Tuition-Based Preschool at Ray in Hyde Park: Jane Averill, 413

Title: Field Trip to see CINDERELLA
Location: Auditorium Theater
Description: See the Joffrey Balley perform \”Cinderella\”
Start Time: 09:30
Date: 2010-02-26
End Time: 12:30

Welcome to our web blog for preschool room 413. We hope you enjoy learning about what we’re doing each week. Please check out our "blogroll" to the right and our special pages, including our Handbook. Like all the preschools in Chicago Public Schools, our program is play-based which means we understand that children learn best when they are emotionally engaged in their learning and have some control over what they do and learn. We follow the teaching principles mapped out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and their roadmap, Developmentally Appropriate Practice . This includes some direct instruction to make sure that students are getting the social and academic skills they will need to be successful in all their school years.

We are off to an exciting new year! Even while we are hopeful that we can open a second classroom, our first classroom is buzzing! This week we started getting to know each other and getting to know what’s around us. We read several books that are fast becoming our favorites: Owl Babies, The Kissing Hand, Raven, and Where the Wild Things Are . Owl Babies and The Kissing Hand are our traditional first week of school stories because they concern separation issues. We have had very few separation problems so far, though in my experience, we sometimes see more difficulties in the 2nd or 3rd weeks of school, particularly after a weekend. If your child is crying when you leave, please rest assured that they stop a minute or two after you’re gone. If there is a severe problem, we will call you. Sometimes a child feels sad during the day and misses their parent. We may have them send an email to you. Don’t worry if the email message is tragic - know that as soon as they hit the "send" button, they feel much better. By the way, a "kissing hand" is when you plant a kiss in the middle of their palm, close their fingers over it, and have them keep it for the day. It doesn’t wash off when we wash hands. It stays until they see you again. You may want to send your child with a kissing hand each day, and let them give one to you. It will make you feel better, too, when you’re sad and missing your child.

Some other things we did this week: I started math assessments by playing counting games with wooden cubes and unifix cubes. Ms Robin was working with the children doing art projects - painting with unusual tools, watercolor flowers, and decorating pillows. Ms. D. was sorting sea shells with some children. The children discovered the Reading/Writing Corner, the blocks and trains, and of course, the loft. We played outside (Kimbark Ave. playground) in what remains of the sand box, the equipment, and in the gardens by the fence. We also began exploring the butterfly garden which is full of flowers, butterflies, bees, lots of things to notice. London brought in some "tree seeds": acorns and a whole chestnut and we read "Earl the Squirrel" to celebrate. The children also had Library on Wednesday with Ms. Travis and gym on Thursday with Ms. Perez. We will be having music with Ms. Pickens on Mondays (yes - Willie Picken’s daughter and jazz musician extradinaire!).

WHO WE ARE

For those of you interested in knowing who we are, we have 20 children in our room:  11 4 year olds, 9 3 year olds; 12 girls and 8 boys (4  3-year-old girls, 5 3-year-old boys, 8 4-year-old girls, 3 4-year-old boys). On Monday we’ll be getting 2 more students and that will be it for our room. I hope those of you who were here last year will welcome our new families.

SUPPLIES

I am still working on getting caught up so I am late with the supply list. Please bring these in when you get a chance: $2.00 for your child’s pillow; $5.00 for a Ray School T-Shirt if you don’t have one (we also have tie-dyed t-shirts for $12.00) - please specify size.

Last name A-J: facial tissue, paper towels, sanitizer

Last name K-Z: computer paper, bandaids

SNACKS:

I am also going to be putting out the snack and sheet schedule. During your week, you will be responsible for sending in snacks for the classroom for the week. Please send in only healthy snacks! One of our parents is a doctor and she has this message for us:

"I just wanted to drop a line about snacks this year.  As a health care provider who sees many 25-40 year old patients with high blood, pressure, diabetes , arthritis and obesity, I am very concerned about about the eating habits of Americans.  The number of persons on canes, walkers and scooters has soared in recent years. Weekly, I get several requests for canes, walkers and scooters due to obesity and arthritis.

