dickinson college children’s center february 2019 · both kindergarten 2019 - 2020 and summer...

Welcome February! Getting snow sure does

make it fun for the children and now with

spring temperatures this week, it’s hard to

predict what kind of clothing we will need. At this time of year, layers are important and please

don’t take the snow clothes home just yet!

Both Kindergarten 2019- 2020 and Summer Camp 2019 applications have been sent out.

Our Kindergarten Program will consist of 15 children and the Summer Camp program will enroll

approximately 30 children per day at both Dragons l and Dragons ll.

Dickinson College Kindergarten held a Kindergarten Q and A Night on Tuesday, Janu-

ary 29th from 6-7:00 p.m. All families, college and community, were invited to stop in to visit with

our Kindergarten teacher, ask questions and tour the classroom in order to learn more about our

hands-on curriculum. If you were unable to make it due to the weather, please let me know and I

would be happy to provide you with some answers to your questions or set up a tour of the Kinder-

garten room and an opportunity to talk with Ms. Brittney our Kindergarten Teacher. Kindergarten

enrollment forms are due Wednesday 2/6.

* Reminder: If you refer a family that enrolls in our Kindergarten Program , we will apply a

50.00 credit to your account.

The annual Pancake Breakfast will be held on February 9th from 8-11 a.m. at the HUB

Social Hall here at the college. The event includes a book fair, arts and crafts and silent auction for

all to enjoy. Tickets are available by calling the center (717-245-1088) and tickets are available at

the door on the day of the event as well. The Silent Auction will have a lot of fun baskets with

some really nice gift certificates as well. There will also be a wide variety of cupcakes for sale!

Summer Staffing is under way. Returning college students have been in touch and re-

questing to return for the summer. New employees have been interviewing for summer positions.

Once all applications are received, we will assign children to the appropriate buildings and assign

the teachers.

Soccer Shots winter session has started and both CPYB and Martial Arts will be start-

ing in Spring.

During the February Staff meeting all staff and subs will be trained on Fire Safety and

Emergency Preparedness. We will also have an officer from DPS join us to talk with us about

our Intruder Drill. The college will be performing an Emergency Active Shooter Drill during early

February, please keep in mind that the Children's Center is not participating in that drill. We will

be doing our own drill in early spring.

Spring also is the time for the teachers and office staff to get caught up on our trainings.

Ms. Brittney and Ms. Sarah both attended the Kindergarten Conference at the beginning of the

month. They received a number of ideas that they can't wait to share with their classes. We have

two teachers attending the CAAEYC Conference held at Messiah College in March. March 15th

we will be closed for a teacher training day. Half of the staff will be taking Pediatric First Aid

Training and the other half will be completing a PBIS and special needs training.

We are very excited to share that we had 57 out of 92 families participate in our Center

Survey! Thank you for sharing about what we are doing well, areas to work on and suggestions

for improving at the Children's center.

We have listed some goals to work on for 2019 and I am happy to share that we have al-

ready started to take action to improve. Goals will be shared at both the Advisory and Parent

Meetings. Have a wonderful month! ~Gina VanKirk, Director

Dates to

Remember:

February 4-7—

Scholastic Book Fair

DCCC Big Play Room

February 9—DCCC

Pancake Breakfast &

Silent Auction

Fundraiser 8-11 a.m.

HUB Social Hall

Family Engagement

Opportunities:

February 18 - Positive

Parenting Workshop

4:15 p.m.

DCCC Big Rom

February 25—Nutrition

and Children

Workshop 4:15 p.m.

DCCC Big Room

From the Director’s Desk

Dickinson College Children’s Center

February 2019

https://www.facebook.com/

DCChildrenCenter/ -

Please like and share our

fun posts and Center news!

Pancake Breakfast News When: Saturday Feb. 9th 8-11 a.m.

at the HUB on campus When: Saturday Feb. 9th 8-11 a.m. at the HUB on campus

$5,000 is our goal: check out the reward!

We Want

You!

Volunteers are still needed

for many different aspects

of the Pancake Breakfast.

Time slots are half an hour

each. No experience nec-

essary!

Please sign up to volunteer

on the sheets in the main

hallway outside of the of-

fice!

MORE FUN…

• Face painting

• Winter crafts for kids

• Science Station

Tickets still available for purchase!

• Tickets for the breakfast are available for purchase in advance or at the door. $8 for adults and $5 for children ages 2 and over. Please contact the office at the Center if you’d like to purchase tickets in advance.

