Earth Week

Madison Elementary Celebrates Earth Week

Next week is Earth Week and we will be celebrating each day at Madison! Below is a schedule of the events we will be participating in as well as some items we might need for some projects! We would love for students to wear green as many days as possible next week to show our Green Spirit!

Power Hour- for an hour every day, each classroom will turn off their lights and power down any electronics.

Trash Pick-Up- During the week, classrooms will take time to pick up litter in the fields close to the school.

Juice Bag Recycling Program- Madison Elementary will be participating in a fundraiser that pays Madison 2 cents for every empty juice bag collected (to be continued throughout the year).

Use One- Students will be encouraged to use only one paper towel after washing their hands and one napkin at lunch.

Recycling Mosaics- Each classroom will create an earth friendly mosaic out of recycled materials. The mosaics will be displayed throughout the building. Please send in CLEAN recyclable items (pop tops, juice boxes, cans, plastic rings, etc that we can use for our mosaic. We will be creating our mosaic on Wednesday).

Pledge Tree- Each student will write an earth pledge on a leaf to be placed on Madison’s Earth Tree in the main lobby.

Trees for Everyone – On Tuesday, Arbor Day, each Madison student will receive a Red Bud seedling to take home and plant.

Book Swap- Students are encouraged to bring a book to school that they have read and are willing to donate. Students who bring a book will then be able to take a book. If your child will be participating please send a book by Tuesday.

Grade Level Earth Activities-Each grade level will participate in “Earth” activities throughout the week. We will be decorating tote bags with our hand prints!

I look forward to a great Earth friendly week!!!

Miss Amy

Sun, rain, wind, storm, hot, cold, cool, warm..What the weather?

We have spent the last few weeks in preschool talking about the weather....and our Kansas weather has done a great job of being different every day to give us something new to talk about every day! It's not every where that you can talk hot weather and sunny days on one day then have to find your snow boots and winter coats again the next day! Our favorite activity has been catching scarves blown in the wind with the wind created by a blow dryer...who knew a simple blow dryer and a few scarves could be so fun....but they are!

Today we got to make cookies sent by our friend Noah. We made sugar cookies cut out with the Easter themed cookie cutters that Noah sent to us. Thank you Noah and Noah's mom! :) After they baked and we took a short recess break, we decorated them with frosting and sprinkles. Maybe the silliest question I asked all day was "what color of sprinkles do you want"...I should have know the answer was "all of them!" :)

In a few weeks we will be celebrating Earth day with a week full of great activities. Be on the look out for a note outlining the activities for the week. Just a quick preview....we will be taking part in a "green hour" each day by shutting down all electronics and lights, collecting cans for recyling and participating in a grade level project.

You will also be recieving a note soon about our upcoming Preschool Family Picnic. In conjunction with Miss Sara's class we will be celebrating our great school year at our family picnic scheduled for May 14th at Celebration Park. A note will be sent home soon with further details. I look forward to a great evening with our students, families and staff!

Welcome back from break

We have had a great week back from Spring Break so far! I apologize for not posting for a while! We have been so busy having fun! I would like to welcome a new staff member to our classroom. Miss Ann joined us on Monday as a new para to add to my great crew! She comes to us with many years of teaching experience in elementary school and after a break for a few years from the classroom she is ready to go and excited to get to know all of Miss Amy's All-Stars!

This week we have continued our zoo themed unit that started the week before spring break. We decorated and cut spiral snakes on Monday and they look very cool hanging from our ceiling now! Yesterday we painted lions with brown and yellow and today added yarn manes. Tomorrow we will be working on a giraffe project. We have done other activities including sorting zoo animals, making zoo animals with play-doh and playing with the Little People Zoo set.

One of our friends broke his nose this morning (at home) so this afternoon I was talking with my friends at school and telling them that when Noah returns to school tomorrow we all need to be extra careful not to bump in to him. And my other friend Kaden commented, "yeah, guys, 'cause we don't want his nose to fall off again!" Oh the views of preschoolers is so fun!

Please be sure to check out the reminder dates posted on the side of our blog for the next two days that there will be no school due to professional development days.

Also, I will be working with our classroom neighbor, Miss Sara, this week to finalize a date for our spring family picnic to be held in May. The plan is for this to be a great time for families from Miss Amy's room and Miss Sara's room to get together to celebrate a great school year and wish all of our friends good luck who are moving on to new adventures next year. Be looking for more info on that soon!

