Early Childhood Education Center

Transcription

1 Early Childhood Education Center Newsletter February 2014 Dear ECEC Parents, February is such a wonderful month in so many ways. It is the month when many celebrate love or caring and hearts. For children it is time to rejoice in getting mail! I can still recall writing the names of 39 classmates on those little envelopes, complaining all the while. It was all worth it though when I went to school, I put a card into each person s mailbox knowing that they were putting one in mine. Opening up the mail was fun because it was so grown up! I also look at Valentine s Day as a chance to show you care about someone special and those that do special things for us. At ECEC and within our district we want to promote healthy social and emotional lives through friendships, acceptance and kindness. I look at it as an opportunity to say thank you to Pam who heads transportation for fixing, washing and starting the busses at 4:30 AM when temperatures are below zero, the bus drivers who drive your children safely to and from school daily, the maintenance staff for keeping our buildings and grounds in great shape, the secretaries for meeting the needs of parents and your children and the Wood Dale School District 7 School Board who supports our schools and programs. Second, it is a time to take care of ourselves as it is Heart and Dental Awareness month. We are reminded that dental health is foundational to overall health. Children have had their dental exams, will learn about brushing and flossing and continue to learn about healthy eating. While hearts symbolize love they also represent life! The reminder to eat healthy, reduce salt and snack intake, monitor diabetes early in life, not smoke, and to exercise regularly are some of the life style changes that may need to be addressed. Remember that your child has been and continues to watch everything that you do. You are the most important teacher and model that your child will ever have. While it has been challenging to leave the warmth of your homes, please make the effort to attend the continual stream of evening parent and parent-child programs that are offered at ECEC and within the district. The programs are offered to inform and support you as your child navigates the school district. At ECEC children and parents continue to read and put up puzzle pieces when they turn in sheets of books read. The Eric Carle Reading Celebration will take place next month. This week we will have the annual Make It-Take It evening. Also being offered in March is an evening with our school social worker as she discusses the challenges of parenting and some positive behavioral strategies that you will be sure to use. As always, thank you for being an important member of our school. Sincerely, Ms. Tadel

2 Faculty Focus: Greetings! My name is Jolanta Rudzinski. This is my first year at ECEC. I am delighted to have the opportunity to teach and learn from the students. I graduated from Dominican University with a degree in Early Childhood Education. I live in Schaumburg with my husband and two daughters. In my free time, I enjoy traveling, photography and cooking. It is a joy to work with the children every day and it brings me pride and professional fulfillment. Hello, my name is Marzanna Zapal, and I am one of the paraprofessionals at ECEC. This is my 9 th year as a member of Ms. Tadel s team. This year, I am working with Mrs. Rudzinski, and I am helping her to engage our students in many interesting learning opportunities. Being bilingual aides me in understanding the process of acquiring a new language and enables me to better serve our ESL students. As much as working with preschool children, I enjoy translating, and I would love to play around with translating poetry and more sophisticated literary texts. I live in Elk Grove Village with my husband Boguslaw. My daughter, Karolina, is a junior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I m excited to engage in many winter friendly activities, including skiing and drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace. Every morning, I look forward to a new day at ECEC. It s never the same. Every day, I learn something new, laugh at something funny, and listen to interesting stories and ideas. Toddler Tips: As tempting as it is to turn on the television to t amuse your restless child, it is important to know that you could be doing more harm than good. Brain based research shows that the rapidly growing brains of children under 5 years of age, and particularly children under 3, are negatively impacted by watching that TV set. For one, the child s brain can become disorganized with all the over stimulation of lights, noises, and rapidly moving pictures that they see. What you observe is a child that seems awed by the screen but what is happening over time to t the mind can t be seen. Second, TV watching is generally a sedentary activity that encourages the young child to sit and watch; a process that stops language. On the rare occasion that you allow your child to watch a show on TV, take the time to sit down with your child and talk about it as you point out and ask questions about what you are viewing.

3 If children are bored, and they will be after you turn off the TV; pull out baking sheets, wooden spoons, pots, measuring spoons and let them explore, e, bang, fit pieces together, pour water and, well you get the idea! In the long run, you will be encouraging your child to be creative, problem solve, entertain their self and learn while playing! These are skills that lay a foundation for learning in school. s Teacher Tidbit: Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a wonderful winter break. It was great to see all the children happy and excited to be back at school. They did a great job transitioning back to school after being off for over two weeks. In our morning and afternoon classes we started off the year reading different versions of the Gingerbread Boy. All the children absolutely loved re-enacting the stories and drawing their own gingerbread pictures. Keeping with this theme, the morning children have also been practicing number recognition and values through counting gingerbread cookies, matching different colored gingerbread boys and girls and identifying different shapes to serve as the gingerbread buttons, eyes or nose. In addition to the gingerbread theme, our afternoon class has been busy identifying rhyming words, writing his/her first and last names, identifying shape patterns and matching the beginning letter sounds! Lastly, the children learned how to complete a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the variety of gingerbread stories. As sad as we are to see the gingerbread boy go, we will soon be welcoming in stories about winter animals and their habitats. Feel free to check out our classes artwork on our class website which is Stay Warm, Ms. Chrysogelos & Mrs. Pecoraro

4 February Dates to Remember... February 6 February 7 February 9 February 11 February 12 February 14 February 17 February 19 February 21 February 26 February 28 ECEC Make It Take It 6:30 PM ECEC Inside Out/Backwards Spirit Day! Wood Dale Foundation for Educational Excellence and PTO Pancake Breakfast at Wood Dale Junior High 8:00 AM 1:00 PM PAT Playgroup at ECEC 9:30-10:30 AM Early Dismissal PM classes dismiss at 1:45 PM ECEC Wear Red and Pink Spirit Day! President s Day NO SCHOOL School Board Meeting 7:30 PM Half Day Dismissal - AM session dismisses at 10:45 AM PM session not in attendance Early Dismissal PM classes dismiss at 1:45 PM Teacher Professional Development NO SCHOOL Happy Birthday to the f to the following children who were born in in February Date Name Age 7 Ryleigh Mitchell 4 11 Krystian Bendyk 4 16 Achilles Reyna 5 17 Justyna Mrowca 5 18 Autumn Hansen 5 18 Szymon Drazba 5 19 Sara Gunia 5 20 Felip Lopez 4 24 Walter De La Cruz 5 26 Slobodan Malobabic 5 28 Alexis Escobar 5

5 Reading Program Information: Keep reading with your child the Reading Celebration is March 13 th!! Message from the Curriculum Department Would you like to know more about what your child is learning at school? This information can be found atwww.wd7.org by clicking on LEARNING/Curriculum. In addition, read Dr. Kudrna's curriculum blog or follow the curriculum department on Twitter or Facebook to find out what is happening in our classrooms. Dr. Kudrna has posted many resources for teachers and families about: the Common Core State Standards, the new upcoming PARCC assessment, the newly developed Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education, Twitter, inquiry learning, and Web 2.0 tools. Parents as Teachers Wood Dale School District reminds you that we have trained parent educators to screen Wood Dale children from 1 month to 3 years of age. If you would like to have your child screened in any developmental area please phone Cristina Valenzuela at There is a playgroup that meets at ECEC at 9:30 a.m. once a month that you are welcome to join with your child. This month s playgroup is: February 11 th 9:30 10:30 AM Parent Pointer ~Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~ (Roger Lewin)