• EVERYONE is invited to this event, it’s always a fun time to be with friends (old and new), family and teachers.

Due to past success of the DCCC Pancake Breakfast, this year the office staff is issuing another challenge to DCCC families. Last year we raised about $4,700! This year we are looking to increase that amount. After seeing all of the items coming in for the Silent Auction, we believe that this is an achievable goal worth shooting for.

When this goal is achieved, we will have a center-wide pajama day! The children (and teachers) LOVE PJ days and we know that this will be a reward that they will truly enjoy as we have enjoyed it in past years!

Please help us in selling/

purchasing tickets for the breakfast. This event is open

to the community so any-one can come. You can also help by bidding on some high quality baskets and packages at the silent auction on the day of the Pancake Breakfast.

As always, thank you for your continued support!

Dickinson College Children's Center

Special points of in-terest: * Scholastic Book Fair to be held in a HUB side room.

* Demonstra-tion by Cen-tral Pennsyl-vania Youth Ballet

* Surprise Mascot Visit!

* Silent Auc-tion—preview cata-log coming soon! Fantas-tic items available for bidding!

* Cupcake Sale!

January has been a month of transitions as we have all returned from a long winter

break, become reacquainted, and gradually resettled into our routines. We are about half

-way through our first winter together. Weather conditions so far have been fairly cold,

so we have not been able play outside on a number of days. We loved our first real

snowfall! We have explored ideas associated with winter through the scenes that play

out beyond our windows, we brought the outside into our classroom, and through pic-

tures, books, stories and song.

In February, we will consider the concept of shadows as we observe Ground Hog Day. We will explore shades of the color red and heart shapes in our environment, as well as thoughts of love, nurturing and caring for each other, as we celebrate St. Valentine’s Day with related board books and songs. For our older infants, we will introduce chunky puzzles, more dramatic play toys, and puppet play. The “Big Room” will give us lots of space to practice crawling, pushing toys, and standing, walking, climbing, dancing and rolling & tossing balls. We will also venture outside whenever the temperatures permit. We will continue to incorporate gestures and baby signing: waving, clapping, pointing, blowing kisses, and other gestures that build on our communication skills. For those young toddlers who are interested, simple art materials will be offered, chunky crayons or paper with small blobs of colorful finger paint, brush painting and sponge painting. This group of infants seems interested in music and dancing, so we will offer more op-portunities for diverse music, dancing and musical instruments. We look forward to the February 9th Pancake Breakfast and hope that you are all able to attend. The infants will participate in their small way toward the construction of a table center piece! Also, be sure to browse through the Scholastic book brochures that you find in your “go home” bins each month. It’s a nice way to build on your baby’s book library at home (they do feature board books). You may order online or submit your order to the office. With each book purchase you make, the Center gets points toward book purchases to enhance our own Duckling classroom library!

~Laci, Stephanie, Tory, & Jody

Ducklings

Reminders:

*Please con-

tinue to label

ALL bottles

and personal

clothing

items.

*Make sure

finger foods

are cut in ap-

propriate size

pieces for

your child.


January was so cold that we all got a little bit of cabin fever from being stuck inside for so many days! We took every opportunity that we could find to go out on the porch or the playground for some fresh air! The cold weather made it easy to talk about winter ani-mals, snow, ice, and read some great winter books written by Jan Brett. Penguins, polar bears, walrus, and snowy owls make some fun noises that we heard and tried to replicate! We were lucky enough to have snow to play with, and we also explored ice. We watched what happens when ice gets warm, painted with ice cu-bes, and made some cute mitten handprints. We read The Mitten, The Hat, and Gingerbread Baby. We col-ored mittens, explored hats and gloves in our dress-up bin, and talked about the gingerbread that we had be-fore break. We also looked for different animals in the books, and practiced the sounds they make. Our fa-vorite animal noises belong to farm animals! “Moo” is a fun sound to make, and we think it’s pretty funny when our teachers make goat sounds!

February is a fun month in our room! We will focus on love, but we will stay busy incorporating lots of sub-jects into the month! We will be talking about our body parts this month. We love pointing to our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, elbows, knees, and toes. We will also talk about our teeth this month. We will be painting with tooth brushes, looking at our teeth, examining the big teeth and practicing brushing. We will spend time making pretty hearts, painting with the color red, and creating some fun individualized Valentine’s day art.

Yellow Pups

FAMILY REMINDERS:

*Please remember to that raw vegetables, such as

carrots and broccoli, are a choking hazard. They

need to be cooked for us to be able to offer them

to children in their lunches. Also, grapes must be

cut into quarters.


