Hi Families,

Although it's been nice having this week off, I've really missed being at school with your children!

We're in week 3 of our theme "Animals Everywhere" and it'll be all about Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!!!  We'll be learning all about Lent and counting down the days until Easter.  In Handwriting Without Tears we'll focus on slanted letters Nn and Vv.  Finding words that rhyme with bug will keep us laughing all week long.  Your kiddos LOVE to make up rhyming words!  In Second Step the focus will be "Fair Ways To Play" which will be challenging since we can no longer share and have to keep our distance.  Now for everyone's favorite part of the day, besides eating and recess, ABC Boot Camp!  We'll be working on the letters Pp, Q,q and Rr.

I am half way through the assessments and am so looking forward to our Parent/Teacher Conference.
It's unfortunate that they will have to be on Zoom, I  very much enjoy sitting down with my parents and discussing our favorite topic!  The children have grown so much this year and despite all the craziness, they're academics are strong.  

Our Auction donation, A Summer Swim Basket, is due by March 1st.  I have only had one donation come in and I need to get it all pulled together, a basket bought, wrapped and turned in by then.  I would so much appreciate you turning in your donation as soon as possible...Thank you!

May God bless you all during this most holy season of Lent,

​Miss C.

Hello Families,

I just finished watching the Super Bowl and even though the Chiefs didn't win it was a great game.  I'm not into sports at all but I always watch the Super Bowl and the World Series.

This will be a fun and busy week as usual.  In our theme "Animals Everywhere" we'll learn all about animal homes, animals we know and the differences between farm, zoo and ocean animals.  The children enjoyed adopting an animal and sharing with the class how they took care of them when they took them home.  I ended up putting them on the wall in the playhouse so the children didn't have to worry about misplacing them (which they did often and caused some upset.)

In Handwriting Without Tears we'll be learning about curved and straight lines with the letters Vv, Ll and Nn.  In math we'll have fun sorting coins.  For Social Studies we'll be talking about President Washington and President Lincoln (my favorite!)  In Second Step, "Managing Waiting" is our goal and the children do a really good job of waiting as during snack time they have to wait until all of their friends have washed their hands and are seated before eating.  ABC Bootcamp, which the children love will be all about the letters Mm, Nn and Oo.  We'll also be working on beginning and ending sounds.

I will begin to reassess the kids so during our Zoom Parent/Teacher Conferences next month you'll be able to see the progress they've made and it's amazing!!!

Thank you for signing up for our Valentine's party on Wednesday, Feb. 10th.  The Valentine bags are finished and a great way to learn managing waiting, the kids can't wait to take theirs home.  They're always wanting to look inside and I tell them to wait until the 10th so they can take home their Valentines.

The Our Lady of Mercy School's greatest fundraiser of the year will be our Parent Club Auction next month.  There will be a week long silent auction and a drive thru dinner.  Each class will have a donation to the auction and more information will be coming in the next couple of days.

Thank you for being such an important part of our family.

God Bless,

Miss C.

Hello again, Families!

Well I was wrong when I said that last week was Catholic Schools Week...it's this week!  We will be sending home Thank You cards the children have made. Tuesday is blue and white school colors dress and on Friday the children can bring in a canned good and wear their favorite sports team clothes (Souper Bowl!)  I know it's a big sacrifice to send your children to OLM, but speaking from experience since my 3 boys came here, it is TOTALLY worth it!!!   You are  all so generous with donations and I love working as a team with you to prepare your children for Kindergarten!  They've grown so much and I'm very proud of each and every one of them!!!

We'll be starting a new theme called Animals Everywhere.  This is a really fun theme with a lot of learning. Not the least of which is the children showing love by caring for pets.  Every child will adopt a pet from pictures in the classroom.  Don't be surprised if they choose an elephant or something.  They'll learn what it takes to keep their pets happy and healthy.  If you have pets at home we would love to display pictures of them.  You can bring them (the pictures) to school any day.  The children often pray for they're pets when we pray around the room!  I love that!

In Handwriting Without Tears we'll focus on the letters Gg, Dd and Pp learning about curved and straight lines this month and our super popular ABC Bootcamp we'll continue on with the letters Ii, Jj, and Kk.  Have you noticed how much the children's handwriting has improved?  I love sending the papers home so you can get as excited as I am!  In math we'll work on oral counting to twenty and comparing sizes.  I have a really cool gorilla project for them to do to compare their hand to a gorilla's.
In Second Step the focus will be on managing anger.

The children and I had a great week last week in spite of the rain and I know this week will also be a blast!