March is Disability Awareness Month and at Madison the special education staff wanted to honor each of our students with a poster with the theme All About Me. Earlier this week you should have recieved a large poster board home with your student. If you choose for your child to participate please decorate your poster (similar idea to the All About Me quilt we did a few months ago) and send it back to school! Be as creative as you would like!

And finally, the special education departement at Madison will be hosting a Parents Night Out for students with special needs and their siblings on Wed. April 1st from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. We wanted to give parents an opportunity to spend a quiet evening with out children....go out to dinner, go shopping or just go sit in your quiet house! :) We will provide pizza and drinks along with games, movies and supervision during that time period. A note went home earlier this week. If you would like to participate please return the slip by this Friday March 27th and include the names and ages of children who will be joining us that evening so we can plan accordingly!

Pictures from police officer visit

Police officer visit

We had a great day in preschool today! We had another community helper visit us today. Chase's dad is a deputy sherrif and visited our classroom this morning and afternoon. With the nice weather outside we gathered out front on the steps and got to see the police car, talk about what police officers do and how they can help us and even got to hear the sirens a few times. We also got to take turns and go up to the police car and take a peak inside. Did you know that the backseat in a police car is just a hard plastic bench? We all learn something new every day! :) Thank you very much Mr. VanDellen for visiting us and sharing stickers, tatoos and junior sherrif badges with us! Chase was VERY excited to have his dad visit him and all of his friends today!

With the great weather we took advantage of the opportunity to get lots of fresh air! It sure does make for a smoother day when we can step outside for a little while!

This week we have been reading Dr. Seuss books in honor of Dr. D's birthday this week. We have been doing lots of fun activities related to these books including water coloring painting fish after we read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and played with blue goo and laced on paper socks after reading Fox in Socks. We will be reading Green Eggs and Ham on Thursday and will be making green eggs and ham on Friday!

Tomorrow we are looking forward to another community helper visit by a paramedic (Claire's dad....one of Miss Sara's friends).

More Community Helper Visits

Kaden, Ian, Noah, Ava and Michelle enjoy their sundaes

Kaden uses his muscles to scoop his ice cream

Noah adds some syrup to his ice cream

Chase's chocolate syrup with a little ice cream too :)

Ava scoops her ice cream

Kylie scoops her ice cream

Last week we had two more community helper visits. On Tuesday we had a fire fighter visit us in the afternoon. He brought lots of equipment with him and talked to us about things that are not safe to play with and what to do in case there is a fire in your house. We learned it is very important to have a family meeting place outside your house and to crawl down low to the ground if there is smoke in your house and if you can't get to a door then go to a window so the fire fighters can find you. We also watched the fire fighter put on all his uniform and equipment so we could see the transformation from regular person to a fire fighter in full gear and start to understand that it is still the same person even if he looks a little scary in his gear. He also brought us Junior Fire Fighter certificates and coloring books that went home that day.

On Wednesday we had a chocolate maker come visit and tell us all about how to make chocolate and where it comes from. She had a great treat for us when we all go to take turns dipping a graham cracker in white chocolate. Yum yum. They were quite tasty!

We also spent the week pretending to run an ice cream shop in our classroom which was great fun! We had pretend ice cream, sprinkles, bowls, cones, spoons, menus and money. We had a lot of fun talking about our favorite ice cream and seeing how many scoops we could pile on one cone. We ended the week with a speical treat on Friday afternoon of making ice cream sundaes. First we smelled all of our ingredients to see what we though they smelled like. Then we tasted a little bit of everything to make sure we liked it! The chocolate sauce and cool whip were for sure favorites. The cherries were liked by some. Then we started the ice cream around the table and scooped our own then added toppings as they came by. I think some students might have had a little ice cream with their chocolate syrup :) Above are some pictures of our fun afternoon!

Next week we have several more community helpers coming to visit. On Tuesday we have a nurse coming (Jennifer, Miss Amy's sister). On Wednesday we have a police officer coming (Chase's dad). And on Thursday we have a paramedic coming (Claire's dad (she is in Miss Sara's room)). We are looking forward to learning all about these jobs as well!

Fruit Salad....Yummy Yummy!

Ian is thinking about the orange


Camden and Michelle enjoy their fruit salad


Chase and Ian also enjoy their fruit salad


Look how hard Michelle is working on the pear!


Ian gives the apple a try


Now doesn't that look tasty! :)


Chase perfects his banana peeling technique


Camden enjoyed licking the oranges!