Yellow Honey Bees

I don’t know if an early spring is possible, but we’ll keep hoping! The beginning of Feb-ruary will find us looking for a groundhog and our shadows so please bring in a flashlight on Friday the 8th for shadow exploration.

The puppies will be decorating a paper bag with crayons and stickers to put our Valentines in and make a love bug. I will be sending home a list of the kids names, please keep Valentines to just a card, either store-bought or handmade.

We will also be exploring our feelings and being nice with our friends. We will be talking about gentle hands, hugs, sharing, and singing songs about friends and feelings. Pointing out when we are happy, sad, angry, ex-cited, etc.

We will be identifying the color red and using it in many of our art projects with paint, crayons, and paper. The puppies will be coloring hearts, painting handprint hearts, coloring a friendship collage and making a pa-per chain.

The puppies have been enjoying playing with play-doh (handmade), it really works on our fine motor skills as we poke it, roll it around, press shapes into it and pull it apart.

Please bring in a set of snow pants and boots. When the temperature permits and there is snow on the ground, we like to get the kids outside. For us to be able to do so, everyone needs to bring their gear. The boots are also helpful for a muddy playground.

REMINDERS:

~ Please check daily sheets for items needed (wipes, diapers, creams, etc.)

~Bring snow boots and snow pants for play (when it snows)

~Hats and gloves/mittens for outside

~Cathryn & Donna

January was a month of change. The children, developmentally, are maturing. We have noticed in-creased verbal interactions, higher- level play, and an eagerness to learn new concepts. They love listening to stories, learning the months, days of the week, and the weather. Potty training is going well; as the major-ity of the children sit on the potty and are praised for their successes.

Our theme for February will be “Feelings”. The children will learn what it means to be happy, sad, angry, and scared. We will identify what triggers us when we are having difficulty. We will make emotion masks, monster mash, feeling faces, and a feelings book.

Just a few reminders:

Please make sure your child has a warm change of clothes.

We go outside if the “feels like” temp is 25 degrees, or higher, so please make sure they have hats and mittens.

Please send in snowboots and snowpants on snowy days. The chil-dren love to play in the snow.

Thanks for your support!

~Barb & Michele

Blue Puppies

Pancake Breakfast News

Blue Busy Bees

The blue bees had a great start to the New Year. We talked about the wonders of winter and we even had several chances to go out and play in the snow that fell. You should be very proud of your blue bee and how they all worked hard and did a great job putting on their snow gear and taking it off as well. Some of the fun projects that we did in January were melting ice cubes with salt, water and the warmth of our hands. We learned about the Arctic and the animals that live there and did an experiment to see how an animal’s blubber helps to keep it warm in the cold arctic waters. We even made and

played in our own arctic using ice, water and arctic animals in the water table We made melting snowmen from paper and snowmen from real snow that will eventu-ally melt also. We also enjoyed reading many books about winter and all the fun that can be had in the winter by children and animals alike.

In the month of February, the blue bees will talk about valentines, feelings and community helpers. We will have a valentine exchange on Thursday February 14. We will talk about how our feelings make us feel on the inside and how they make us look on the outside. When we talk about community helpers, we will talk about the importance of each of them in our communities.

We continue to talk with the children about Being Safe, Being Kind and Being Responsible. As par-ents, you can help us by reminding your child each day in the hallway what it looks like to Be Safe, Kind and Responsible when walking your child to their classroom in the morning and leaving in the evening.

With more than half the class being 3, we will start to do more small fine mo-tor play such as cutting with scissors, beading with small beads on pipe cleaners, working with more difficult puzzles and having more art supplies such as markers, water color paints and stampers available on a more regular basis.

Parental Reminders:

*Please label all of your child’s snow gear

*If your child has a food that requires a fork to eat it, please send a fork in their lunch box

*Please check food labels to make sure the food you are sending for your child is peanut and nut free as well as no traces of peanuts or other nuts

~Jody & Cassie


Blue Bears

The Teddy Bears sure did enjoy their unit on clothes! Who knew talk-ing about clothes for a few weeks could be so entertaining! We learned all about different clothes for weather, clothes for different jobs and sports.

In February, we will change gears and have an All About Me theme. We will talk about what makes us special and about our feelings. We will also spend a week on Dental Health.

We will finish our month out with Ms. Ange’s all-time favorite’s Dr. Seuss. We will have many silly stories and of course, MANY silly things will be worn made and eaten these few weeks. Please keep your eyes on the lesson plan these weeks so not to miss anything excit-

ing.

