Halloween Fun!

FIRE TRUCK - The Chapel Hill Fire Dept will bring their truck for a visit on Monday , November 3rd! Usually the fire fighters show us how they look & sound when wearing all their gear. Then they take us, class by class, to look at the truck!

CCP will have SPIRIT DAYS on November 5 & 6. Wear your school shirt or class color (yellow) on either or BOTH of these days : )

BOOK DRIVE - A former CCP parent, Heather Bochicco, works with Chatham Reads to gather gently used or new books for children in Chatham County that may not have easy access to books. To help put more books in the hands of children in our area, Heather has placed a bin under the Blue Whale classroom to collect some books. Thank you for considering donating to this cause during the month of November!

CLASSROOM DONATIONS WANTED!!

We would like to transform our kitchen area into a grocery market in November, but need to stock the shelves! Send in your recycling. Instead of throwing food packaging into the can at home, you can bring it to the Duck Market (for example, cereal boxes, berry containers, snack boxes…if you have the can opener that pops the lid off instead of making a sharp edge, we’d LOVE to have some sturdy cans). You can send a couple items as you use them throughout the month & we will add them to the market. Thanks for your help!

We had a busy week of Halloween fun! We began by decorating our room for the holiday. With the decorating supplies set out before them, the Yellow Ducks went to work with tape, streamers, spiderwebs, etc. They seemed to truly enjoy having complete autonomy in deciding how THEIR classroom got decorated.

Later, the witches & wizards were experimenting with baking soda, vinegar & soapy water to create potions in the sensory table. They worked with pipettes and squeeze bottles to find the right combination of ingredients to make their cauldrons of eyeballs & spiders bubble over as they cackled with glee!

The class then voted on a face for our jack-o-lantern and learned about making tally marks. In the end the happy face had the most votes. Most of the Ducks enjoyed helping clean the slimy goo & seeds out of the pumpkin and gave instructions to the pumpkin carver (me 🙋‍♀️). We turned off the lights during lunch to enjoy the glow of our happy pumpkin 🎃 .

In between all of this holiday madness, we learned a new letter, too!! H is for Halloween, of course. We were impressed with how many other words the Ducks thought of that had the H sound. They really enjoy adding words to our Letter board as they think of them throughout the week.

We also learned about our next artist this week- Jackson Pollock. We read Jackson Pollock Splashed Paint and Wasn’t Sorry. One friend told us he saw an elephant among the splashes, others thought it just looked like fun. It may be time to go visit an art museum to get a 4 yr old’s perspective on your favorite paintings! Everyone used squeeze bottles to make splashes of paint on paper and used straws to blow and splatter the paint across their paper. When the paintings were dry, wiggly eyes, foam shapes and lines were added to turn the splashes into monsters.

Our Halloween Parade & party were a blast! The skies finally cleared and everyone was happy to walk through the village showing off their great costumes. Thanks to our wonderful room reps, Carol Ann & Carrie, and all of your generous donations, we had lots of yummy treats, played games with spiders & eyeballs and decorated haunted house lanterns at our party afterward.

Please remember that while taking pictures of school events is encouraged, and hopefully enjoyed within your family, many of our families choose to keep their children’s images private. Please refrain from posting photos on social media that include children other than your own. Cropping is a great way to prevent this from happening. Thank you!!

Happy Trick-or-Treating! And may the force be with you through the time change this weekend 🤪

Wishing you well,

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Spooky Season

HALLOWEEN PARADE on OCT. 30TH- We hope you can join us for our Halloween Costume Parade around Southern Village.  Please send your child to school in their costume and drop them off at the classroom at our usual 9:00 a.m. time.  The Yellow Ducks will meet families outside in front of the church at 9:25 a.m. on Oct. 30th and start our parade with the Blue Whales class (please note that the parade is NOT on the 31st!! We will do it on Thurs. since the Blue Whales are not in school on Friday).  Families are welcome to dress up too.  Please help your child change out of their costume after the parade before you leave.  If you are OK with them wearing their costume all day (and they will be able to move & function) that is fine too, but we will be our normal messy selves and play outside that day.  Our room reps, Carol Ann & Carrie, have organized a fun party for the children in our classroom with treats, art activity and game after the parade. Thank you all for donating!

