Blog Archives

Week of 5/20

5/23/2019

Dear Polar Bear Families,
Reminders:

• No school this Monday May 27th. Closed for Memorial Day
• Friday May 31st we have our 3’s field trip to Victoria Gardens in central park. Every child must be accompanied by one adult. Montclare T-shirts for the kids, one adult and one child’s entrance ticket provided. Please bring a lunch for you and your child. We’ll have lunch after some fun. We’ll meet at Victoria Garden’s and go in as a group.

Theme: Celebrating the Alphabet
Letter of the week: A-Z

Some books we read this week:

ABC I Like Me!, by Nancy Carlson
Animals A to Z, by David McPhail’s
A My Name is Alice, by Jane Bayer
Eating The Alphabet, by Lois Ehlert

Classroom Activities

This week we celebrated the alphabet by reading lots of alphabet books and playing lots of games. Our favorite was called “Kaboom”. The children pick out sticks with letters on them and keep them. If they get one with no letter, they yell “Kaboom” and get to collect all the sticks taken out so far.
Monday Center time we used to practice writing our letters with our Handwriitng without Tears materials.
During center time on Tuesday we played a game focusing on categories. The children are still learning how to name and organize categories in their thoughts. For example, we asked, “is a pepper a fruit or vegetable?” We continued the game using different categories (fruit, vegetable, animal, flower etc) and continued naming as many things in each category as possible.
During our center time on Thursday we focused on sequencing. In order to learn how to read, it is important that children understand that stories have a beginning, middle, and ending. We divided the children into groups and showed them 4 cards with each with a moment in a sequence of events. The children had to look at all 4 cards, and then decide what happened first, second, third and forth.
For our art project this week we began working on our outside bulletin board. It’s the goodbye board for the year, so we decided to celebrate something we all love that says “summer” to us… Ice Cream!
We also got to celebrate our final Polar Bear who will be turning 4. Mischa’s parents and baby brother came in to help us celebrate her birthday in July.

We hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Best wishes,
Karen, Rebecca, and Marvin

Week of 5/13

5/17/2019

Dear Polar Bear Families,

Reminders:

Our final Scholastic order for the months of May/June is due beginning of next week. We would like to thank all of you who participated in the Scholastic program and bought books. Every book you bought earned the Polar Bear Room points that we could use to purchase more books for our classroom. And as you know… nothing makes us happier than reading a good book!
Save the Date: The three’s end of year field trip to Victoria Gardens is on Friday May 31st. Details will follow, but we meet at the park and enjoy the fun! Please remember that each child needs a chaperone and that you need to make sure we have the field trip consent form signed before we go.

Theme: Theater Week
Letter of the week: X, Y, Z

Some books we read this week:

Pete the Cat’s World Tour, by James Dean
Pete the Cat and the missing cupcake, by Kimberley and James Dean
Pete the Cat Construction Destruction, by James Dean
I love Pete the Kitty, by James Dean

Classroom Activities

Our Letter of the Week was actually three letters this week – X, Y, and Z. We read three Scholastic books as well. “Xylophone for X-Ray Fish, by Liza Charlesworth, “The Yak who said Yuck”, by Carol Martin, and “Zach the Lazy Zebra” by Wendy Lewison.

This week was all about our Pete the Cat performance.

On Monday we made the scenery for our show. We used dot markers to paint a beautiful background showing the buildings Pete the Cat saw as he was “walkin down the street”.
Tuesday we took our show on the road for the first time and travelled across the hall to the Sky room. We put on our costumes and got to find out what it was like to perform for a real live audience.
On Wednesday we went to Rainbow room and performed for Rainbow and the Star room kids.
On Thursday we went up to Gym 3 and had a final dress rehearsal. We figured out where everyone would stand, got into our costumes, and performed our show for the Blue Room. It went so well and the kids were all so excited to be “on stage”.
Friday was the big performance. Our thanks to all the parents and caregivers for being such a great audience! We hope you had fun.

Have a great weekend.
Karen, Rebeccca, and Marvin

Week of 5/6

5/10/2019

Dear Polar Bear Families,

Reminders:

Save the Date:

The Polar Bear Theater Week production of “Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy buttons” will be at 9am Friday May 17th. Caregivers and siblings are welcome to attend. Following the performance there will be a short cast party in the Polar Bear Room from 9:30-10am. See you all there!

