UPCOMING EVENTS:

March 11 & 12 - Conferences - School is closed to allow for spring conferences, but our playground is always open! Feel free to plan with another parent to watch each others’ children on the playground during your conference times. We ask that you please come without children to conferences, so that we can have a private conversation about your student’s progress.

March 30 - April 6 - Spring Break!

April 15 - Spring picture days. We will have both individual and class photos done.

April 21st – Planetarium Field Trip (Every child can have one chaperone join them and NO siblings are allowed on the field trip). We will provide more information next week during conferences.

April 23rd - 🎼 Casual music programs in the fellowship hall. Shortly after drop-off on Thurs., 4/23, your child will sing a few songs with the class & Ms. Vicki for an audience of parents and special loved ones in Ascension Hall. More details to come…

*SPECIAL REQUEST- The Ducks will be doing a special “egg drop” STEM experiment during the last week of March. We need recyclables to use in our creations to protect our egg! Please send recyclables (washed out containers, small boxes, packaging materials, etc) ASAP. Thanks! : )

YELLOW DUCK NEWS:

Did you guess from the blog title that our framework for learning this month will be fairy tales? Fairy tales spark imagination and offer moral lessons. Children can learn from the characters’ mistakes which helps them develop critical thinking skills. These stories can also help children confront real-life fears and anxieties in a fantastical setting. Best of all, they’re so much fun! We will be reading alternate (or fractured) versions of the tales as well. These stories encourage critical thinking, creativity, and humor by challenging the traditional, often rigid, structure of the original fairy tales.

After a lively discussion of what constitutes a fairy tale- magic, animals that can talk, fairies, make believe!- we began by reading Jack & the Beanstalk (and the alternate version- Jack & the Beanstalk and the French Fries!). Everyone planted a bean in a bag. We are eagerly watching & waiting for them to sprout! We used real leaves to make prints to add leaves to our classroom beanstalk. And in our sensory table our Ducks found matching upper & lower case letters laid by the golden goose.

The Ducks have really been working hard to strengthen their fine motor muscles all year & are ready to do some more complicated cutting. They cut out swirly beanstalks and crowns this week. The princes & princesses also loved using shaving foam “mortar” to build castles in the sensory table.

The game Pretty, Pretty Princess was also a hit. The children have been learning how to take turns, count and help others count, and lose gracefully. Pretty much all the important things in life!

We continued with Goldilocks & the Three Bears next (and the alternate version- Goldilocks & the 3 Dinosaurs). After the story was read, we set the table in our dramatic play area complete with different sizes of chairs, dishes, “beds”, and bear headbands . The story was then played out again by the children moving through the story on their own. Doing this allowed them to practice story sequencing, retelling, and practicing with size order. They were learning again without even realizing it. We’re sneaky aren’t we?

We’d like to thank former CCP student Brooks, brother of Aubrey, for visiting at circle time to READ to us. How inspiring to hear another child, not an adult, reading stories to us! He read one of our favorite books, Find Fergus 🙂

We had some beautiful weather this week and finally got the bikes back out of the shed. The Ducks have some speedy legs & enjoyed racing as well as some leisurely rides around the lot. Don’t forget to lather up with sunscreen before school!!