FIRE TRUCK - The Chapel Hill Fire Dept will bring their truck for a visit on Monday , November 3rd! Usually the fire fighters show us how they look & sound when wearing all their gear. Then they take us, class by class, to look at the truck!

CCP will have SPIRIT DAYS on November 5 & 6. Wear your school shirt or class color (yellow).

Picture Day resulted in some of the cutest pictures I’ve seen! But…our funny face class photo literally made me laugh out loud. These Ducks are having so much fun and have truly bonded with each other now.

This week we have had a focus on shapes while we have some Halloween fun 🎃 We practiced drawing a triangle & square on the whiteboard. We also painted black bats and cut triangles to make their wings. They are hanging upside down, as bats do, in our window. We chose shapes to cut out and turned them into monsters in our journals. The children thought up some silly & spooky stories about the monster they created, too. We even read Spookley the Square Pumpkin and talked about how each of us is different (just like the shapes). At circle time we compared some shapes to solids. This week we discussed the differences between a triangle & a cone or pyramid and between a circle & sphere. We noticed shapes are flat and solids take up space & can be held.

Our loft became a campsite this week…Camp Quackiwaka! Everyone enjoyed building a campfire, roasting marshmallows, using the flashlights, and most of all having a turn to play some tunes on the guitar. Our new sign up sheet has worked very well & the Ducks are learning to manage their turns on their own.

It will be nice & cool this weekend….perfect weather to start a fire and roast some REAL marshmallows!

Have a great weekend with your Yellow Ducks,

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Fine Motor Halloween Fun

FALL PHOTOS - The Yellow Ducks photo day is scheduled for Wed., October 22nd with photographer David Gellatly outside under the bell tower. You are also invited to have a family photo taken on Saturday, Oct. 25. The photos will be outside in the church yard. Click here to sign up for a convenient time slot.

HALLOWEEN PARADE on OCT. 30TH- We hope you can join us for our Halloween Costume Parade around Southern Village.  Please send your child to school in their costume and drop them off at the classroom at our usual 9:00 a.m. time.  The Yellow Ducks will meet families outside in front of the church at 9:25 a.m. on Oct. 30th and start our parade with the Blue Whales class (please note that the parade is NOT on the 31st!! We will do it on Thurs. since the Blue Whales are not in school on Friday).  Families are welcome to dress up too.  Please help your child change out of their costume after the parade before you leave.  If you are OK with them wearing their costume all day (and they will be able to move & function) that is fine too, but we will be our normal messy selves and play outside that day.  We will party with the children in our classroom with treats, art activity and game after the parade. The party sign up request that was sent out by Carol Ann & Carrie was quickly fulfilled! We appreciate all of your donations.

FIRE TRUCK - The Chapel Hill Fire Dept will bring their truck for a visit on Monday , November 3rd! Usually the fire fighters show us how they look & sound when wearing all their gear. Then they take us, class by class, to look at the truck!

We started our week with some Monday Math- measuring monsters and a roll & count game of kids vs. teachers (whose ice cream cone would get colored in first?), as well as a few rounds of the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel game. The Yellow Ducks are good sports & give each other high 5s at the end of their games.

But our real goal this week was working those hand muscles! We rolled & cut pumpkin pie scented playdough to create pumpkins and monsters. Miss Carina read Room on the Broom and the Yellow Ducks threaded beads on to their own brooms. Everyone drew and cut out their own pumpkin and gave it a jack-o-lantern face complete with teeth they also cut. Most exciting of all, the children got to apply tattoos ALL over the pumpkins they brought to decorate! They were peeling the plastic off the tattoo & squeezing sponges to apply them on their own, and they loved it!!

Is there room on the broom for a bead?

Is there room for another friend??