The three’s end of year field trip to Victoria Gardens is on Friday May 31st. Details will follow, but we meet at the park and enjoy the fun! Please remember that each child needs a chaperone and that you need to make sure I have the field trip consent form signed before we go.

Theme: Theater Week Letter of the week: W

Some books we read this week:

Pete the Cat. I love my white shoes, by Eric Litwin
Pete the Cat, Rockin’ my school shoes, by Eric Litwin
Pete the Cat and the bedtime blues, by Kimberley and James Dean
Pete the Cat and his magic sunglasses, by Kimberley and James Dean

Classroom Activities

Our Letter of the Week was “W” and our Scholastic Letter Book this week was “Worms Wagon”, by Samantha Berger”. We also got to watermelon and vanilla wafers in honor of the letter W.
This week was all about rehearsing for our big show. We rehearsed every day and worked on using a big speaking voice that wasn’t shouting, saying our lines all together, and using our bodies and faces to show emotion and add excitement to our performance. We even practiced up in Gym 3 and pretended we had an audience
On Monday we got to watch the Panda Room practice their theater production of Peter Pan. The kids loved being an audience and we had such fun being the audience.
This week we also made our costumes. We used tissue paper and glued it onto cardboard to make our groovy buttons. On Friday we put them on our Pete the Cat shirts and practiced in costume for the first time.
On Tuesday we went up to gym 3rd with the whole school for assembly with Noel. We got to sing all our favorite songs and spend time with friends we usually only see in the hallway.
We also worked this week on a super secret art project for Mother’s Day. We want to wish all our Polar Bear Moms the happiest of days!

Have a great weekend!

Karen, Rebeccca, and Marvin

Week of 4/29

5/3/2019

Hi Everyone!

Reminders:

Save the Date: The Polar Bear Theater Week production of “Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy buttons” will be at 9am Friday May 17th. Caregivers and siblings are welcome to attend. Following the performance there will be a short cast party in the Polar Bear Room from 9:30-10am. See you all there!

Theme: Theater Week and Seeds in spring
Letter of the week: N

Some books we read this week:

I’m a seed, by Jean Marzollo
The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Kraus
Growing in a Garden, by Mari Schuh
Animals in the Garden, by Mari Schuh

Classroom Activities

Our Letter of the Week was “N” and our Scholastic Letter Book this week was “The Nicest Newt”, by Heather Feldman
We continued getting ready for our theater production of Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy buttons and began the week by watching the performance the Polar Bears gave last year of “Pete the Cat”. We wanted the children to have a better idea of what a theater production would look like. They loved the show and were very excited to start their own rehearsals.
We talked more this week about what a “character” in a play or book is, and how we can use our imaginations to figure out their “motivation”. For example, why was Pete walking down his street wearing his four groovy buttons? Where was he going? Why did he choose the shirt with the groovy buttons? How did he learn to count? These things aren’t in the book, but as readers or audience members we can make up our own story to go along with the one we are reading about or seeing.
We have a brand new bulletin board that we worked on this week. In addition to Pete the Cat May is a month we talk about planting flowers and gardens. Each child made their own flower out of paper plates and dot markers and then we added their pictures to make the cutest blooms ever!
In Circle time this week we began our discussions about growing things in spring. We read books and talked about what a seed is and how you use them to make things grow.
Tuesday was the April birthday blowout extravaganza! Cole, Spencer, Brady and Jordan all turned 4 this month and their parents came in for a birthday party. Jordan’s mom made the most adorable “Icy Polar bear” cake we’ve ever seen (check out weebly for a picture of it). After cake we put on our glow sticks and had a dance party. It was epic!

Wednesday we had a special treat when Arthur’s mom Rose came in to help us discuss Earth day and how we can help take care of our planet. She read us “The Lorax” which was a huge hit and then sent the children home with their own plant to care for along with a fantastic book about ways to take care of our planet. The kids had such a great time!

Friday we had one more treat. It was Gaby’s birthday (the only one in May). We celebrated with a Lion King theme. Gaby brought in the most adorable lion masks for all her friends that we put on and jammed out to music from the Lion King and ate cupcakes. It was the perfect end to a very exciting week!

Have a great weekend.
Karen, Rebeccca, and Marvin