01/19/12

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Little B’s Early Childhood Learning Center

Little B’s Winter News
I hope everyone has had some down time following all the Holiday festivities.  December is such a busy time of the year!!  Our staff is renewed, rejuvenated and ready to go!!

The following are our “New Year’s Resolutions”

Regarding our recent Rate Increase- Your satisfaction is important to us. In order to continue to produce a high-quality and successful Learning Center we have recently been forced to raise our rates. Our teachers, very qualified and professional, earned their first raises since we opened in 2007 along with an increased price of insurance, food and utilities, has forced us to increase our prices by $1 per child per day effective Jan 2, 2012. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. We hope you will let us know immediately if there is any way we can serve you better. We appreciate your business and love being with your children every day. 

Little B’s is setting up a Parent Advisory Board.  We need 5 volunteer parents to serve on this advisory board. This group will help in setting center/classroom goals, plan fundraising/ community events, and offer ideas/suggestions on how to make Little B’s better!  Send me an email if you are interested and we will have an initial meeting at Joe Jitters at the end of January. 

Renee Warpula, Director

Reminders:
* Bring winter gear, we go outside everyday-Temp and weather PERMITTING.
* Bring gloves/mittens that wont get wet easily
* Bring extra clothes to change into after outside play, this time of year the playground can get wet.
* Label all outside clothes.
* Dress your child in layers our classrooms can get warm.

Early Literacy
When children are first learning to read, they seem to use all of their visual ability to essentially 'photograph' words, seeing print as a whole. They next begin to understand that words can be broken into parts (letters or graphemes) and that those parts represent spoken sounds (phonemes). As children figure out the process of connecting letters to sounds, experiences in outdoor classrooms can support their understanding of these whole- to-part relationships, which occur in abundance in nature. Experiences in the natural world can also facilitate letter discrimination, which is an important step in developing both reading and writing fluency. Encouraging children to recognize patterns and shapes in nature is an especially effective early reading and writing activity. It is interesting to note, as Ellen Galinsky does in her book Mind in the Making, that all the world's languages have an amazing regularity in the number of times that intersections (like Ts, Ls and Xs) are present in the shape of letters. Fascinatingly, those shapes with intersections occur at the same rate in natural scenes as they do in written language. So, an activity like taking young children on an outdoors 'shape walk' not only helps them to see patterns in the natural world, it also helps with later letter recognition. Providing natural materials such as twigs and logs (that con tain many naturally occurring shapes) is also a great way to help children think about the alphabet." --Ellen Galinsky

Happenings:

Infant Room- Welcome to our new babies jaxson and Georgia!!  Make sure to check out our awesome bulletin board with Baby Signs on it!!

Toddler Room- We welcomed Genna and Lucas who moved up from the Infant room!  We are getting ready for Valentine’s Day!

Butterflies- Our Ms. Maddy is here full time! We have been learning to keep our hands and feet and mouths to ourselves through play scenarios, books, and activities!

Bears- We want to welcome our new friends, Avery, Ava, and Macy!!  We have recently started doing stations in our classroom to better prepare us for Kindergarten!

Play-doh learning station in the Butterfly Room.

Learning Centers:

Learning centers are typically set up in a classroom to encourage children to make choices. As they work in the centers they learn to work independently as well as cooperatively. This gives the child more control over what they do. Learning centers offer one easy route to addressing children's individual learning styles.One important learning center that is invaluable to an independent learning environment that fosters creativity and expression is the "art center".  The art center allows children to visually express themselves, learn how to critically evaluate their artwork, as well as the artwork as others, helping them to practice and develop their cognitive skills, language skills.

"Library centers" are a major contribution to not only learning center curriculum, but all other classroom strategies. In the library center, children learn the importance of reading and writing by engaging in motivational literacy activities through meaningful context.  The library center also gives the child opportunities to practice reading, have immediate access to print materials for independent reading  participate in read-aloud and retellings and share experiences they have had with books. In the muscle center, students engage in activities that exercise their bodies, and subsequently “wake up” their minds. Movement also allows children to outlet their high energy and creativity. During muscle activities, students learn to control their bodies and apply gross motor skills to new types of movement^.

Next, the "music center" creates opportunities for children to cooperate in activities that stimulate creativity, listening, and language. By engaging in songs, children learn the natural intonations and rhythms of language. When singing together, children feel harmony with their classmates.The "table games center" offers a unique way for children to explore established rules, create their own rules, and enforce those rules. Table games also promote healthy competition, giving students a chance to cope with negative feelings in a safe and supportive environment.  Children explore mathematical concepts while playing games like cards, dice, and Connect Four.  Children must plan strategies in order to problem solve and win the game.

Another important center that should be included in this list is a writing center. Set up an environment that supports and motivates writing. Provide writing materials in all of your learning centers. Once writing becomes established in the classroom, you'll find that it carries over into a variety of activities. Memo pads, notepads, and stationery placed in manipulative, library, or art areas can transform the activities children typically engage in there. These writing materials allow children to create their own activities and play scenarios, reinforcing the important message that there are many uses for writing. 

Winter Activities to do at Home:

Sledding, snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding, tubing, hiking, make snow angels, make a snowman, use food coloring and a water mix in spray bottles and “paint the snow”, shovel, build an igloo, have a snowball fight, make snow ice cream, make snow cones, gather sticks and make a frame, dig a hole in a snow pile and make a fort, visit a state park, snowmobile, play hockey, broom ball, go skating!!

Holiday News

Valentine’s Day Box Contest!!!  Each child needs to make a Valentine’s Day box AT HOME and bring it in by Friday, February 10^th for voting.  Top Winners will receive a prize!!

Classroom Parties will be held on Tuesday, February 14^th.  We will have a Center-wide Dance party out front at 9:30 a.m.  Each classroom will individually host a party as well.  You may bring in Valentines.  Please just have your child sign their name and not write their friends’ name on the valentines.  More info will be sent home from each teacher! 

Little B’s Buzz

Can your Child “Bearly” wait for Kindergarten?
The 5 year old room (Bear Room) is for children going to Kindergarten in the Fall and have regular full-time schedules. The classroom is small, so teacher Ms Beth gets lots of one on one time to practice early Kindergarten skills. Throughout the day, we have a structured schedule that focuses on different academic and social skills needed to have the most success in Kindergarten. During our circle time each day, we cover number and letter recognition, concepts of the calendar, sing songs and read books. As the year progresses, we work on rhyming words and the sounds a letter makes. During small group Learning Stations, the children rotate through planned activities in each domain- language, literacy, science/discovery and Math. All day long we touch on social-emotional and self help skills. The most important thing a child can bring to Kindergarten is their self-confidence!! Please see the attached lesson plan for our room to get an idea how much we stuff into our days!

Butterfly Flutters
In the Butterfly room, children are typically around 3 years old until they can move to the 4 year old room in the fall. Ms Dawn Summers is the lead teacher and Miss Shi is her assistant. The Butterfly room main goals are working on relationship building and positive peer interactions. Academically we concentrate on name recognition, counting, colors and shapes each day. Sign Language is incorporated in our class in every aspect and the children really enjoying using and learning signs. This classroom collaborates with area Early Childhood Special Education programs. Providing a room of inclusion with children with different abilities physically and or developmentally, teaches tolerance and provides all children with a better understanding and acceptance that not everyone looks, learns or talk the same way, but we are all friends and can play together the same. Please stop in and visit any time!                 

 
WEDNESDAYS
Every Wednesday, Melissa and our favorite Seniors (From the "Lighthouse" assisted living homes around the corner) come and help with art projects
and read stories to us!  We have really grown attached to them and wait for their arrival!