Dear Pre-Kindergarten Families, Happy 2022!! Welcome to the new year. This week was met with a special visit from Father Robert and his dog Amica. Father Robert came to say hello to the children and introduce them to his dog Amica, a beautiful black Lab. Father Robert blessed our classrooms and chalked our doors. This is An Epiphany tradition. Our church celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany on the first Sunday of the year. The Epiphany is traditionally celebrated on January 6th. It is the feast that celebrates the arrival of the three Magi who had come to worship the Child Jesus shortly after his birth. We celebrated as a school family at Mass this past Friday. What a wonderful way to begin our new year! Father asked for a blessing for all that enter our door, the students who learn here and the teachers who teach here. Some exciting things are happening in our school. We worked very hard together to create a wonderful learning center-based classroom in Mrs. Mary’s class. The new learning centers allow children to learn in the most meaningful way: through hands-on play experiences, which is why they are a vital part of a high-quality classroom. New centers include an invitation to build and play in the block area, a designated writing center with a chalkboard easel to promote vertical writing, an art center set up to support creative art experiences, a math center to explore numbers and counting, a new science center to support little learners being scientists, a vertical magnet wall, and finally, an updated library/abc center to support reading and all things abc. The classroom has also added writing and literature opportunities to each center and is being labeled to add visual cues throughout. Having printed labels is important to a preschool classroom as it can provide a precursor to reading. The children have been very engaged in learning how to use their new centers and are enjoying their new classroom set up. We are also in the process of building a few Little Tikes cars for the children to play with outside. These will provide more play opportunities as well as gross motor play. Last week, we began our new theme, Seasons Everywhere. This theme will last for 3 weeks. We will explore weather, how seasons change throughout the year, and how we adapt to the seasons changing in our environment, as well as how animals adapt to the change in seasons. We will also explore all things winter, such as ice and snow and snowflakes. We will be learning about hot and cold temperatures as well as using a thermometer. We will also be learning about how animals hibernate during the cold months. In our social emotional curriculum, we will be learning about how we feel feelings in our bodies, strong feelings, naming our feelings and managing disappointment. We will continue with our Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program and review letters with ABC Bootcamp. In math, we are learning about ordinal positions, sets up to 10, and more/fewer. In religion, we will be learning about the two greatest commandments. We will also learn about being kind to others as we learn about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our school will be closed on Monday, January 17th to observe his holiday. The week of January 24th-28th will be a flex week. We use this week to review and prepare for national Catholic Schools Week. We will also be doing our second hands-on art/artist lesson. We continue to feel blessed that you have chosen our school for your child’s catholic education. If you have any questions or concerts, please feel free to contact us on playground, or email us at veronica.jasso@olmlancers.com or mary.kravec@olmlancers.com In an effort to keep up with healthy habits, we will continue to take temperatures and wash hands as well as toys. Each classroom has an air purifier. If your child is sick, please have them stay home. We will continue to work together as a pre-kindergarten program and adapt to accommodate the needs of each classroom. Please check for the posting of this blog at olmlancers.com, Mrs. Veronica and Mrs. Mary’s Class monthly, with updates as needed. Thank you, Your Pre-Kindergarten Teachers, Mrs. Mary and Mrs. Veronica
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Dear Pre-kindergarten families,
December is upon us, and we are well into learning about the season of Advent. Last week we lit our first purple candle on our advent wreath for hope. This week, we will light our second purple candle for peace. During these three weeks, we will be focusing on preparing for the birth of baby Jesus. We have been reading our Advent Story; this is a very special book that has a daily reading and special inspirational message. The book is about a little bear that is following the star with the tail that leads him to Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus. This is an amazing book to help prepare for Christmas, and it is available on Amazon(Advent Storybook 24 Stories to Share Before Christmas by Antonie Schneider and Illustrated by Maja Dusikova). On Monday, December 6th, we will be celebrating St. Nicholas Day. This is a tradition where children put out one of their shoes and St. Nicholas puts a small treat in it. We have made St. Nicholas paper stockings and attached them to a paper bag to set out on Monday to celebrate. On Wednesday, December 8th, we will be attending Mass. This is a Holy Day of Obligation, and we celebrate Mother Mary and the Immaculate Conception. Please have your child arrive early in case they need to use the bathroom. We will line up and leave for Mass just after 8am. Mass will now be held inside the auditorium. This week, we will also be learning about Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego. Their Feast day is on December 12th. During this time, we will continue practicing for the Christmas program and with first semester review as well as our daily Heggerty lessons. Next week on Tuesday morning we will have a dress rehearsal in the auditorium at 8:30am. Please make sure your child arrives before 8am so they can use the bathroom and put on their costume. We will celebrate December Birthdays on Wednesday, 12/15, and perform in the Christmas program that evening at 6pm at the church. On Thursday, 12/16, we will have a special Christmas snack(a special sign up will be posted) and preschool pajama day. Friday, 12/17, we will attend the Christmas play in the auditorium and watch Charlie Brown. That day, the entire school will close promptly at 12:30 for Christmas break. There will not be afternoon child care on this day. Classes will resume on Monday, January 3rd. Mrs. Hermosillo and I would like to wish each of your families a very Merry Christmas, and we hope that you enjoy time with family during this holiday season. Thank you, Mrs. Veronica and Mrs. Hermosillo Dear pre-kindergarten parents, Thank you to everyone that was able to attend our ABC Bootcamp Fashion show!! It truly was an amazing