I want to thank you all for taking the time to meet with me for conferences. It was so nice to connect with each of you and share insights on your child. Carina & I are enjoying getting to know them and look forward to watching them bloom & grow 😊. I was very glad to be back with them in my happy place on Thursday. Being out of the classroom is a bit unsettling to me, but your Yellow Ducks are learning to be flexible and enjoyed meeting Miss Melissa & having Miss Vicki in class with them!

We hope you are enjoying a nice long Fall weekend with your families!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

UPCOMING EVENTS:

*BRING A PIE SIZED PUMPKIN (about 6” size) ON MONDAY!!* 🎃

CONFERENCES are this week on October 14th &15th. Each conference will be about 20 minutes. Ms. Vicki & Ms. Melissa will be working with Ms. Carina in the classroom with the children, and I will be meeting with you across the street. Just park in the lot at 105 Market Street & enter through the door on that side of the building. You will find me in the conference room to the right. I look forward to chatting with you about your children!

TEACHER’S PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT- School will be closed on Friday, Oct 17th

FALL PHOTOS - The Yellow Ducks photo day is scheduled for Wed., October 22nd with photographer David Gellatly outside under the bell tower.

HALLOWEEN- We hope you can join us for our Halloween Costume Parade around Southern Village.  Please send your child to school in their costume and drop them off at the classroom at our usual 9:00 a.m.  The Yellow Ducks will meet families outside in front of the church at 9:25 a.m. and start our parade with the Blue Whales class.  Families are welcome to dress up too.  Please help your child change out of their costume after the parade before you leave.  If you are OK with them wearing their costume all day (and they will be able to move & function) that is fine too, but we will be our normal messy selves and play outside that day.  We will party with the children in our classroom with treats, art activity and game after the parade. Our room reps, Carol Ann & Carrie sent an email with a link to sign up to contribute to our party. We appreciate your help!

(**on that note, I need to make a correction to last week’s blog. The Blankenships, Lilly’s parents, gifted us with our taco set. We have enjoyed it so much!! Thank you ❤️)

We had our first fire drill this week! After reading our CCP Fire Drill book everyone was prepared and knew what to do!

We also celebrated another addition to the Whole Hand Club. Happy 5th Birthday to John!!

This week we continued to discuss Autumn. We had many beautiful leaves to compare and used some to make our own leaf creatures similar to the ones we saw in the story Leaf Man. The Ducks squeeeeeezed tubes of glitter glue to add sparkle to the fall leaves they painted last week and worked together to add more decorations to the giant pumpkin we now have hanging above our writing table. We also read the story The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We moved our bodies along with the movements in the story and then used felt pieces to retell the story and build the scarecrow. Following the sequence of a story helps with comprehension, recognizing patterns and understanding the components of a story (beginning, middle & end).

The taco truck remained open all week- no health violations! Upstairs in the loft we opened a Lego Lounge. We began using a sign up sheet for time in the loft. The kids wrote their names on the list and waited for a turn without complaints. Everyone appreciated this fair approach and respected it. At the same time we were sneaking in some writing practice (and on a vertical surface!).

Our letter of the week was Tt, and our turtle puppet was seen all around the room. The Yellow Ducks thought of many words beginning with the Tt sound. We practiced making our names this week, too. Learning the letters in their names is always the best place to start with preschoolers. Most of our 4 yr olds recognize their name in print and can rote spell their names when asked. However, they may still struggle to differentiate the individual letters. We practiced finding and naming letters as we built a name rainbow!

Have a cozy weekend with your Yellow Ducks!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Pumpkins & Tacos...why not?

UPCOMING EVENTS:

CONFERENCES take place on October 14th &15th. Each conference will be about 20 minutes. Ms. Vicki & Ms. Melissa will be working with Ms. Carina in the classroom with the children, and and I will be meeting with you across the street in the church office building at 105 Market Street. We will let you know more details as we get closer to our conference days. I look forward to chatting with you about your children! Here is the link to the sign-up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080B4CAEAA2DA5F94-58978725-2025

TEACHER’S PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT- School will be closed on Friday, Oct 17th

FALL PHOTOS - The Yellow Ducks photo day is scheduled for Wed., October 22nd with photographer David Gellatly outside under the bell tower.