Important Dates:
2/1 - 2/5  Catholic Schools Week
2/10 - Valentine's Party
2/15 - 2/19  Winter Break - Preschool closed
​
Many blessings to you all and thank you again for being so amazing!

< 3  Miss C.

Hi Families!  I hope you had a great weekend! 

This is a flex week for us and gives us time to catch up on our ABC Bootcamp.  At first, I had the children write the letters on a whiteboard and than I decided it would be better if they did it on paper with a clipboard where you could see them.  I ask the children to write the letter, upper and lowercase and to write any small words they see me write.  I draw pictures of the words they come up with such as Hazel (one of our girls little sister) and they get a big kick out of it! I'm not an artist, thank God I work at a preschool!!!  The children all get excited when I ask them to get out their clipboards and markers when we're at group.  I have seen great improvement in the children's letter recognition and sounds!  I'll be assessing each student next month to see how much they've grown and I'm really excited about it!!!

This is Catholic Schools Week and the children will be making thank you cards to you parents for sending them to Catholic School.  In Handwriting Without Tears we'll work on the letter Cc, Second Step will be all about managing disappointment.  This is a lesson that we all can learn from no mater what our age!

From looking at the weather on my phone we have a lot of rain coming our way in the next week.  We'll be staying in instead of going out for recess so we will fill that time with some cool science experiments.  We'll combine milk with paint and see the results and have races where we blow cotton balls across the classroom!  Science is so fun...we're going to have a blast!  If you aren't aware, shaving cream is great for removing glue and other sticky things from a table...we'll be doing that too!

If you ever have any questions or concerns about your child, please feel free to discuss them with me.  You can e-mail me at sharon.colcleasure@olm.com or call the school at (209) 722-6657.  I am here for you as I know you are here for me and your child.  We're a team!  

Lastly I would like to thank those of you who have so generously donated cleaning wipes, baby wipes, tissue and paper towels to our classroom.  It is greatly appreciated!  At this time we are running low on paper towels.  We have changed soaps to be more gentle on the children's hands but the paper towels are a little rough, so I prefer to use the paper towels from the store.  It would be greatly appreciated if you could donate paper towels to the classroom.  Thank you very much in advance!

​May the Lord bless you for your continued generosity and the involvement in your child's education.

<3 Miss C.

Dear Families,

The children have been learning all about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream that we are all, no matter our differences, to be treated kindly and fairly.  We have discussed that we are all God's children and that we look the way we do because that's exactly the way God wants us to look and God doesn't make mistakes!  Ask them what they've learned!

This will be a short week for us but we have a lot of learning to do...as always.  Every week I post 3 assignments on Seesaw.  I have a few of you who do them regularly and I thank you as they are there to help prepare the children for Kindergarten.  For those of you who don't take advantage of the website, I know you and your child will enjoy sitting down and working together if only for a few minutes.  It's a win, win situation!

The theme this week is "Seasons Change."  Handwriting Without Tears will cover the letter Q and in 2nd Step we'll review naming feelings.  One of our science projects this week will be "Ice Painting."  As the children paint the ice the colors mix and the ice begins to melt.  It's beautiful, amazing and messy!  The perfect description of a science project!!!

May you always walk in the Lord's shining light,

< 3  Miss C.

Hi Dear Families,

The kids had a great first week back at school!  They all jumped right back into the routine of things like they had never been away.  It made me so happy to see all their smiling faces...it brightens up my day!

Seasons All Around is our theme this month and although we'll hit all the seasons, we'll mainly concentrate on winter. Brrr!  Tomorrow I'll get my giant flip paper pad to do our ABC Boot Camp on.  We did it this week but I used a whiteboard so there is no reviewing.  Now I'll be able to show off my artistic talents on paper and we can refer back to a specific letter when we need to.  I draw a big circle on the paper and write the letter...say...Aa in the circle.  The children and I go over the letter and sounds multiple times and the children write the letter on their white boards.  The children then tell me something that starts with Aa for example and if someone says ax, I write out ax while spelling it out loud and draw a perfect picture of an ax beside it!!!  Thank goodness the kids are preschoolers and if it slightly resembles an ax, they're good with it!!!  The kids  have fun with it and it's really improving their writing skills as well as their letter recognition and beginning sounds skills!

This week we'll learn all about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I have a couple of projects lined up that I think the children will enjoy and learn from.  In Handwriting Without Tears we're still learning letters with curved lines and Ss will be our letter this week.  We'll do the Nursery Rhyme 5 Little Kittens and in our 2nd Step it will be all about Strong Feelings.

