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A Note From The Can you believe a month of school has already gone by and Director’s Desk… summer is officially over? This first month of school has gone very smoothly and the children have done an amazing job adapting to their classes! Our monthly theme for October is “Marvelous Me and Flu season is rapidly Healthy Eating”. The children will continue to become familiar approaching and flu shots are with the new surroundings and routines as well as learning how to now available. According to stay healthy with their eating habits. In order to help the children state regulation all children who learn about healthy foods we will have Salad Tasting Day in each classroom. The students will each bring in their favorite part of a attend school must receive a flu salad and share with their class to create a mini salad. Your child’s shot. Proof of the shot is teacher will notify you on which day you should bring this in. required prior to Dec.31. If Other topics we will be covering this month are Fire there are any questions please Prevention, Columbus Day, Halloween, and Stranger Danger. We email me or see me in person. will discuss the rules of Stranger Danger especially when the As we approach the new season, children are out Trick-or-Treating on Halloween. We will continue with our “Handwriting Without Tears” with the letters D, P, and B some good habits when ill are and the two numbers we will be focusing on this month are 3 and 4. to: stay home when sick, wash Our shape is an octagon and our color for this month is black! Black your hands often, avoid close Days are Tuesday, October 13th and Wednesday, October 14th. On contact with sick people, cover these days send in your child wearing something BLACK and with your coughs and sneezes, clean a BLACK “Show-n-Tell”. Kindergarten will observe Black Day on th and disinfect surfaces. Wednesday, October 14 only. Our Annual Pumpkin Picking Trip at Von Thun’s Farm will rd Also, please provide an updated be on Friday, October 23 . On this day Good Day will have Early Dismissal, which means all full day children must be picked up by Universal Healthcare Form 12:00 pm. There are NO AFTERNOON classes on these days. when your child receives Halloween Parties for each class will be held on either his/her annual check-up. Thursday, October 29th,, or Friday, October 30th. Your child’s teacher will let you know which day their party will take place. I look forward to seeing Please make sure you look for sign-up sheets outside your child’s everyone at Von Thun’s Farm on classroom to sign up to bring in a delicious treat to share at the Oct. 23rd! This is always a party. Children are more than welcome to wear their Halloween great trip that our students costumes on this day! Just please make sure they have on the proper shoes to participate in normal school day activities. Your and families enjoy each year. child will also be participating in their class’s parade at the end of their school day on the day of their party. Make sure you have your See you on the hayride!!!! -Miss camera when you see them march out in their costumes! If you Amy have any questions do not hesitate to ask the teachers. Wishing you all a Happy Halloween!

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Welcome to October! The preschool class is settling into a routine nicely. We are all learning more about each other and some of our likes and dislikes. This month we will continue working on rules and what is expected of the children in each classroom. This month will be filled with learning. At the beginning of the month we will learn about fire prevention and fire safety rules, we will practice fire drills, as Miss well as, learning how to stop, drop to the ground, and roll!! Sometimes these lessons become scary to children so please reinforce at home that fire safety and prevention Janet’s is important everywhere in school and at home. Perhaps have a fire drill of your own Pre- and make sure your children know where your meeting place is should there be an emergency at home. I make these lessons fun and lighthearted not to scare the school children. Then, we will move into our salad-tasting week and learn about the Class importance to our body of eating healthy. I will send out more information regarding salad tasting in the week to follow. Moving right along we will talk about Christopher Columbus and then Halloween! At this time I am asking for two to three parents to volunteer as "room parents" for our classroom celebrations this year. Requirements include joining the class for the party as an extra set of hands to Miss Cecily and myself as well as preparing and bringing in a craft for the children to do during the party. The classroom celebrates three parties a year; first Halloween, second Valentine's Day, and third Spring Fling right before Spring Break. Please feel free to email me at [email protected] with the subject Miss Janet's room parents or please speak to me after class. This month we will read a lot of fun books including “Stop, Drop, and Roll” and “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bat!' Hope all of you can make it for your child's costume parade on the days of our Halloween parties. They will take place the last 15 minutes of your child's class. Please see me if you have any questions.

Well, we made it through our first month of school. We are having a great time learning about each other and really enjoyed looking at all of the All About Me forms. We especially liked looking at the pictures of everyone's family. We are looking forward to really getting into the swing of things with our writing of letters, numbers, and our names. We are going to start with our addresses and phone numbers to go along with our unit on "Stranger Danger". Also this month we will talk about Halloween safety, learn who Christopher Columbus was, fire prevention, and eating healthy. One of our activities will be vegetable tasting during the week of October 5th. We are asking each child to bring in their favorite vegetable to share Miss with the class. Another activity we will be doing is learning all about fire safety especially if our clothes catch on fire. We will learn to stop, drop, and roll. Finally, Patty we will have our first class party to celebrate Halloween. Our party days are & Thursday, October 29th, and Friday, October 30th. We ask each child to please sign up Miss on our party sheets to bring in something in to share. The party sign-ups will be located outside of our classrooms. They will be available starting Monday, October Jeni’s 12th. Pre Last month we performed an awesome experiment with an exploding apple. We cored out the middle of the apple added baking soda, red food dye, and then Kinder- poured vinegar over top to see what would happen. The children really enjoyed garten watching it explode like a volcano. We also talked about Johnny Appleseed, and who he was and why we celebrate him. We also enjoyed tasting different types of apples Class and discussing the many different things you can make with apples, especially the little mini apple pies we made in class and enjoyed with vanilla ice cream.