Camden works on cutting oranges


Michelle works on cutting pears


Ian is working on the apples


Chase is picking grapes off the vine!

Last Friday morning we set out on our latest cooking adventure of making fruit salad. Of course the activity had to be proceded with watching the Wiggles Fruit Salad song/video first, just to get us warmed up. Then we all got our hands washed and sat down at the table. I showed the kids pictures of the ingredients we would use (green apples, red apples, bananas, grapes, pears, oranges) and had them go find each item on anther table. Then we handed out plates and plastic knives (with plenty of supervision!) and away they went. There was some very creative cutting and slicing going on or in the case of the bananas....Chase decided just breaking them in half would work too! And all the yummy fruit got tossed in the bowl, mixed up and down to the tummys! We had lots of satisfied customers with our little project. Given the amount of handling the food experienced :), us teachers just took the kids word for it that is was yummy! :) Above are some pictures of our activity!

Pizza, pizza, pizza

This week in preschool we have been setting up and running our own pretend pizza shop. We have been playing with pretend pizzas, rollers, pizza boxes (from Pizza Hut, even the real thing), a variety of toppings and setting up a table complete with a red/white checkered table cloth to serve our yummy pies! The students are really enjoying this activity. We are concluding our concluding this week by making our own mini pizza's on Friday....yum, yum!

Next week we will be continuing with the restaurant theme and serving up ice cream in our ice cream shop! What flavor do you like? I think my friends' favorite part might be the sprinkles!

For snack on Wednesday of this week we made pudding pies and boy were they tasty. As a group we read the recipe box to make two big boxes of chocolate pudding. Everyone got a turn at pouring and stirring and waiting (that was that hardest part). We smelled the pudding and decided it smelled really good! Then we scooped it into mini pie crusts, plopped on some cool whip and topped it with.....you guessed it.....sprinkles! Doesn't get any better then that! I had to be out of the room when my friends ate their creations but I hear they enjoyed them alot. They saved one just for me which I had for my lunch time dessert today and it was pretty tasty!

On Tuesday we had a special visitor to continue our community helper visits. Lea Krannawitter, a friend of Miss Amy's, and a great eye doctor, visited our classroom to share with us what you do when you go see an eye doctor. She brought along an eye chart and we told her what letters we saw. She also brought some other cards that had drawings of a house, circle, apple and square and we had to see if our eyes could see them....I think we all passed! :) The coolest part was two special books that she brought. One tested our color vision and the other had special glasses that went along with it and helped us see things in 3-D....kinda cool! All of my friends were very nice during her visit! She brought along her own little assistant, her 3 year old daughter Mia, who helped her pass around the books and glasses. My friend Kaden was super sweet and suggested we all tell Mia our names so she knew who we were! :)

We have welcomed two new friend to our classroom this week. Bri and Erick started on Tuesday and are with us in the mornings right now. We are happy to have them in our classroom. They are doing a great job of learning the ropes and figuring out all the fun things we do in preschool!

I want to send a BIG thank you to all parents who attended Parent Teacher Conferences! I very much enjoy meeting with each of you and sharing all the wonderful things your children are doing in school this year. We are having a very successful year and I'm very proud of each of my students and their accomplishments! Thank you for coming!

Valentine's Day Pictures

Chase is delivering friendship notes into a friend's mailbag

Michelle is showing off her heart frame

Kylie worked very hard on her heart frame!

Kaden is working very hard on his heart frame

Chase has decorated his jacket with Sponge Bob stickers!

Camden is using a marker to decorate his heart frame and Noah is working with Miss Diana on his heart frame

Michelle came all dressed up....foot loose and fancy free....for our Valentine's Day party....love it!

Here are pictures from our Valentine's Day party!

Pictures of making cookies

My friends (Michelle, Ian, Noah, Camden, Chase (front)) in the morning sitting at the table as we put the cookies in the oven!

MMMMMM....tasty! Makes you want a bite doesn't it! :)

A few weeks ago we made cookies on a Friday morning as our Friday cooking project and then decorated them as a class in the afternoon. As you can see from the pictures they are very creative cookies, but when you have 3, 4 and 5 year old cooks in the kitchen you are for sure going to get creative things! The students really enjoyed decorating the cookies with frosting and fruit for friendship fruit cookie pizzas!

Pictures of my friends

Look close you can see that Ian wrote his first and last name and how old he is!

Here are a few more pictures of my friends working hard at school!

Kaden wrote his friends name and is not getting ready to write his own name very nicely!

