January 27-February 2

Beaumont/Alameda Pre-K

Newsletter for the week of January 30th-February 2nd

So long, January; hello, February!  We had a lovely short week this week.  It was informative and fun learning all about Transportation.  From planes to trains, from trikes to bikes — we learned that we enjoy all the different ways we can travel from place to place!  We took a daily poll of how each student arrived at school, and made a chart to represent this information.  We discussed our city’s bus system for Bus Day, and had fun learning through play with our homemade bus passes.  We love Trimet!  For Bicycle Day, we explored a real bike in our classroom, identified and labeled all the different parts, discussed why riding a bike is good for our planet, and designed our dream bicycles.  We also learned all about airplanes this week, and cut and pasted together our very own paper planes.  Our class’ Penny Program continued to go very well this week.  The students seem to be enjoying working toward their personal goals, and seeing the positive results of their good choices.  Thanks so much to all our families for participating.

We are very excited to start learning about Rocks and Minerals next week; we anticipate that it will “rock!”  Also, letter ‘Pp’ sharing starts next week.  Please remember to remind your student to bring only one or two items for sharing, and that it should be something that is on topic with that week’s theme (i.e. Rocks and Minerals), something that starts with the letter of the week, or something from Nature.

We enjoyed learning all about our Person of the Week this week, Gabriel Derner.  Gabe was an excellent helper with our classroom duties all week long.  He told us that he is 5 years old, weighs 42lbs, and is 3’7’’ tall.  His eyes are brown, and his hair is brown.  Some of his favorite foods are mac and cheese, turkey, and frozen fruit.  His favorite color is green, and when he grows up, he wants to be a Daddy!  He likes when he can play with his sister, and watching movies with his sister.  If he could have three wishes, he would wish for a movie set, a Star Wars movie set, and an electrical robot.  Thanks for be a great helper all week, Gabe!

Thanks and Reminders

Thanks to Simone and family for bringing in snack this week!

Thank you to Coco and family for sharing a very special model of the Portland Street Car, and sharing some street car stickers with us.

Thanks to Henry and family for providing play-dough this week.

Next week for Rocks and Minerals, students are invited to bring in their personal rock collections.  Please help us remind them to:

  • Bring in no more than 6 rocks
  • Take them to school in a container or bag of some kind with their name on it
  • Please do not bring in anything from their collection that is valuable or irreplaceable

Please do not send your child to school with candy or cards for Valentine’s Day.  Our class does not celebrate holidays, and will not be exchanging Valentine’s Day cards at school.

The Week in Review

Monday: Today we started our day off by discussing what the word transportation means. Students were asked if they came to school by: bus, bike, walk and car. Most students drove to school today.  We will continue this throughout the week and tally them up at the end of the week to see which mode of transportation was used most this week.  We read Vroom, Chugga, Vroom-Vroom. Students learned how to sign the letter Oo and its pronunciation. Students who shared today were: Lola, who shared a stuffed animal Owl. Kate shared Oats.  Cannon shared an octopus and a book with a picture of an otter. Daphne shared a huge stuffed animal octopus.  Davis shared a map of a subway system.  Gabriel was chosen for person of the week. Our project was making his person of the week pages for his book.  At the end of the day many students asked for more of the optional homework sheets. Keep up the hard work!

Tuesday: Today in Pre-K we continued to learn about transportation! Buses were the topic of discussion! A lot of the friends in our class have been on a city bus. Some places we have been on the bus were Voodoo Doughnuts downtown, grandparents’ house, the gym,  OMSI, a friend’s house, home, the pet store, and dad’s work. Our special project today was to make our very own “All Zone” bus passes. We also read the book The Wheels on the Bus and sang the song as well. The teachers set up a “bus” and had the students take turns being the bus driver; stamping each of the friend’s passes. We began learning the song “ABC” by Jackson 5 using sign language! The following friends shared for the letter ‘Oo’ today: Ella shared an Orange, Henry shared his sister’s Owl, Gus shared a piece of an Oak tree, Gabriel shared an Orange, Margaret shared an Orca whale, and Simone shared Ovaltine! This afternoon, we drew transportation murals. We broke the students who wanted to participate into three groups, and gave them unlimited buttons and drawing supplies to make a city scape that included a bus! They came out great! What a fun day!

Wednesday: Today was an excellent day learning more about transportation.  Our focus was on a human-powered means of transport — the bicycle!  We talked about a few different kinds of bikes, why riding a bike is good for our planet, and how much fun this mode of transportation can be!  In the morning, Teacher Shelley brought her bike into the classroom.  We talked a little about bike safety — the equipment and gear used to bike safely, why we use bike lights, etc., and about the different parts of a bike.  Everyone was given a chance to come up and stick a label on different parts of the bike.  The special project choice today was drawing a picture of our Dream Bikes, and some of us practiced using scissors to cut out our bikes.  We read a book about things that transport not only people, but food, dirt, mail, etc. called Wheels Around today.  Today for letter ‘Oo’ sharing, Charles brought in CheeriOs and an Orange, Deacon also shared some CheeriOs, and Hudson Oborne shared himself, and some bracelets he had that are in the shape of the letter ‘O.’ At the end of the day today, we read a book about being a good friend called I’m Sorry, and Teacher Katie told one of her much beloved stories about a fairy named Twinkle Twinkle Tweedy Bee.

Thursday: Today we started our day off by reading Gabriel’s person of the week book. Students said comments like “I like your drawing” when we were reading the book! Students who shared today were: Benton shared origami he made and an octagon. Tess shared an orange. Chase shared a magnet of Oregon, a picture of president Obama and Oreos because they are his favorite cookie. Quincy shared oatmeal. Maggie shared a list of words she came up with such as order, otter, odor, organic O’s and old. Lucy shared a book about the ocean. Our special project was constructed our own airplane. Students were able to cut and paste different shapes to create their airplane. Since it was so wonderful outside we played in the sunshine for quite a bit in the afternoon. We practiced a new clean up game today, where the goal is to finish cleaning before the song “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” ends and be sitting on the carpet with quite voices. They all did a great job and seemed to like it. We will continue to practice this throughout the year.

Friday: No School

Have a great weekend!