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We had a great first month. I hope your children are having as much fun as I am. Even though we have spent a lot of time learning and practicing rules, we have spent plenty of time playing, making projects, and most of all, just having fun! We celebrated several silly holidays last month, some of which were delicious. Besides Rice Krispies Treats, chocolate milkshakes, and apple pies, Miss we also made cheeseburgers out of cookies, icing, and other assorted goodies Chris’s for "Cheeseburger Day". Our 'applecano' was also a big hit! Each child had a chance to make the apple erupt. The children loved coloring pictures that Full began with the letter “E” and mailing them in an envelope to their houses! Day We've been learning a lot of new songs too! The "Teddy Bear Song" for Pre- "Teddy Bear Day" was our first. For Autumn, we have learned several Fall songs. Ask your child to sing some of them for you at home. Since Halloween school is around the corner, you'll be hearing a lot of spooky songs, too! If you would Class like the words to any of our songs, just drop me a note. This month will also be as fun and maybe more exciting since we will be celebrating Halloween. We have Columbus Day, Smile Day, Mad Hatter Day, Fire Prevention, and so many more fun celebrations. To keep us safe we will learn all about fire prevention and what the proper steps are in case there is an emergency. Please talk over the proper steps you would follow in your own home if there were an emergency. We will be sharing and tasting our favorite part of the salad for "Salad Tasting Day" in which we ask the children to bring in their favorite item found in a salad for us to try and we will have a special treat for "Dessert Day". Please keep an eye out for our Halloween Party sign up outside the classroom door. I'm looking forward to seeing all of our children in their Halloween costumes!

This school year has started off great; everyone seems to be settling nicely. To help the children settle in we read a few books about starting school; “Time For School” by Gail Herman, “Pirates Go To School” by Corinne Demas, and “If You Take a Mouse To School” by Laura Numeroff. We also talked about making friends, including everyone, and treating others how we would want to be treated. These are few books we read to reinforce these ideas; “Bucket Filling From A to Z” by Carol McCloud and Caryn Butzke, and “The New Bear School” by Carrie Weston and Tim Warnes. Miss We will continue with learning this month’s letters, numbers, and this Jeni’s month’s color, black. The week of October 5th we will be having salad tasting where we ask that each child bring in their favorite part of a salad to share Full with the class. Miss Nina and I will keep track of what each child likes and Day make a chart, which we will hang outside the classroom so you can check out what your child enjoyed! We have our Halloween parties this month and we Pre will be making a goody bag to put our treats in. For this project we are asking Kinder- that you send in an empty cereal box, thank you! Please check outside our garten classroom for the Halloween Party sign-up sheet. Looking forward to another Class fun-filled month! 3

Fall is here! October will be a super busy month in Kindergarten, but we are all ready for the challenge. We will begin the month by learning all about New Jersey state facts. Last month we spent time learning about maps, and where New Jersey is located, and now we will focus on some cool things that you may not even know! The children will love to brag about their knowledge of these facts, so be sure to ask them about what they learned! We will also be learning about Christopher Columbus this month. Of course, we have a great song to go along with our lessons, and your children will be singing it for you before long! Fire Prevention Week is coming up shortly, so the Kindergartners will be Miss discussing things they can do to make sure they are fire safe. We will talk about things we should not touch, such as candles, matches, or the stove. We will discuss Cheryl calling 9-1-1 in the event of an emergency, and also, how firefighters are our friends & who are always willing to help us. Miss During Science, we will begin reading "Scholastic News" on a weekly basis. The children love this, as the topics are related to class lessons, and they have their Amy’s very own little newspaper to look at and learn from. We will also be learning about Kinder- the food pyramid and food groups and how much food we should eat daily from those groups. My "food groupies" will make an appearance in our classroom and the garten children will have several chances to play with them. We will also discuss exercise as Class a way to keep ourselves healthy and we will do some fun exercises together! Last month, everyone did a fantastic job learning his or her letters and numbers. During October, we will continue to work on them. During the latter part of the month, we will begin skip counting by 2's and 5's. Sight words will begin to be taught toward the end of the month, as well. We will begin with the first 5 words on the list, and you will see the words of the week both on the daily sheet, and in a blue booklet for homework one night each week. The children will be quizzed on the sight words, and you will know in advance which words should be studied. Our color for October is black, and our Color Day and “Show-n-Tell” Day will be on Wednesday, October 14th. We will also be having a Salad Tasting week so the children can try some veggies that they may not have tried before. Since we will be discussing healthy eating, salad tasting fits right in! To round out fabulous October, we will have some fun picking pumpkins at our annual trip to the farm. Our class Halloween Party will be on Friday, October 30th. Watch for some awesome fall crafts that will be on display both in the halls and in our classroom! Happy Fall!

Black Days are Early Dismissal Remember Tuesday, on Friday, Halloween October 13th October 23rd for Parades are at and Wednesday, our Pumpkin the end of class October 14th. Picking Trip. the day of their party!

Kindergarten Halloween will celebrate Parties are Black Day on Thursday, Wednesday, October 29th October 14th. and Friday, October 30th. 4

Kieran Pastore 10/13 Lucas Balint 10/15 Lucy Lloyd 10/19 Harrison Bergamotto 10/21 Avery McNeff 10/22 Dean Fontana 10/23 Jake Nunn 10/30

I’m a little pumpkin short and round.

I grow on a vine and on the ground.

I start as a seed and grow and grow.

Soon I’m ready to be carved and glow.

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Good Day’s Annual Pumpkin Picking Trip will be held on Friday, October 23rd at Von Thun’s Farm. Please be sure to hand in all permission slips by Friday, October 9. We hope to see you all there!

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