With no shortage of falling leaves on our playground, the children have been having so much fun helping to pile them up, and of course jump on in them. Back to school has come and gone and the kids are getting into their routine now. We have enjoyed some new activites, such as flannel board stories, and some new centers. We have loved our visits from Cooper the Therapy Dog. The children get so excited to see his fluffy little face and get all those sloppy wet kisses. Last time he visited, he stayed for story time and we couldn't resist reading "Good Boy Fergus" to him. Parents, Cooper's owner Kim would like us to let you know, Cooper visits the Schenectady Public Library for storytime! It is open to the public and we will have his schedule of appearances for you if you are interested. A few reminders:
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As we are gearing up for our school year, we wanted to take this time to welcome our new families, and our former families back! Sorry for the long newsletter this week, but we have a lot to tell you! A Quick Introduction Ms. Kristy and Ms. Michelle will be the full time teachers this school year. Ms. Paulette will be helping out as a part time assistant teacher, and Ms. Bridget is back this year part time as well. You may see Miss. Rachel from time to time as a substitute, but college is keeping her pretty busy this year. All Children Will Need Please make sure your child has the following items:
Please be mindful of pick-up time. The center closes at 4:30pm. All of our employees have second jobs, classes to get to and/or children/family responsibilities directly after work. A late fee of $1.00 per minute after 4:30 is expected to paid at the time of pick-up for any late arrivals. This fee will be enforced as late pick-ups have been a problem recently. Thank you for understanding. Our staff want to get home to their families as much as you do. Tuition: Tuition is expected to be paid by the due date. It is preferred that you pay at the beginning of the month for the month. The only other option we are accepting this year is weekly payments, which are expected each Monday, or your child's FIRST day of care that week. I can no longer accept bi-weekly payments. If your payment is received after 4:30 on Friday afternoon, please add a $20.00 late fee to the tuition. Safety: Safety is our number one priority... To keep the chidlren properly supervised we ask that you please text Kristy with any questions/comments, concerns or updates on your child. This includes a change in pick up time or person, if your child will be absent/on vacation, and absolutely all tuition related questions. If Kristy is not present she will forward your messages to Michelle or Bridget so everyone is on the same page. In order to keep the chain of communication flowing properly, please do not text Michelle or Bridget directly. Blue cards will be sent home to update with any new contact information. Teacher's on staff will contact you if your child is being sent home sick or if there is an emergency. Misc.
On to the fun stuff! This year we will be getting back to basics in our lesson planning. With all of our "older" kids gone to Kindergarten, we will be working on basic concepts with our young preschoolers and toddlers. Each month we will have an umbrella theme for the entire month such as "FALL" with sub themes each week (i.e. leaves, pumpkins, apples, etc). Each month we will also concentrate on a shape and some of our art projects will incorporate this shape. A great way to reinforce these themes is to have your child point out the monthly shape in their take home projects. You can also count individual shapes they used in the project. "How many circles did you use in this cat face?" Ms. Bridget will also be bringing back Kids in the Kitchen this year. The older children will be doing some theme related healthy cooking projects. While these projects will usually be eaten for snack-time, we will be taking tons of pictures to send to you via Daily Connect, or if you signed the photo release, shared in the newsletter. To see our theme list for this school year, please check the website, they will be uploaded shortly. Again, welcome back! Thank you for your continued support of The Giving Tree. We are super excited for this upcoming school year and hope that you are too.
Kristy and the staff of The Giving Tree We are so excited to share that The Giving Tree children will now enjoy visits from Cooper the Therapy Dog! Cooper is a 3 1/2 year old West Highland Terrier that will be coming to visit the center once a week. He loves people, especially children and we think the kids are going to LOVE him. How could you not with a face like that! He reminds us of one of our favorite books "Good Boy, Fergus!" by David Shannon. We are so excited to meet him in September.