Ava is waiting patiently at the table for the next activity

Post office pictures

Here are some pictures of my friends pretending to be a mailman!

Michelle is trying out the postman outfit

Kylie is picking up the mail

Noah is delivering mail

Chase is checking out the mailbox!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today was a fun day! We got lots of work done this morning and even enjoyed some time outside despite the wind. After lunch we did circle time then moved into centers for one last day of playing mailman in the pretend center. We had tons of fun in the hallway with an obstacle course that took us through the stretchy fish tunnel, down the hall on a scooter and back on the trike. At the art table we practiced peeling the back off stickers and make a heart collage. Then after a quick recess some of our moms and dads arrived for our short party. First we worked on a heart shaped frame with a pick of each student inside. Then we moved to the snack table for a cupcake from our friend Noah....Thanks Noah and Noah's mom for the yummy snack and plates and napkins for our fun party. Then we got to practice our mailman skills and deliver our valentine notes and treats in our friends mailbags. We finished our day with a short circle time where we are practicing our phone numbers. Some of my friends are working hard on saying the numbers as they see them and some are doing awesome telling me what number comes next before they see it! I'm very proud of them all!

Just a quick reminder the students do not have school until Tuesday February 17th. I am looking forward to meeting with each of you this week for parent teacher conferences. A note should have gone home today reminding you of your date and time for our meeting. If you are not able to attend this date/time please let me know as soon as possible (856-0413 or wilcoxa@usd231.com) so I can reschedule.

I am working on getting some pictures downloaded so I can add them on here of the great things we have been doing at school....stay tuned!

Playing Mailman

We have been having a great time this week pretending to be the mailman in preschool. We have a pretend post office set up with keyboards, envelopes, a mailbox, stamps (stickers) and a mailman outfit. We have been taking turns buying stamps and mailing off our letters and being the mailman to deliver the mail! Today we practiced our trike riding skills while delivering mail to houses (pictures of a house with a student's address....we had to match up the address on the envelope with the address on the house)....tricky stuff to ride a trike and carry an envelope AND look for the right house all at the same time. We've also been working hard on making our own mailbags that we will use on Monday to collect our Valentine's from friends. We laced them together yesterday and decorated them with stickers today.

Last week we talked about the letter A/a and this week we've moved on to the letter B/b. We have sang about what sound B/b makes, played the B/b games on www.starfall.com and looked at pictures and tried to guess if they start with be and if they don't what would they sound like if they did....for example, we decided that banana starts with B, but cat does not but if it did it would sound like bat! Pretty cool how that works! :)

Friday we will be making friendship fruit pizza cookies (heart shaped sugar cookies with frosting and fruit pieces) as we prepare for Valentine's Day. On Monday we will have a short Valentine's Day party but a day filled with fun friendship activities! I sent home a list of the friends in our classroom if you chose to send in Valentine's.

Reminder, no school for preschool students next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the following Monday. I am looking forward to meeting with all parents for Parent Teacher Conferences. I will send home a reminder note on Friday with your meeting date and time.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Yummy Grilled Cheese

Yay! It's Friday! The past several Fridays we have been doing cooking projects in the morning! These have been great activities for the students to practice taking turns, waiting, following directions and experiencing the process of creating yummy treats. Today we are going to make grilled cheese (or grilled ham sandwich for those who can't have milk)! We use a power point presentation to follow our recipe so it's a visual for the students. I have uploaded this power point to our blog site.....it should come up at the bottom! Check it out and see if you are able to view it! :)

I will blog later this afternoon to let you know how it goes! Over the next few weeks we will be doing some of our cooking projects in the afternoon so our friends who join us then can join in the fun!

Icebergs and Snowmen

We have made it half way through the week! This morning in circle time I introduced the letter of the week....Aa.....as a new slide in our powerpoint....who knew that could be soooooo exciting! We talked about some pictures that start with Aa and watched the As page on www.starfall.com

This afternoon for centers we worked on our paper snowmen and added some scarves and popsicle stick arms and legs. At the frog table (fine motor), we counted buttons to put on snowmen. And at the turtle station (sensory table) we froze when we played with frozen ice bergs (we froze water in small milk cartons) with water and instant snow. But that sure was fun! For recess we went to the motor room and did an obstacle course which was super fun! First we crawled through a green tunnel, got in the blue swing to swing like super man and then did the "rocket ship" in the carpet tunnel! I had lots of great friends waiting for their turn!