The daily recommendation for adults per the US Department of Health and Human Services is 7-9 fruits/vegetables per day, 6-8 servings of whole grains per day, 2-3 servings of dairy per day and 6 ounces or less of meat, chicken, fish or eggs.  This diet aqlso substantially reduces the risk of cancer.  We develop our tastes for foods as children.  Because many of the children are in the classroom for 10 hours per day, they will form some of their eating habits in school.  We, as health care and educational professionals, are obliged to address this issue head on in the schools.

Each day, snacks should include several fresh fruit, whole grain or fiber snacks(eg. popcorn).  I think that gummy bears, "fruit snacks"(which list corn syrup and sugar as the first ingredients) and chips should be banned from the snack list.  Healthy options include fresh fruit, whole grain pretzels, yogurt, popcorn, whole grain bagels, whole grain crackers, raisins, applesauce without sweeteners, rice cakes, cheerios, Kashi Mighty Bites and Heart to Heart cereals(as snacks), Barbara’s Puffins, Snackanimals and Fig Bars, Natures Choice Fiber bars, 100% juice are acceptable.  Any snack with corn syrup and sugar listed in the first ingredients should be refused.  These are empty calories which lead to obesity and diabetes.  Some of these may cost a little more than others, but several bunches of bananas or raisins or popcorn are not much more than the empty calorie snacks.

Other benefits include improved behavior, increased attention span and an increased life span . "

Anyone who would like to bring in fresh fruit, for example if you go apple picking, etc., is more than welcome to. If you would like to bring in ingredients for cooking projects during your week (or you would like to do a cooking project with us), please let me know. We eat lunch at 12:30 so we need a little snack in the morning. We are working with the school to provide snacks in the afternoon, but often those are bags of cookies which we are trying to avoid. I’ve asked the cafeteria if we can at least get some milk. I’ll keep you posted…

OPEN HOUSE

Open House this year is September 23. Please excuse my confusion on this - they changed the date. It is from 7-9 pm. I suggest that you find childcare for that night so we can talk freely and not worry about the children running around. If you cannot find childcare, please come anyway and bring your child. This is one of few opportunities we have to talk about the school year. You go to the auditorium at 7pm for an overview of the school, and from there you come to the classroom where I’ll be waiting.

SCHOOL CLOSING

There will be one day in either the end of October or early November that the classroom will be closed. I’m waiting to hear what day it is and will let you know right away. I believe there will also be a day at the end of January. I will let you know when I get confirmation.

PARENT-TEACHER COMMUNICATION

Please let me know if you’d like to set up a meeting to discuss your child or how things are going. I will make myself available from 8:30-9:00 am (8:00am if necessary). You can always email me at japrek@yahoo.com or leave a message in the classroom at 773-535-0954.

August 11, 6-7:30 pm

Ray School Preschool Classrooms

5631 S. Kimbark

For More Information, call 773-535-0954 and leave a message

We are accepting applications for the next school year. You can find it under our Blogroll and submit it to the Ray School Office, along with a deposit and photo id. If you have any questions about our program, feel free to contact Jane Averill at javerill@cps.edu or leave a message on our classroom phone, 773-535-0954. To be eligible, child must be 3 years old by September 1 of the year they are starting and they must be toilet-trained.

What’s cool about Preschool at Ray?

