Utopia Preschool

April 30, 2010 * This week we have had so much fun making the best gifts a mother could ever want! But we can’t tell you what we made….it’s a surprise! We have also been practicing a lot on our dance festival performance! The performance will be on May 20th at 7:00pm. * On Thursday we read a story about Anansi the Spider. In the story Anansi weaves a web to catch a warrior’s good dreams! We began making our own dream catchers by painting the cut out rim of a paper plate. Next week we will continue the project by weaving yarn through holes punched in the plate and adding feathers and leaves to the bottom. They will eventually either hang from our ceiling in the classroom or, if your child does not stay for nap, be sent home to hang in your house. These dream catchers will ward off bad dreams and only send us good dreams. We will be a room full of happy nappers! * Exciting news! Another new addition to our beautiful garden will be a new mural that students from the elementary school will...

Reminders: Please remember to return your re-registration forms if your child is returning to Utopia preschool next school year. Forms are due back April 30th. We have a new parent board in the cubby area to make sure we are keeping parents informed. Take a look at it when dropping off or picking up! May 20th we will be performing at the school Dance Festival! The Festival will be at 7pm. We hope that everyone will be able to join us! We will be the first to perform so we will all walk in together. When our performance is over all children will go back and sit with their parents to enjoy the rest of the show. May 17th we have no school. It is a student holiday. May 31st we are also closed in observance of Memorial Day. Things we did this week: In celebration of Earth day during morning circle on Thursday April 22nd the children answered the question, “What can we do to help on Earth day?” Every response was different and unique! In our “bounce area” we have a display of each child’s ...

Our Summer school brochure went out last week. If you have not received one, they are next to the parent sign in sheet. Please let us know if you are interested (sooner the better). The re-registration form for Fall 2010 will be going out this week. There is a $200.00 fee that will be applied towards your child’s first semester tuition fee. There will be a payment box on top of the sign in area for dropping off registration forms and fees, both of which are due by Friday, April 30th 2010. Rather than giving the forms and fees to Sister Patricia, I would like to collect them myself and turn them in together to her. Earth Day: some of the children (one in particular) are excited about planting an apple tree, so we were hoping that you the parents would be interested in donating any amount to fund the project. On Friday, April 16th, we visited Alma Via. We walked across the street making sure that we looked both ways and used the crosswalks. We entered into a large room where many of the...

* This week was our last full week before our spring break. Next school week is only four days. Thursday, April 1st, is an early dismissal at 12:30. All students and parents are welcome to attend school on Thursday for a special Easter egg hunt that will begin at 11am. We will not have a blog update next week. Therefore, we wish all of our families a wonderful Easter break. Enjoy the time off and, hopefully, the good weather! Heidi will not be at school next week. She will be visiting her sister in Hawaii until April 12th (when school resumes). She wishes everyone the best! * Our garden is looking better and better everyday! We would love for everyone to bring in a plant from their garden to add to ours! We also still have our giving tree up right next to the sign-in area if you would like to donate anything else to our garden! We would really appreciate it if families could donate things for our dramatic play area also! * Kool-Aid Play Dough: This week we experimented making play do...

Easter egg hunt: on April 1st we would like to invite all parents and children to join us and participate in an Easter Egg Hunt! We are inviting everyone to join us at 11:00 am to hide the eggs in our garden. Then all the children will go on an egg hunt with our hand-made baskets (if you haven’t yet please bring in a milk / juice carton or strawberry basket). After the egg hunt we will have an early dismissal at 12:30 and start spring break! School resumes on April 12th. Donations for interest area: in order to enhance our dramatic play area we would like all our parents to donate items! These items do not need to be store bought – we would more than love old clothes as well as items from parents who work in the medical, dental, fire, safety, postal, and science fields! We really appreciate all donations! Student volunteers: over the past few months Utopia has been fortunate enough to benefit from the assistance of two students from the upper grades, Elliott, an eighth grader, and Jona...

March 12th, 2010 Updates about the past week Fish Tank Project: after adding four new fish to our two fish tanks, the kids were very excited, and all seemed to express a strong interest in sea life. So: a good number of the children worked with Teacher Michelle to create the classroom’s very own “fish tank” that is now up in the dramatic play area. We used yellow, green, purple and red paint on blue turquoise butcher paper as the water background. After painting the water, we worked very hard on making a fish stencil. After this, we used scissors to cut them out and presto, our fish were here! After we colored them in – using paint, dobbers, markers, crayons, and / or stickers – we cut tape and taped the fish up on our “fish tank.” Then we thought the fish tank needed more than just fish after reading Ten Friendly Fish, so we made starfish as well as more fish, this time with sponges, and added them with the others. Making their own fish tank was a great way for the kids to discuss the...

MARCH 4TH, 2009 This week we welcomed two brothers to our classroom, Bradley and Zachary. The boys adjusted quickly to our program and have already made friends. Our kids are awesome at welcoming new people into their lives. REMINDERS – * We will be closed on Friday, March 12th for a school holiday. * Thursday, April 1st will be a minimal day for the start of the Easter vacation. UPDATES – * Thursday, March 4th: The children really enjoyed making bread and eating our cauliflower pasta. We also visited the Skylab (a planetarium presentation in our school gym) which was scary for some at first but turned out to be exciting and educational! * Throughout the past month, several of our students expressed concerns for our solitary black and orange fish. So we purchased two more black and orange fish, an algae eater, and a beta fish. To keep harmony in the tanks, we keep our lovely blue beta fish in a separate tank on the other side of our room. The children have become very interested in mar...

Welcome to our blog! UPCOMING EVENTS: - Thursday (March 4th) ALL children are invited to attend school to take part in the Skylab (planetarium) presentation from 9:30 am to 10:30 am. In addition, we will harvest our cauliflower plant and make roasted cauliflower pasta with the children and fresh baked bread. This will be offered at lunchtime but feel free to send a small snack or a regular lunch with your child in case the pasta doesn’t suit his or her taste. All parents are welcome and encouraged to join us for lunch at 11:30 - please let us know if you plan on coming! - Some of the staff attended a training workshop at the Presidio this past weekend at a school that follows the Reggio Emilia approach. As the director, I am very interested in most (if not all) of the approach, and am very excited to learn more and begin to implement it within the classroom. More information to follow. However, in the meantime, if you would like to look into this on your own, you can go to www.reggioal...