Don’t forget to keep the date open for the Pancake Breakfast Saturday February 9th. This is always a great time to see other families from the center and have a great breakfast.

We cannot wait for another month of fun!

~Ange & Kendra

Yellow Bear Cubs

We had a great time starting the New Year by playing games with our friends! We then learned about clothes that we wear in different seasons and dif-ferent types of weather! We did some comparing of characteristics on our clothes. We enjoyed some great winter clothes stories by Jan Brett that also introduced us to some special animals!

In February, we will be wrapping up our clothing talks. We will have some winter weather exploration. We will be strengthening our problem-solving skills and reviewing our feelings. February is Dental Health Month and we will be having a week on Dental Health!

Reminders:

*Please limit the toys from home that are traveling to school to be the sleep toy only! The cub-by area is a very congested space with the coats, snow clothes and bedding bags. Extra toys fall from the cubbies and quickly become a conflict or get misplaced.

~Mandy


The month of January seemed to be a long month being stuck in-side the majority of time, but it was made bearable by all the fun and en-gaging learning opportunities that took place! Here’s what we did! The Balls Unit was a huge hit! We were able to cover a lot of ground! Science, Shapes, and Space were all covered while investigating and discussing the topic!

All good things must come to end and open doors to even more enriching learning experiences! To help keep our

topics consistent from home to school, I’ll be sending articles home about what we are discussing at school! February’s going to start out with discus-sions on feelings. Helping children to identify and label emotions is an im-portant first step. Many preschoolers do not yet have the vocabulary to identi-fy feeling words like angry or frustrated, or have the skills to “read” facial cues or to interpret body language. We, your child’s teachers, strive to sup-

port children’s social-emotional development when they label and talk about emotions.

We’ll also dabble in dental health and talk about our teeth! We’ve had several friends who have begun losing teeth and there’s been lots of talk about the tooth fairy!

We’ll wrap up February pregaming and gearing up to cele-

brate a wonderful well loved author in our room, Dr. Seuss! Dr. Seuss celebrates his birthday early in March and we shall celebrate, because one thing is for sure, and that’s that the

bunnies sure do know how to party! We’ll plan a party worthy of Dr. Suess! We’ll be busy writing invitations, planning food to serve, and what games we’ll play! Last-ly, the décor of the room will be Bunny-fied! I cannot wait to see what kind of party

the Bunnies plan!

Upcoming Events:

Pancake breakfast: 2/9/19

STEM Challenges: 2/12/19 & 2/26/19

~ SARAH, DEBBIE, & CARLY

Bunnies

Kindergarten Dolphins News


January was a lot of fun in the kindergarten room! When we came back from our winter break, we spent a week getting back into the swing of thigs by review our classroom expectations, reviewing sight words and math concepts and writing. We met out class “pet”, a small brown bear named Bernie. The children have started taking him home and having adventures with him on the weekends and writing about it. We then moved into a unit about winter weather and polar/arctic animals. We read several fiction and non- fictions books about the arctic and the animals and people who live there. We have added a few new words to our word wall this month: day,

are, would, and was. We also have learned about exclamation marks, question marks and periods in both our reading and our writings. We have continued to have our STEM (Science. Technology. Engineering. Math) Challenges with the Pre-K classroom. We cel-

ebrated our 100th day of kindergarten which was a huge success! We wrote 100 words, danced to our zero the hero songs, counted 100 things, shared our projects, wrote about what we would be like when we are 100 years old and invited parents to come and listen to our presentations, play pinata, and build with 100 things!

February we will be discussing feelings and practicing expressing them and labeling them. Labeling emotions and feelings are a critical component to young children’s social and emotional develop-ment and classroom success. We will continue to work with our super hero Ruby who is teaching us about resiliency in

and out of the classroom. February is also dental health month so we will be dis-cussing how to take care of our teeth and keep them healthy.

Upcoming Events:

Scholastic Book Fair: 2/4/19-2/9/19 Pancake Breakfast: Saturday 2/9/19 Valentine’s Day Card Exchange: 2/14/19 Game Day: 2/18/19 STEM Challenges: 2/12/19 and 2/26/19

**Winter Assessment will be going home the first week of February. There will be 2 copies going home, one is to sign and return and the other is yours to keep. Please let

me know if you have any questions.

Ms. Brittney

dickinson college children’s center february 2019 · both kindergarten 2019 - 2020 and summer...

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