Tag Archives: environment

Welcome to Spring 2015 in Room 1

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Laura Paciorek| Comments Off on Welcome to Spring 2015 in Room 1

Dear Families:

 

We are excited to begin a new semester with all of you.  We cannot wait to see how the children have grown over break.  We are also excited to welcome a few new children and families to our classroom.  It is going to be such a fun semester.  We have a few updates for you as we begin:

 

NEW TEACHERS AND SCHEDULES: We have a new face in our room and some of the teachers’ schedules are changing a little bit this semester.  If you see someone new, be sure to say “hello.”  We have been spending a lot of time working together as a team during the past two weeks and getting to know one another.  The Room 1 team is a fantastic group, I think!

 

  • Ms. Amanda – Ms. Amanda’s schedule is changing to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this semester.  We are glad to have her in our room!
  • Ms. Caroline – Ms. Caroline is going to be teaching on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.  However, you will also see her in a new role on Mondays and Wednesdays when she will be completing her student teaching through the internship class.
  • Ms. Chandler – Ms. Chandler will be working full days now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  We are glad that she will be staying with us until the end of the day.
  • Ms. Ruby – Ms. Ruby is a new teacher on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.  She did service learning in Room 3 last semester.  We are excited to have her in Room 1.
  • Ms. Ana – Ms. Ana will be a floater in our classroom, primarily on Mondays and Wednesdays.  You may also see her around on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
  • Ms. Laura – I will still be here Monday through Friday.  There are a few days here and there where I will be absent.  In many of those cases, Ms. Nicole will be subbing.

 

If you have any questions about our staff, please let me know.  Also, you can see some bios of the teachers in our classroom if you would like to get to know them a bit more!

 

CUBBIES: Please insure that your cubbies are stocked with a change of clothes and diapers for your child. We will be getting right into art, water in the sensory table, and more!

 

NEW ROUTINE: We have a new routine for our classroom!  We hope that you find the changes to be exciting.  The biggest change is that we will be starting our day outdoors and finishing our day indoors.  When you come in the morning, be sure to sign in in our sign in book, help your child wash his or her hands, and then bring your child to the yard.  We plan to have a teacher indoors each day to greet you, too!

 

PLANNING DOCUMENTS: We also have our first week’s plans to share with you.  On the second page of the document, you can see what we will be doing for large groups and for special activities.  During the first week we will not go to the art studio, as the teachers and children will be getting used to our new routine.  However, we have some fun 3D artwork planned for inside our classroom.  We also plan to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear and sign “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” with some sign language incorporated into it.  The classroom is set up slightly differently this semester, too.  We are hoping that the changes will lead to more use of some of the areas of our classroom

 

WINTER BREAK JOURNAL: If you have completed your winter break journal, we would enjoy seeing it!  If you are a new family, please do not worry about completing a journal.  Instead, we would love to have a few family pages created for the journal books that are left here at school.  We cannot wait to add more pages to your child’s journal this semester.
FACEBOOK: Please consider visiting our CDC Facebook page for information and updates about the Center as a whole!

 

Have a great weekend everyone.  We cannot wait to see you all on Tuesday, January 20 (or Wednesday, if you do not attend on Tuesday).  Also, if there’s anyone to add to our classroom email list, please let me know.  I am using a completely new list now since there are now new families in our room!

 

-Laura Paciorek

 

New routine: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x1T7NIfw0NcwjiXF1ztyq6eF7BOpfUBqYE8CmM-KaWc/edit?usp=sharing

First week’s plans: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hqobw_LZJzEzr4f5eOVBIRSnOLemzr1m-BN-nO8JKUc/edit?usp=sharing

CDC Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Child-Development-Center-at-MiraCosta-College/213823248677493

 

BCC: Families of Room 1, Teachers of Room 1, Supervising Staff of the CDC

Posted in Classroom Posts, Families and Community, Planning Documents

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Room Plans – September 22

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Laura Paciorek| Comments Off on Room Plans – September 22

Hi, everyone:

Our classroom planning sheet, which begins on September 22, is below:

Indoor planning September 22

We are excited to see what the children may do with our new materials.

– The Teachers of Room 1 –

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Environment Plans!

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Laura Paciorek| Comments Off on Environment Plans!

On Friday, the teachers met to discuss the plans for our classroom environment and group gatherings.  We came up with the following ideas (in our planning documents below).

We are still looking for inexpensive binoculars for the classroom.  The children still have a strong interest in birds!  We sang Aloutette (a French song about a bird) with the children last week as Ms. Laura played it on her flute.  The flute has been a fun addition to the classroom.  If you have a musical talent you would like to share with the children, we would love to have you join us at the end of our day to play an instrument!

Here are our planning documents.  Have a great week!

Indoor planning September 8

Outdoor Planning – September 8

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Week 3 in Room 1: Environment, donations, gatherings

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Laura Paciorek| Comments Off on Week 3 in Room 1: Environment, donations, gatherings

Dear Families of Room 1:

We are so excited to begin our third week with you and your children.  We have some exciting things planned for the next couple of weeks.