Please stay tuned to your email for our September newsletter, you should receive it right before labor day. It will have important information about September. We are looking forward to a great year and are so happy to be able to provide more activities and programs for the children, such as the Therapy Dog International program. We thought we would take this edition of our newsletter as a chance to introduce you to your child's teachers. Yes, you see them every day, and you talk to them about your children, but how much do you know about the Giving Tree Staff? Without further ado, let me introduce you to our staff. KristyHi, my name is Kristy. I've been in childcare for the past 21 years. I first started out at an indoor playground in Guilderland called Stompin' Grounds where I was a team leader hosting parties. A couple of years later I started at Maple Leaf Childcare Center as a teacher's assistant and worked my way up to director of the program. I was there for 10 years before I decided to work for BOCES with children who are diagnosed with emotional disturbances. I knew working with children was my calling so I decided to go to school for early education and special education. I attended SCCC and then went on the College of Saint Rose to receive my BA degree. I opened The Giving Tree in January of 2011. I am so blessed to have a successful business where families and children can feel comfortable, safe and loved. When I am not with my Giving Tree family, I am spending time with my fiance´ DP, my son Gavin (14), my daughter Ireland (7), and my step-daughter Sofie (6). I love Pinterest, music, and laughing. MicheleHi! I'm Michele. I am originally from Amsterdam, NY. I am the middle child and the single mother of two beautiful daughters Taryn (21) and Kyleigh (19) both full time students in college. In my free time I enjoy working out, kayaking, hiking, running, skiing and spending time with family and friends. My motto is Live LIfe to the FULLest! RachaelHi! My name is Rachael. I am currently attending school at HVCC for Radiology. In addition to The Giving Tree I waitress at Marcellas in Burnt Hills. I have 2 fur babies named Bella and Luna who are beautiful German Shepards. In my spare time I love to hike, watch football, horseback ride and I also took on hunting this year! PauletteHi, I'm Paulette. I have been working at The Giving Tree for almost 2 years now. I have lived in Charlton for 35 years. I have been married to my husband for 33 years and have 4 grown children who all graduated from Burnt Hills. I enjoy gardening and crafts and love working with your children!
We've really been enjoying the outdoors lately, even with all of the rain we've been having. The children love our new outdoor balls! Now if we could ditch this rain for more than a couple of days we'd be thrilled. As you can see we've been practicing taking walks with our walking rope. The kids are loving it. You may have heard the children come home and talk about our "Job Sticks." Each day the children get to pick a stick with their job for the day. They get to pick from things like Breakfast or Lunch Helper, Timer Helper, Clean Up Investigator and even Baby Helper. They are really enjoying all the responsibility. We love encouraging independence and responsibility at the Giving Tree. The children are responsible throughout the day for cleaning up their meal and sleeping spots, putting away their toys and putting on their jackets (stick and flip method) and shoes. We of course are always there to help if they need it but many times they don't want grown up help and enlist the help of their friends instead. We find the more independence they have the more confidence they have in themselves and their abilities. This month we have been learning all about Transportation, Spring and Community Helpers.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter/Passover holiday! The past few weeks we have been discussing Spring Rain and Easter. We've been learning about how the rain helps all the summer flowers grow. MAnyWe've been reading "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Chick." This book is wonderful for young children as it is a rhyming book. Rhyming books are very helpful to young children as an early literacy tool. Children have an easier time remembering the words from read to read and start to associate the verbal word with the written word. The children loved reciting the words with our teachers during circle time as we read the book together.
Our next theme as we come back from Spring Break will be Earth Week. The children will be learning about the importance of recycling. They will even be bringing in their own recycling items to separate in our recycling bins. Many of our projects this week will use recyclable materials as the key elements. We can't wait! We all know that art in the classroom is vital to children's creativity and learning. It allows children to process the themes of our week by representing them visually and provides a hands-on approach to teaching. So what better theme for our little kiddos than to teach them about the masters of Art. This is a theme that I have done for all the years I've been teaching and while you would think it would be "too mature" for preschoolers and toddlers, it has never let me down as the student's favorite theme of the year. |
Monet's WaterliliesOur first artist of the week was my personal favorite, Claude Monet. The children learned that Monet loved painting gardens so much he created his very own so he always had a place to paint. They also learned that he didn't paint with crisp lines but instead blended colors to create his beautiful gardens. |
Andy Warhol-The Marilyn DiptychThe kids had a LOT of fun with this one. We learned that Mr. Warhol enjoyed creating his art based on things that were popular at the time. His art was called "Pop Art" and featured famous people and everyday objects, like a Campbells Soup Can. They thought that was very funny. They really loved doing these colorful projects. |
Van Gogh's Starry Night
Oh, Mr. Van Gogh, what a strange man with his "broken ear" (as one of our kiddo's called it). The children really focused on the swirls and spirals in this painting. They used a new technique to create their own swirls by mixing paint on top of shaving cream and then pressing their paper into it. The results were very subtle and yet, very cool.