• Students are learning about stories, their own and other peoples.
• Students learn about writing: how it works, what it’s used for, and how to do their own writing.
• Science topics include animals, fabric, wood & paper, concepts in chemistry and physics, nature, and the scientific method (observation, recording observations, recording changes, experimentation, etc.).
• Math includes number recognition, understanding and manipulating quantity including adding and subtracting, and the foundations of algebra, measurement, geometry and data collection .
• Social Sciences include our neighborhood, cultures around the world, and character education .
• Art, music and movement are all important parts of our program.
• We also have gym and library
  

Pre School Information

Ray has two types of preschool programs. One is a half-day program and the other is a full-day , tuition based program. Both are play-based which means we understand that children learn best when they are emotionally engaged in their learning and have some control over what they do and learn. We follow the teaching principles mapped out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and their roadmap, Developmentally Appropriate Practice .

The half-day program is called "Preschool For All". It is open to children in the Ray School district . Morning class is from 9:00 to 11:30 am and the afternoon class is from 1:00 to 3:30 pm. Contact Bethanie Smith in Room 405 for more information.

The full-day, Tuition-Based program operates out of two separate classrooms. The hours of operation are from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm. You can contact Jane Averill in Room 413 for more information or call 773-535-0954 and leave a message.

Come join us in the Ray School contingent for the 4th of July Parade and Picnic. Bike/stroller decorating will take place from 10:30-11:00 at 54th and Lake Park, behind the Hyde Park Bank building. The parade will start at 11:00 and wind up in Nichols Park (53rd between Kenwood and Kimbark) around noon. Look for our table near the playground and come do a watercolor painting.

Hi Everyone!
Well, we were all hopeful that spring had sprung, but I guess we have to be patient. We stayed in today, but I’m sure we’ll be able to go out and play tomorrow. Again, please make sure you have adequate clothing for your child, which means planning for 20 deg. as well as 70 deg. Please makes sure hats and mittens/gloves have your child’s name. This is the time of year that it’s easy to lose warmer clothing.
ISAT testing is over. The kids really enjoyed going to Bixler Playground, so that made it all worth while. We’ll be back at our regular playground (Kimbark side of the school).

1. Language arts
2. Measurement
3. Chemistry
4. Kindergarten
5. Ray Festival
6. Tardiness

1. Language arts. We finished our chapter book ! We read "The Tale of Desperaux" to the children just before naptime. I have the dvd on order so we’ll get to watch it in the classroom after we get back from spring break. Some children fall asleep quickly and they did not get to follow the story very much. Many of the children heard the whole book. I hope you’ll start to read chapter books to your child, as well as continuing to read picture books . Both are important.  Chapter books help your child develop their sense of story and memory. Picture books generally have more creative and challenging language, as well as beautiful artwork, so they are important for vocabulary building and building a sense of fantasy.

Just so you know, most of our students love reading information books, particularly science books . The best ones have photographs. Reading information books to children is also important because the style and structure of the language is consistent with what they’ll be reading their whole academic lives.

We have also been practicing our handwriting using dry erase boards.

2. Measurement. We have been learning about measuring this week. We started out thinking about what is longer or shorter or the same as. This week we were learning about the tools you used to measure things. Here’s what we came up with:
–you can use any tool or unit to measure something, but it has to be shorter than what you are measuring;
–when you measure something, you have to line up what you are measuring with the tool you are using and make sure both stay in the same place;
–if you measure something using one tool, and then measure the same thing using a different tool, you’ll get a different measurement. The longer the tool, the lower the number for your measurement. The children measured a board using 2 inch square blocks, then 6 inch unit blocks , then 12 inch blocks. Then they compared the numbers for each tool on a graph. We even measured a teachers’ chair using student chairs!

I hope you will help us continue this study by finding ways for your child to measure things at home.

3. Chemistry . We’ve been doing some chemistry in our classroom. We are mixing two or three ingredients together to make something new. We made ooblek (corn starch and water ) and silly putty (glue and liquid starch). We’re going to be mixing other kinds of ingredients together and see what happens. It is not really important for children this age to know why or how starches bond with non-starches. It is important for them to know that when you mix some things together, you get something entirely new with a whole new set of properties. Don’t worry. We don’t do explosives in preschool.

