Fall leaves, we glued colored craft pasta (or colored leaves) in Fall colors on our tree!  They are hanging in our hallway. 

We REALLY enjoyed learning about squirrels!  We watched really funny, but educational, squirrel videos of actual squirrels, and learned that they come in different colors, but they all have long fingers on their front arms, and they like to eat nuts.  We read three funny squirrel books, Scaredy Squirrel (my personal favorite), Scaredy Squirrel At The Beach, and The Squirrels Who Squabbled.  We watched “Cyril The Squirrel” animated book and the read aloud story of The Squirrels Who Squabbled, sang “Gray Squirrel”, and made our own squirrels with gray, brown, and black crayons and cotton balls! They are decorating our hallway tree!

We finished up the color RED and the shape CIRCLE.  We did a color red object paper, a Q-tip painting red circle, and listened to/watched RED songs on our Smartboard.  We did a circle tracing paper too. October will focus on OVALS and ORANGE, and we will slowly introduce the Number 0 and the Letter A.  

Our Flag song this week was “Yankee Doodle”. We are doing great going to, from, and during our Special classes of Gym, Library, Music, and Spanish.  We went outside to the black top and playground.

Some Closing Reminders:

• Please wash and return clean blankets/stuffed guys on Tuesday, since there is NO SCHOOL on Monday due to Teacher In-Service.

• Remember to check folders nightly.

• Please ensure that your child goes to the bathroom at home before coming to school. Too many friends are not making it to our bathroom time. This is especially important now that we will begin to go to the gym for Prayers and Announcements at arrival time.  The toilets/sinks down there are much bigger and harder to reach.

• Speaking of going to the Gym at arrival time, we will begin doing this on Tuesday, September 29.  Please walk your children all the way down to the door at the other end of the school (referred to as the GYM DOORS), where the teachers will now meet them. Mrs. Bauer begins prayers promptly at 8:00.  If your child arrives after prayers begin, they will be held in the Gym foyer and marked late on attendance.

• Remember that if you need to pick up your child early, it needs to be at 11:45, before we get into children’s lunchtime, staff lunchtime, bathroom time, and nap time.  Please understand that this is for the safety of your child and so we are not walking the halls at random times while our big friends are learning…not to mention the dreaded taboo of waking sleeping three-year-olds during happy nappy.  Thanks for understanding =)

• If you could kindly let me know if someone in your house is away (or for any reason you feel may have your child a little “off”), it would be a big help so we can give extra hugs and reassurance!

• We are really working on independence with activities of daily living (shoes, toileting, opening lunch items, cleaning up, packing/unpacking, etc.).  Please encourage this at home. Please practice especially opening and closing the Bento boxes! My mottoes are: “If you don’t try, you will never learn” and “I will help you with ANYTHING and EVERYTHING...as long as you TRY first”!!!  Hint...they can do WAY more than they let on =)

• Please send forks and spoons in your child’s lunch if they have a food item requiring them.

• New Scholastic Book Club book selection forms will come home next week with a due date of October 15 for orders.

• If your child attends CARES, please send their October calendar next week.  I would appreciate it if you could send me a copy too, to keep in my room.  

• Have a wonderful three-day weekend with your little ones!