HALLOWEEN- The Yellow Ducks will join the Blue Whales for a Halloween parade around Southern Village on Thursday, October 30th shortly after arrival time. More details coming soon.

The Yellow Ducks are enjoying the beginning of the Fall season 🍁🎃. This week we practiced using our busy fingers (pincer grip) to rip paper and tape. We peeled tape off the whiteboard to save bugs, and we ripped (and cut) tape as we created sticker pictures. We ripped paper and began a collage of a BIG pumpkin that we will continue next week.

On October 1st we listened to Miss Sue’s all time favortie Halloween story- Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. You can listen to the reading of it on YouTube! https://youtu.be/QpLK8AWsVMA?si=5ECgqYL3eXe21wMI

The moral of the story is “together we are stronger!”. We then used an Energy Stick to make a circuit with one, then two, and then our whole circle of classmates. The only way to complete the circuit and make the energy stick light up and beep is if we worked together.  If someone didn’t hold hands it would not work and it would break the connection.  It was a great experiment and deepened our school family bond. 

We also opened a Duck Taco Truck in our dramatic play center. Everyone was so excited about the new taco accessories donated to us by Aubrey’s family. Thank you Barlows!! However, the excitement caused some chaos and the taco truck got trashed 😱 There were dishes & food on the floor getting stepped on and the “health department” came and shut us down! We called the next day to see if it could re-open and were told there would be a re-inspection to see if it had been cleaned up. The Yellow Ducks all rushed to clean up together and the Taco Truck passed! It was a good lesson in natural consequences.

Enjoy the beautiful Fall weather on this long weekend. We’ve heard from many of our little friends that they are going pumpkin picking. Maybe go get a taco at a REAL taco truck while you are out! : )

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Community & our 1st Lunch Bunch!

Our 1st Lunch Bunch

Our Yellow Ducks are really building a close community quickly! Everyone loved having lunch together this week. There was lots of conversation and helping hands (those wrappers can be very tricky, but our friends help each other out ❤️). The Ducks worked in pairs to go on a shape hunt and took turns drawing the shapes we found on their shared clipboards. We see them showing kindness to their new friends every day and beginning to learn to solve their disagreements peacefully. It is wonderful!

This week we strengthened our fine motor muscles by making peg pictures, placing small items on line designs, rolling playdough to make numbers and apples, and singing Where Is Thumbkin?. We used our creativity as we painted at the easel, drew with chalk and made leaf rubbing watercolor pictures.

We had a science exploration of our five senses all week, also! We played I Spy, did a smell test (they got EVERY one correct… smarties!), tasted sour lemon, bitter chocolate, sweet icing, and salty pretzels, touched slippery shaving cream as we painted with it, and listened to audiobooks in our new listening center! (Thank you to Ava’s family for donating a new CD player 😊)

our smell test

We are always working on our literacy & writing skills, as well. The Ducks are getting very good at writing their names on their own artwork! They enjoyed playing office and sending notes and emails this week. They thought of so many words that begin with this week’s letter (P) and practiced writing A, P and names in the shaving cream.

We capped the week off with a birthday celebration for Olive!! Her dad was a great storyteller and her mom brought us amazing ice pops!! Welcome to the whole hand 🖐️ club, Olive!! Happy Birthday!

Have a wonderful, maybe wet?, weekend with your Ducks!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Upcoming Dates:

FALL BREAK is next week! School will be closed on October 2nd & 3rd (Thursday & Friday)

CONFERENCES take place on October 14th &15th. Each conference will be about 20 minutes. Ms. Vicki & Ms. Melissa will be working with Ms. Carina in the classroom with the children, and and I will be meeting with you across the street in the church office building at 105 Market Street. We will let you know more details as we get closer to our conference days. I look forward to chatting with you about your children! Here is the link to the sign-up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080B4CAEAA2DA5F94-58978725-2025

TEACHER’S PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT- School will be closed on Friday, Oct 17th

FALL PHOTOS - The Yellow Ducks photo day is scheduled for Wed., October 22nd with photographer David Gellatly outside under the bell tower.