Next week on January 18th the preschool will be closed as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

May the Lord keep you warm, safe and healthy,

<3 Miss C.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

There is only one way we can go from here and that's UP!!!  2020 was...well you know...you lived it!  I couldn't be happier to move on from last year!  My husband and I went for a drive and I saw these signs that said Be Optimistic and that's exactly what I will be!  It's too easy to slip into negativity and stay there so let's all be more optimistic this year!  : )

We'll start this brand new year by reviewing our schedule and classroom rules.  We've been home so long that we may have forgotten how we need to distance ourselves from others, walk in the classroom, use inside voices and those three special rules...nice hands, nice feet and nice mouth.  We've got this, I know, and it won't take long to get back into the swing of things.

After the refresher course we'll concentrate on God's two greatest commandments...We love God with  our whole heart and We love others.  We'll learn all about the weather and the four seasons in science, learn the letter U,u in Handwriting Without Tears, focus on beginning sounds and in math we'll learn more/fewer, ordinal positions and sets of ten.  In our Second Step curriculum we'll review emotion management with "We Feel Feelings In Our Bodies.

Whew!!!  I'm going to be optimistic and say WE'VE GOT THIS!!!

The only change in our calendar this month is us being closed on Monday, Jan. 18th to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I pray this new year brings you all many blessings and good health.

< 3  Miss C.

Hi Families!

Welcome to our final week of December.  I can't believe we've come so far in the school year and the children are adjusting well to all the changes we've had to make.

This week the children will work on the letters Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy.  They have made great progress in their letter recognition and sounds, so after vacation we'll start ABC Boot Camp. We'll also work more on letter writing and number writing and recognition as well as introducing their last names.  During the time off if you could take just 15 minutes a day to work with your child it would benefit them greatly!  I would to love to see the work they do at home, so if they bring it in, I will put a sticker on it and send it home or keep it in their file.  Thank you!

Your Christmas gifts are finished and the children just need to wrap them and we'll send them home...we hope you love them!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued generosity in your donations of cleaning wipes, tissue, baby wipes and paper towels!  Currently we are fine in the baby wipes department and we have plenty of tissue, what we go through like crazy is the cleaning wipes (many handwipes are mistaken for cleaning wipes) and paper towels.  Anything you bring is very much appreciated!  Thank you!  Also I will be looking at the children's school boxes and sending a note home naming items that need to be replaced.  They use their boxes every day so they take quite a beating!  Lastly, please bring appropriate winter clothes for your child's extra's and make sure they have a complete change of clothes in case of an accident or possibly a wet slide or mud puddle!  Thank you again!

May the Lord's love shine down upon you every step of your journey,

<3 Miss C.

Hi  Families!

 The first week of December has flown by and I know the next two will as well.  The children have learned all about St. Nicholas and were thrilled when he came to our classroom when we were at recess and put a treat in our stocking bags!!!

This week we'll concentrate on Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego.  The children will make a small book to help them understand why we celebrate them.  We'll work on curved lines and the letters in review will be Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt.  We'll also work on a Christmas rhyming book, "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell."  In our Secend Step social/emotional curriculum we'll review feelings, how to understand how someone is feeling by looking at them and sharing our own feelings with others.  Of course we'll also continue learning about Mary and Joseph's difficult journey and the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus' birth.

Stay safe and healthy, you are always in my prayers,

<3 Miss C.

Hi Families!

I've missed you all so much!  I hope you and your families had a blessed Thanksgiving, I sure did!  I'm old but this was the first Thanksgiving meal that I prepared all by myself and it was good!  At least I thought so!!! I didn't get any complaints!  Cooking isn't my strong suit, my only talent is that I can whistle really loud!!!  Hey!  It's something!

I have finished my assessment on the children's letter knowledge skill and turned it in to Mary.  She made me a list of letters that we will revisit to help the children along.  The letters are H,I,M,N and we'll concentrate on them this week, letters with straight lines.  Next week it will be Q,R,S,T and the third week will be U,V,W,Y.  We'll also be learning the letter Pp this week.  It would benefit the children if you could work on these letters at home with them.  Thank you.

We'll be celebrating St. Nicholas Day on December 4th and the children will be making a stocking attached to a bag that we'll put in the hallway so St. Nicholas can sneak in and give them a treat!  We'll also be learning all about Advent and talking a lot about the birth of Christ.  There's a beautiful song on youtube called Happy Birthday, Jesus and I'll probably play it every day, if you want to share it with your family.  We'll do a secret science activity and if it works out it will be your Christmas present so our lips are sealed.  

I'm super excited to start a new ABC Bootcamp in the New Year.  More info on that will be forthcoming and it will be great for the kids!!!

May God bless you and keep you safe and healthy this holiday season,

<3 Miss C.