Jackson PollockThe children really took to this artist. His artwork and his story stood out to them and they waited paitently all week to learn more about him. Mr. Pollock developed a new form of painting called "Action Painting." He would drip and throw paint onto the canvas to create his masterpieces. Mr. Pollock preferred to paint when he was angry because he thought his paintings came out better. The kids LOVED dripping and splattering the paint on their canvases during this project. |
We would love for you to continue this learning at home. Below are a list of great children's books to help your little budding artists learn all about the masters (click the title for a link to amazon) Don't forget Netflix has all the seasons of Little Einsteins which features not only beautiful artwork and their artists but also famous composers and their works of art. The children really enjoyed picking out Monet and Van Gogh's painting during our special movie day episode.
Books we used this week..
It's been awhile since our last newsletter and we have SO much to tell you! We have been non-stop learning and celebrating this past month.
Our Valentine's celebration was super fun! We enjoyed reading each other's names on our cards and hand delivering them to our friends. We had an exciting party and enjoyed some delicious cookies and treats.
Our Valentine's celebration was super fun! We enjoyed reading each other's names on our cards and hand delivering them to our friends. We had an exciting party and enjoyed some delicious cookies and treats.
We loved celebrating Dr. Seuss week. We read One Foot, Two Feet and painted our own feet (and sometimes our friend's) to make our art project. Check out these pictures!
This week we have been focusing on music in the classroom. We learned the different rhythms that different notes make and how to use sound and clapping to show those rhythms. We learned one note is a "tah" and two notes connected are "ti-ti," and when you have a line of these notes we can read them out loud, "tah tah ti-ti tah" and make music. Even our babies are walking around chanting their tah's and ti-ti's now. We made music note collages, trumpets, guitars and even records (try explaining what THOSE are to this generation!)
Next week we will be talking about art and famous artists. The children will be learning all about the classics and mimicking painting styles of famous artists such as Pollock, Warhol, Monet and even Michelangelo. We can't wait!
We've started our units on Winter and all the things associated with the cold weather. The children had a mini unit on hibernation and migration and learned about how some animals sleep through the cold months and some fly to warmer areas. We made some great art with bears in caves and birds flying south. They really enjoyed learning about how frogs sleep under the ice all winter long.
helped us chip away at the remaining ice until we could free all of the animals from it. They talked to each other about how cold the ice was and how even though the water we poured was "hot" as soon as it hit the ice it too became cold.
The children also worked on some beautiful snow globes and mittens that will be decorating our center for awhile. We are very excited about what February will bring and working on our Valentine's day mailboxes. The kids can't wait to change our calendar from January to February.
In celebration of Martin Luther King Day we spent a lot of time this month talking about diversity; our differences, uniqueness and how we all come together to make the world a brighter and better place. The children investigated their hands at circle time and compared them to the hands of their friends. We talked about how they looked different, each one of them a different color and size, some of them had longer nails, some of them had cuts and scrapes. Then we talked about how they worked and what was on the inside. They discovered that no matter what the hands looked like they all bent the same way, they all could pick up their sippy cups the same and they all had the same bones inside. We used this discussion to teach the children that it is the same way with other people. They may look different or sound different but everyone is same on the inside and not one person is better than another. We followed up our discussion with one of my favorite books "Big Al." Big Al is the nicest fish you could ever meet but because he looks big and scary he can't make any friends. Not one fish will give him time to show them how caring he can be until one day when they get caught in a fisherman's net and Big Al comes to their rescue.
We also worked on a few activities that celebrated diversity and differences.
We thought you might enjoy this list of children's books that will help reinforce these themes all times of the year.
- Big Al by Andrew Clements
- The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane Derolf
- We All Sing with the Same Voice by Delbert Charles Miller and Sheppard M. Greene (here is a link to this read online, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezAwndQ5FRs)
- Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell
- It's OK to be Different by Todd Parr
- The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
- Hooway for Wodney Wat by Helen Lester
- All Kinds of Families by Nora Simon