4.  Kindergarten. You should have all received a letter in your mail boxes today from Ms. Butler, the Ray principal. Check your mailbox if you haven’t received it. Ms. Butler is offering to meet with parents of preschoolers going to kindergarten next Thursday at 5:00. We should be sending home a notice about that tomorrow or Monday.

5.  Ray Festival. Ray Festival is March 26 (Thursday night). Our class will be having a booth there with Room 104, Ms. Kinsella. This is an opportunity for the students and families at Ray School to spend an evening of fun and for teachers to raise money for their rooms. Please see the attached flyer. We need your help to make this a successful event.

6.  Tardiness. Class starts at 9:00 am. If you are running late, need some special time with your child, whatever, please call me before 9:15 and let me know if you’ll be coming in. The office expects us to take attendance by 9:30 and issue tardy slips to anyone who is late, something I really don’t want to do. If you’re going to be late but will definitely be in, call us and I’ll mark your child present.
Remember, we need absence notes if your child is absent

Hi Everyone!
I want to remind you all that we will be closed this Thursday and next Monday for Lincoln’s birthday and Presidents’ Day. Friday there will be no hot lunch because the rest of the school is closed.

Bookstore Coupons: The coupons for 57th St. Books are in your mail folders. They are good until Feb. 22. This is a special event the bookstore is running for Ray School families, so I hope you take advantage of it. Coupons are for 10% off an entire purchase (20% for members).

Valentines Day: We’ll be having a small party on Friday for Valentines Day from 3:30-4:30. If you would like to send in a treat or valentines, that would be great. I probably don’t need to say this, but don’t spend a lot of time getting your child to write out a valentine for each child. If they want to pass some out, send enough for each child and have your child sign the back or you can sign them. We’ll be having them make valentines for each other on Friday (picking names like we did at Christmas time).

Volunteer Opportunity: We would like to help the children make a quilt as part of our study of Africa. I have some muslin but we need to cut it into squares. If you would be willing to do this for us, please let me know. We’d need it by next week. The Sewing Club is going to sew the squares together for us.

Post Office: We are almost through writing our letters. If you haven’t sent in an address, please do so by Wednesday morning. We’ll be displaying copies of our letters on the board outside our room. The originals are going to be sent out on Wednesday. We have a postage scale in our room now, circa 1968, that the children are using to compare weight. Weight is an abstract concept and hard for children this age to understand, so we’re starting very simply with comparing heavy and light objects. We’ll be adding a balance scale to the room later on.

Africa: We’ve started our study of Africa by looking at fabric patterns (kente cloth). We’ve read the story "Ananzi the Spider," retold by Gerald McDermott, and "The Spider Weaver" by Margaret Musgrove. We have a book box of books from and about Africa, both fiction and non-fiction. (How do you tell if a story is fiction or non-fiction? Chances are if the animals are wearing clothes or speaking English, it’s fiction) Ms. Diane, our art teacher, is also teaching us how to make paper kente cloth, and we may try our hand at some fabric designs. The children are also interested in African music, particularly African Playground by Putumayo. We’ll be listening to Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo as well.

Some of the things we hope to explore:
Food
Drums and other music
Kenya, South Africa and Ghana (Ms. Annohr, a 2nd grade teacher, is from Ghana)
Stories: Ananzi stories, Abiyoyo, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain
Animals
Houses
The Nile River
Madagascar
Galimotos

I hope you are all enjoying this warm weather. We are. This is a good time to remember to put your child’s name on their hats, mittens, scarves, etc. They wear them outside, run around and get warm, take them off, and then lose them. We try very hard to keep track of all their clothing.

