Dissecting owl pellets 1/31/13

Thursday we read White Owl, Barn Owl by Nicola Davies. Then we dissected owl pellets. Owls eat their food, such as a mouse, whole and then spit out the bones and fur in a pellet.

 We used toothpicks to pick out bones and used magnifying glasses to see the small bones easier.

The pellets looked like hard poop.The children found skulls, leg bones, teeth, foot bones, toes, ribs, fur and feathers.

Winter Fun

January newsletter

January 2013

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday. Thank you to all the parents who came to see the children perform songs and their play. The children worked very hard to learn the songs and were very excited to show you what they had been working on at school.

We will begin the new year with a theme about winter. We will learn how snow is formed and then melt snow to see what is in it. We will use snow and ice in our sensory table and for other experiments. We will use books by Jan Brett during our winter theme since many of her books take place in winter. We will also read different versions of her book The Mitten and learn about the winter behaviors of the animals in the books.

We will continue letter recognition using the Handwriting Without Tears program. We are only using capital letter for writing but the children will see how there are different ways to write letters. Capital letters are easier to write, they are all the same height and they all start at the same place (the TOP). The words we will use for describing the letters are big line, little line, big curve and little curve.

If your child is staying for aftercare, they should bring an extra pair of socks and mittens for the afternoon. Also don’t forget shoes.

Dates to remember:

1/9 (Wed) and 1/10 (Thurs) - Show and Tell, Book orders

1/21 No School - Martin Luther King Day

1/22 No School- Teacher Inservice

2/13(Wed) and 2/14 (Thurs) -  Valentine’s Day party – We will exchange valentines with classmates. Please do not bring candy. We will have some fun activities during the day and have a special snack. If you are interested in bringing a special snack, please let me know. Please do not have you child write their friends’ names on Valentine cards, just sign your child’s own name. This helps us cut down on the time it takes to pass out cards. M/W class has 8 children, T/Th/F has 13 children.

2/23-3/5 – Winter Break. School resumes on Wednesday, 3/6.