HALLOWEEN- The Yellow Ducks will join the Blue Whales for a Halloween parade around Southern Village on Thursday, October 30th shortly after arrival time. More details coming soon.

Dot Day

International Dot Day was on Monday. So, to celebrate we read the book, “The Dot”. Its beautiful message to children is that wherever they are with their art, it is a masterpiece. Dot art was made by all, and every child signed their masterpiece just like any famous artist would. Focusing on dots was simple and helped even those who struggle with art, to step back and see value even in a dot! We learned about the artist Yayoi Kusama, the “Princess of Polka Dots”, and had so much silly fun covering our classroom in dots much like some of her art installations!! We also used dots to create our names this week. We will introduce a new artist to the children each month.

This year we will have many ways in which we will learn about the alphabet. We started with the letter A and will skip around the alphabet until we’ve finished. Recognition and sound will be practiced. The children will tell us what starts with the letter of the week and we will attempt to draw some pictures that start with that letter on our paper. We learned that Miss Sue’s pictures are -Ish……alligator-ish, astronaut-ish…just like in the story Ish by Peter H. Reynolds, and that’s OK. The children will be able to use the white board throughout the day, writing vertically to help strengthen those hand and finger muscles. We also have a shelf that we will fill up with letters and the tiniest of objects that start with each letter. These can be held and then put back in their position when done. Auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners will hopefully, all be able to learn the alphabet better this way.

We celebrated Catherine’s birthday on Tuesday. Her mom came with a fun story about unicorns and mini cupcakes for a treat. Delish 😋 Happy Birthday, Catherine!

We also had our first Chapel time and Music class this week! Pastor Lee told us a story and had us “catch the light” as he blew out the candle so we can carry it with us & spread love to everyone. Miss Vicki had scarves & tambourines for us to use as we sang & danced along with the music. Such a fun week!

Lunch Bunch

On Monday we will have our first Lunch Bunch.  Please label your child’s snack & lunch and pack them separately.  We ask that you continue to put their snack in their cubby and just leave their lunch in their backpack. Please remember to pack a nut and sesame free lunch and snack and include any needed utensils, napkin and water bottle.

Lunch will be every Monday and Wednesday and pick up will be an hour later at 1:00. If your child isn’t ready for lunch bunch (some may not be ready to stay longer and that’s ok), let us know & maybe try later in the year to start.

We have sometimes had parents ask if we need anything for our classroom. We would love to set up a listening center for audio stories, but our current CD player doesn’t have a headphone jack. If anyone has an old CD player/boombox they no longer want, we’d love to use it! If you are curious, our class also has an Amazon wish list! The items on this list are “wants”, not “needs”, but would be wonderful additions to our play and learning. https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2GHEXHLIX551O?ref_=wl_share

We will also keep a QR code to this list on the board outside our classroom, as it gets updated throughout the year 😊

Have a wonderful weekend with your sweet Ducks!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Duck Class Family

We had a wonderful first, full week together. We were very busy Ducks, exploring our classroom, checking out our outside play spaces, eating together, and beginning to get familiar with our new classroom routines. Everyone is doing a great job of learning each other’s names and lining up to travel to all the places we go during our short time at school. Occasionally, you might see your child struggle to fit things into their little cubbies. Before you jump in to rescue them, encourage your child to try it themselves first. Almost every time, they will figure it out and beam with pride in their accomplishment! You will too! Often times, the opportunity to struggle is a gift. As we keep reminding them…we can do hard things!!

Some of their favorite activities this week were making designs with rubber bands on pegboards, building castles, playing family with our new friends in the super cool loft, creating gardens on the playground, playing shape bingo and discovering robots hiding in our Alphabot Blocks!