ENVIRONMENT: Our environment is in the process of being updated.  Here are some of the things that we have added, based upon the initial observations we have made of the children during weeks 1 and 2.

Science/Discovery: We have added some color paddles so that the children can explore color and light (physical science).  We have also added magnifying glasses because they are useful science tools to have in the classroom.  We noticed that the children have been interested in the magnets on the teachers’ name tags.  Therefore, we also added large magnet wands into the classroom.

Kitchen area: In our dramatic play kitchen area, we added large utensils since we observed the children consistently using the one we originally had available to them.

Dress up: We put out more shoes instead of hats (we kept one hat for now).  We are planning to add things that they might like to put in the bags and baskets that we have available for them to carry.

Blocks/construction: We talked about introducing the children more to the unit blocks.  They just started using those blocks on Friday.  We also plan to add some large cars and trucks instead of the small ones.

Art: The children are exploring cause and effect and making marks.  We plan to put out watercolors with big brushes at the easel.  We also want to add more paper and chalk.  They have been using the printmaking items, so we would like to add new items that make different kinds of prints and fingerpaint for a different texture.

Music: The children have been using everything in this area, so we want to keep it the same for consistency and repetition.  Ms. Laura plans to bring in her flute to play for the children sometime soon, too.

ROOM DONATIONS: There are some things that we would love to have for our classroom.  The first is something small: bubble wands of all shapes and sizes!  We have found that bubbles have been a huge interest of the children and we want to build on this investigation.

We are also looking for a small fish tank and fish.  We talked about pets that might be fun for the children and fish would be great!  We know that sometimes families have things like fish tanks in the garage or storage area, so we wanted to check with all of you first to see if any of you had a tank you would like to donate.  Please talk with Ms. Laura if you do so that we can coordinate the process of getting a tank set up for the children.

We have noticed that almost all of the children have shown an interest in birds.  It’s a great thing because we have a lot of birds visit our yard.  If anyone has a bird feeder to donate, we might try to hang one outdoors to encourage more birds to visit.  We are also looking for children’s inexpensive binoculars that we could put in the science area so that children could look for birds and other creatures through the window when we are indoors.

GATHERING OPPORTUNITIES: The children are learning the routine in the room. We have two “gathering opportunities” in Room 1.  One is a music time before snack.  The other is a literacy time at the end of the day before pick up.  We have been singing and dancing to “Slippery Fish” as our song for the first group and plan to continue that.  Ms. Laura may also try playing “Alouette” (a French song about a bird) or some other songs on the flute at some point soon, if the children seem interested.

At the end of the day, we have been looking at the children’s journals.  Each child now has a book with photos from school in it.  We are working on getting better cover photos so that we can make covers for the books.  The teachers will also work on adding some descriptions of the photos at some point.  For now, we wanted each child to have photos of them enjoying their time at school.  It has been great seeing the school photos added to the books with the family pages in them.  The children often carry the books around with them and talk about their families.  Now that the books contain photos of home and photos of school, they truly create a home-school connection!

We hope that you had a great long weekend.  We will see you all soon!  If you have questions, please ask a teacher in Room 1!

– The Teachers of Room 1: Ms. Laura, Ms. Amanda, Ms. Caroline, Ms. Chandler –

Posted in Classroom Posts, Planning Documents

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Book about Room 1

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Laura Paciorek| Comments Off on Book about Room 1

Dear Families:

I hope you are all having a great first week of school.  We have truly enjoyed getting to know you all and your children.  Today I created a book for all of you!  It is a book for children and families about Room 1.  The book is attached in PDF format.  I want to encourage you to:
  • ​Print out this book and bind it together somehow so that you and your child can read it together (we use report covers and sheet protectors to make books for children).
AND/OR
  • ​Download the PDF into your eReader, tablet, or phone and have it available for you and your child to scroll through and read/discuss together.
The book is about the environment and routine in Room 1.  It shows places in our classroom that may now be familiar to your child.  Reading this book at home with your child can:
  1. ​Create a connection between home and school
  2. Help your child learn some early literacy skills
  3. Help with the transition to beginning school in Room 1
  4. Create a bond between you and your child
  5. Provide oral language opportunities for your child
We hope that you enjoy this book!  We will be putting some copies into our classroom, too, so that we can read the book with the children in the school setting.  This will create even more of a connection between home and school.
Learning about the routine of school, becoming familiar with the classroom environment, and creating relationships between the adults and children in the classroom are the most important parts of beginning school.  We will continue to work on forming relationships with you and your children.  The family photos and family pages for the children’s journals have been great.  We have those in our classroom already!
If you have any questions about Room 1, please do not hesitate to ask.  We hope that you enjoy this little book about our classroom.  If you have trouble downloading it, please let us know.
Have a great evening.
– The Teachers of Room 1 –
Attachment: My School

 

Posted in Classroom Posts, Families and Community, Language Arts, Social Studies

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