Welcome to the 3/4 preschool class. As your child’s teacher my aim is to provide your child with a loving, warm, nurturing and fun environment. This class is a place where she or he can continue to grow emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually, intellectually and creatively by playing with friends.
Your child will have many choices of what play to participate in which will help him or her grow in decision making capabilities, self-confidence and creativity. Their play will include art, science and math explorations, planned small group activity centers, circle times, story times, songs, fingerplays and other musical explorations, cooking and fieldtrips. Our focus will be on learning through fun, hands-on play experiences in a warm and loving environment. In their play, your children will be seriously working on their fine motor skills, their math, reading and writing abilities their logical thinking, reasoning and creative thinking, their social skills, and their musical and artistic abilities.
Some things that will help your child adjust to school include:
1. Have positive expectations that your child will adjust and do fine in school. Be on time bringing your child to the classroom in the morning. Let him or her know when you will be coming back and be on time at the end of the day. This will help ease any separation anxieties your child has.
2. Pack extra clothes, shoes, socks, underwear and a plastic bag in a small bag in case of any wetness caused by water play, art, rainy days, snacks or bathroom accidents. Extra clothes provided by the school probably won’t be as comfortable or well fitting.
3. Dress your child for weather conditions and messy activities. We play outside most days except if it’s pouring rain and we will be doing a lot of messy activities. Please make sure their clothes are appropriate for running and playing in. They’ll be safer, more relaxed, and have more fun.
4. PLEASE LABEL EVERYTHING that comes to school with your child.
5. If your child is sick he or she will have a stressful day at school and will be exposing other children to his or her illness (not to mention the teachers). Please don’t bring your child to school if she or he is not well enough to participate.
6. You know your child best. Whatever you can share with me about your child will help me understand him or her better, and will enable me to provide a more enriched learning environment for him or her. This is particularly true if something stressful is occurring in the child’s life. Please feel free to call me at home with any questions, or anything you’d like to share, or to arrange to meet with me after school if you have any questions or concerns.
Now a little bit about me. This will be my 15th year working with young children and my 9th year teaching at ACP. I worked in the Bellevue School district for four years and taught 4’s at a Jewish Community Center preschool outside of Boston, MA. I have a BS from the University of New York and a Washington State teaching certificate with endorsements in Early Childhood and Elementary education. I am married and the mother of two great young adults. I love working with young children and am excited to be teaching 3/4’s again.