This week we introduced our classroom jobs, as well. Each week each child will have a new job to do. Having jobs not only teaches responsibility, but it fosters community and gives the children a sense of pride and accomplishment. We remind the children that just as a home family takes care of each other & helps out, a Class Family does the same. A few of our jobs include:

• Breath Leader (leads us in taking one of our 4 types of breaths as part of our Brain Smart Start)

• Wish Well (moves friends into the heart to wish well)

• Calendar (adding a number & counting them along with friends)

• Weather (colors a square on our weather graph)

• Song Leader (chooses a favorite song for us to sing)

• Line Leader, Door Holder, Electrician (turns classroom lights off when we leave) & Caboose (very important to make sure everyone is safely in line!)

Another special job is to be the Lucky Duck. Each week the Lucky Duck will be invited to share what we call a Guess & Tell. On Mondays we will notify you if your child is the Lucky Duck for the week. They can bring in ONE item hidden in a bag or box (or a photo of the item in an envelope, if it is too large) on Tuesday. Help them think of 3 clues about the item (you can write them down to help your child remember). Your child will tell us the clues at circletime, and we will guess what they brought to show!

This week we also made our first self-portraits! First we sang a song called Mat Man as we built a person along with the song. Then we moved to the tables to draw our own people with pencil and added color with watercolor paints. Finally, Miss Carina & Miss Sue traced over the pencil with black marker to accentuate the lines. Look for our portrait gallery coming next week to the hall outside our classroom!! You MUST see what amazing artists we have in the Duck class!

Next week Chapel with Pastor Lee begins on Wednesday and music with Miss Vicki begins on Thursday.

Have a wonderful weekend with your Duckies!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Welcome Yellow Ducks!

Hello Yellow Duck Families,

It was just wonderful to see our Yellow Duck friends together in our classroom this week. Each one of them did an amazing job of dealing with the big task of saying goodbye to their families and a new beginning with their teachers. Any first day nerves disappeared very quickly and each one of our yellow duck friends had a great time exploring their new classroom and saying hello to some new friends.

Each day you will be able to see new updated photos of our classroom fun. Just go into the CCP website, enter the password to the Parent Portal, go into the Yellow Duck class page & click the classroom photo button. Looking at these photos with your child is a great way of stimulating conversation about school, feelings and friendships. Alternatively, at the end of every blog that is sent to your email on Friday, is a “read on” button. PRESS IT! You will be able to see the blog in its entirety, including the photo link, that way.

Blog notes:

~ If you need to respond through the blog, please use the “click here to email Sue directly” button. If you don’t use that button and just hit reply, Ms. Shelly ends up getting the email and then has to forward it to us.

~Be aware that several of our families have elected to not share their children’s image publicly. If you download a photo from our album or snap a shot during a birthday celebration, please do not share it via social media or any other public venue. Please pass this information on to anyone you might privately share photos with (ie. grandparents). Thank you for your understanding with this matter.

This week we read the book, “ishi, simple tips from a solid friend”, by Akiko Yabuki. It is a book about a rock named ishi (rock in Japanese), that reminds readers to choose and share happiness. It’s an awesome way to spur conversations about different emotions and how to work through them. We all made our own ishis (with permanent markers 😉) and we sent them into the world to pass on kindness.

Our Yellow Ducks had fun pretending it was the dolls’ birthdays and making kinetic sand cupcakes this week. They enjoyed mixing yellow & blue playdough to make it green. Many children did tanagram shape puzzles & made bead bracelets, too. After reading Pete the Cat Rockin’ in His School Shoes we also did our 1st writing as we attempted to write our names to add to our own book! (to be published next week 😉).

Lucky Duck!!

Each week every child will be assigned a job to help with in our classroom. One child will be the Lucky Duck and have a chance to share something that is special to them with the class. We will let you know on Monday if your child is the Lucky Duck and ask that you help your child think of 3 clues to give their friends. We will attempt to guess what the Lucky Duck has brought to school!

DISMISSAL:

Thank you for waiting in the hallway until we bring your child to you. We work on last names, parents’ names, pet names, etc. to make it fun. Each child is noticed this way and it reinforces our desire to know them well.

Have a wonderful weekend with your lovely little Ducks!

Sue & Carina