Happy Tuesday

Happy Tuesday! It was another cold day outside so we kept our little selves inside and tried to stay as warm as possible! This morning we went to music and sang some songs! Everybody worked really hard this morning. We even tested out a new game that Miss Amy bought last night that works on manners and makes us use words to ask for a turn! :) It was like a picnic game....that's fun to dream about in the middle of the winter! Before lunch we gathered on the blue carpet for a short circle time and talked about a new book Miss Amy wrote this morning about how Big Boys Go Pee Pee on the potty....that is some GREAT reading! But everyone seemed to enjoy it! We will see how that works for my friends who are learning to use the potty like big boys!

Lunch time was lunch time....nothing too exciting, nothing too scary! :)

After lunch we started the afternoon with circle time and counted how many days were left in January....not very many! In centers we practiced cutting circles for our snowmen we are putting together tomorrow! I saw some great scissor skills today! At the ladybug (turn taking) table we did some winter time file folder games and worked on matching letters and colors. And at the turtle table (sensory) we played with the instant snow! The real stuff is too cold! :)

We went to recess in the OT room then came back to have some dry cereal mix for snack. My friends are getting really good about using their manners and asking for more when they want it! We ended the day in circle time again doing our "Name-O" songs and the "Mac Chicken Dance" then got ourselves all bundled up and ready to head out to the bus!

Tomorrow we will be putting together our paper snowmen, counting buttons for snowmen and playing with ice bergs in the water in the sensory table....brrrr!

Reminder - the Madison Carnival is this weekend, Saturday the 31st. We are still in need of several volunteers to help make this event sucessful! If you are interested in helping please contact the front office as soon as possible!

Have a great evening!

Snowmen and Mailman!

Happy Monday! It was a great day back to school to start the week, although a little, or a lot cold!!!! Brrrrr! This morning we started the day by having the students try to take off coats and backpacks on their own with out all of us huddled around to help! They did really well! It took a few minutes for all my friends to get themselves organized and get their things put away but soon enough we were all set and ready to go! Today in circle time we practiced saying the numbers of our phone numbers! Everyone has the "dash" down pat! :)

This afternoon we took a short trip next door to Miss Sara's classroom for our guest Mailman John. He works in the Shawnee area as a postal carrier and came to share some of the things he does in his job and some the equipment he uses. He let us try on his sun hat and test out his spikes for his shoes when it is icey outside! All my friends did really well sitting and listening!

Over the next several weeks we will be having several visitors as we do our community helpers unit. We are looking forward to a visit from a baker and chocolate maker (yum), a dentist, a nurse (Miss Amy's sister), a paramedic, police officer, eye doctor and we are still looking for a vet and fire fighter to come talk to us. If you know of anyone please let me know!

For centers today we talked about snowmen and snowflakes....which we might see falling from the sky soon! :) At the art table we folded paper and snip shapes to make cool snowflakes when they unfolded. We practiced holding our scissors correctly and asking for help if needed. At the floor station we crumpled paper and stuffed three large white trash bags.....any ideas what that might make.....good chance it might turn in to a snow man tomorrow! :) And at the fine motor table we practiced rolling balls to make snowmen.

Kaden was our "teacher" today for circle time and he did a great job leading us through out power point for circle time! We talked about the fact this is our last week in January and counted all the way to 26.....whew!

Tomorrow we will be working on our class trashbag snowman and practicing our cutting skills again to cut out circles for snowmen! We have some great snowman books lined up as well! I will be starting a list of books on side bar of our blog site. This will be a great list of ideas for you to check out at the library or look for in scholastic orders or at the book store!

Have a great day!

Welcome!

Welcome to Miss Amy's All-Stars blog! On this site I will be adding information about our classroom, upcoming events, recaps of past events, fun stories and pictures and videos of some of our favorite things in preschool! My goal for this blog is to provide additional information that I am not able to write in our daily note books and share some of the fun events that take place in our classroom. I will also be experimenting with uploading power points and other documents to share with you that will include information such as weekly lesson plans, recipes for cooking activities, enrichment activities you can do at home, just to name a few. Be patient as I learn how to do all these fun things to allow me to share much more information with you!

Please feel free to post comments to our blog posts if you would like. I will check these comments at least once per week. I do as that you NOT ask questions specific about your child or ask important questions that need an immediate response. For these questions please continue to use my school email address (wilcoxa@usd231.com), your child's daily notebook or a phone call (856-0400 - front office).

Miss Amy :)