Hi Everyone,
It’s a pretty busy week here at preschool. We have a post office in formation, some star/solar system study going on, and today, Mwenda was asking about snakes so I guess we’ll be looking at snakes, too. The children are so curious about so much, it’s hard to keep them sated. What we try to do is steer them to whatever books or other resources (internet) that will help them find out more about what they are interested in. Our big project is the Post Office , and for this, we will need your help.
HELP!
**If you know anyone who works in a post office who would be willing to help us with our study, please let me know right away. What we mostly need now is real "artifacts" from a post office;  boxes, canvas bags, stickers, envelopes, boxes, or anything else you can think of. If you can loan us (or know anyone who can) some kind of machine that would be used in mail delivery, that would be great. We also need real mail - junk, letters, etc. so we can look at addresses, stamps, etc. We also need some stamps for the children to examine. Once we know where we’re going on this project, we’ll let you know.

PHONE LIST
I am attaching a phone list of the class. If there are any corrections, omissions or additions that need to be done, please let me know by email. If there are major errors I’ll send out the corrected list.

WELCOME
In case you haven’t noticed, we have 2 new students in our class: Alanis and Sarina. I hope you will all welcome them and their families into our community.

FIELD TRIP
Please don’t forget our field trip for Jan. 21 (Wed.) to the Museum of Science and Industry . We’ll need as many adults to come with us as we can get since it is such a large museum. We should be back around 1:00 pm. Please fill out the trip form, send in your $4.00 (parent chapperones are free), and volunteer to come if you can. Those of you attending the inauguration in Washington, D.C., you will be missing a great trip to MSI and I feel sorry for you…  (tee hee hee)

DINNER PROPOSAL
My family had such a nice time at Zad (Jed’s dad’s restaurant) over the holiday, we thought we would plan a preschool family time there. How does Jan. 31 at 4:00 pm sound to you? Hamza said that children would eat free. Zad is a Middle Eastern restaurant with Morrocan specialties (try the soup! It’s wonderful!!!). The children have already enjoyed hummus and baklava brought in by Hamza. Please RSVP with me so we’ll know how many families will be coming. If there are very many people who would like to come but this is a bad day for it, we’ll change the date.

MISSING
We can’t seem to find Ahmad’s snow pants. They are blue with a zipper on the side and his name on the tag. Please check to see if you accidently took them home.

HEALTH
This is the time of year we sometimes have viruses run through the room. We will call you if we believe your child is sick. We’re also redoubling our sanitizing to try and reduce the spread of illnesses, though we know that it’s almost inevitable that some children will get sick. Make sure we have a way to reach you or an emergency person at all times. Also please make sure your child washes their hands as soon as they come in in the morning. If you think your child is coming down with something, please keep them home. Call us and let us know if your child has a particularly contageous or dangerous illness, such as strep, chicken pox, scarlet fever , etc. We will then notify all the parents to be on the lookout for symptoms.

SUPPLIES
If your child’s last name begins with M-Z, you were not asked to bring in supplies at the beginning of the year since we don’t have room to store everything. We’ll be posting a "Wish List" on the back door of the classroom and we hope you’ll volunteer to get some of these things.

THANKYOU!
*Thanks to Bevis (Auden’s dad) for cutting up wood for us and delivering it to the classroom. We’ll be starting our wood projects next week, or sooner if we can manage it. *Thanks to Mikki, Alanis’s sitter, for getting us some extra flashlights. (We still need more if you haven’t sent in one with your child). The kids are enjoying the daily light show at nap time.
*Thanks to Karen (Sophia’s mom) for hanging out in the mornings with us and helping the children with journals.
*Thanks to Daisy, Sarina’s mom, for volunteering to help with the photo books (finally!). We also appreciate your help in the mornings.
*Thanks to all of you who donated books to the classroom from our wishlist at 57th St. Books. I’m always happy when we get books for the class, but it’s a real blessing to be able to get particular books that we need.

I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves in this cold weather. We’ll be inside this week, playing in the trike room and doing as many physical activities as we can inside the building. Perhaps we’ll start reading some stories about the sun, beaches, warm weather, and see if that encourages spring to be early this year.

See you all soon!
Jane