evening. The kiddos did an outstanding job! Thank you kindly for your generous donations. This week, we are finishing up our Being Thankful theme as we continue to prepare for Thanksgiving. We will continue to review our Second Step curriculum from the first part of the year. We will also continue with week 8 in our Heggerty phonemic awareness program. This week, we will also be working on an art project. We will be learning about Van Gogh and painting a sunflower project. Our school is working together with Catholic Charities to support their annual Thanksgiving food drive. We are asking each preschool family to please donate 2 cans of corn or peas or cranberry sauce. Please bring it by Wednesday, November 17th. This week, we will have a special Thanksgiving snack provided by the preschool staff. Friday, we will attend Mass and the entire school will dismiss promptly at 12:30pm. Save the date: Wednesday, December 15th at 6:00pm!! The 8th grade class will be putting on a Christmas program at St. Patrick’s church. Our class will assist them. We will be learning our parts when we return from Thanksgiving break. We are very excited to be able to participate in this program as last year we were not able to have a Christmas program. We wish you and your family a very blessed Thanksgiving. I hope you will enjoy time spent together with your family. Wishing you many blessings, Mrs. Veronica Dear Pre-kindergarten parents, We have concluded our theme, My Community. This week, we are having a flex week; we will concentrate on having fun Halloween activities. We will be using our 5 senses to carve our class pumpkin as we read the Pumpkin Gospel book. On Wednesday, we will be celebrating October Birthdays and on Thursday, we will have our special Halloween snack. Thank you if you signed up to bring something; please remember that we have moved our snack from Friday to Thursday. Please bring items on or before Thursday. If your child would like to bring a small special pre-packaged treat to share with their friends, please bring it before Thursday so that we can add it to their Halloween treat bag. Please remember that students in preschool do not wear Halloween costumes to school. During the week, we will also continue with our Heggerty phonemic awareness program as well as ABC Bootcamp. This week, we will be working on letters Uu, Vv, Ww and Xx. Please remember to work on your ABC Fashion show vests at home. If you have any questions about our fundraiser event or your child will not be able to attend, please let me know. We are looking forward to our first fun ABC Fashion show event on Wednesday, November 10th at 4:00pm. Please feel free to invite friends and family members as we are planning this event to be outside. In our Second Step social emotional program, we will be learning about Caring and Helping. You can follow along by logging in to Unit 2, Week 12. This week, we will also be celebrating Red Ribbon week. At the preschool level, we will talk about making safe healthy choices. We can join the main school with fun dress up days. These are the dress up days: Monday - wear the color red, Tuesday - wear Hawaiian style clothes, Wednesday - wear 50’s style, Thursday - wear your favorite team shirt or jersey. I will be out of town on Monday, October 25th. Mrs. Mary will be teaching our class. I will return on Tuesday, October 26th. Have a blessed week, Mrs. Veronica Dear pre-kindergarten parents, October is the month of the Rosary. Last week, we continued to learn about the Rosary. Please practice at home by praying the prayers of the Rosary, the Hail Mary, the Our Father and the Glory Be prayers that are all in the small prayer book along with other catholic prayers that went home last week. The children have been making Rosaries at school out of beans. This has been a great opportunity to learn about how to pray the rosary and count to ten as we counted out the beans for each decade of the Rosary, and it was also a good opportunity to use our fine motor skills as we glued each bean onto our paper. We were gifted our own rosaries from Mrs. Gaby. We took them to Mass on Friday, and Father Antonio blessed them for us. They will be coming home. Please remind your child to take very good care of it as it is special because it is blessed. This week, we will be making a chalk Rosary in the back circle of the school with our 5th grade buddies. This is a tradition that I have been doing for the past 12 years. On Thursday, the entire school will pray around the chalked rosary together. Last week, we continued to learn about our theme, My Community. We talked about different people we meet in our community. Our focus last week was on fire safety. We learned about what to do in a fire emergency, how to stop, drop and roll, and how to call 911. Please talk to your child about having a plan at home in case of an emergency. It is always a good idea to have an emergency plan and a designated meeting place. This week, our focus will be on ‘Going Green.’ We will be talking about taking care of our community and recycling. In math, we will be talking about How Many is 5? In ABC bootcamp, we are learning about letters Qq, Rr, Ss & Tt. In our social emotional curriculum, we will be learning about accidents. You can follow along at home with the home link by logging into Second Step, Unit 2, week 11. In religion, we will learn about the Saints. SAVE THE DATE!! Wednesday, November 10th. Preschool is planning a celebration to the upcoming completion of ABC Bootcamp. The children have worked very hard learning their letters and sounds. We will celebrate with an ABC Bootcamp Fashion Show!!!. Each student will be receiving a paper bag vest with one letter from the Alphabet on the back. This will be a take home family project. Please decorate your child’s bag with things that start with the letter on their bag. The fashion show/fundraiser will be a fun evening dedicated to celebrating our students and supporting our preschool. Help support our Library… This week, our school is having a Virtual Book Fair. A flyer went home on friday. Please purchase online; your books will be delivered right to your home. You can follow the link, and you can also share the link with family and friends. https://www.scholastic.com/bf/ourladyofmercyschool7 This is a great opportunity to add to your child's home library and support our school. The book fair runs from October 18th - October 22nd. OLM receives 25% rewards from all books purchased during this time. After the 22nd, OLM will receive 2% rewards for the rest of the year. Thank you for your support. October is also Breast Cancer Awareness month. We wear pink to support this cause. If you have extra change, we are collecting in our pink jar to contribute along with our school. There will be ‘pink’ dress up days, and at the end of the month our school will make a donation with the money we have raised. Progress reports will be going out this week. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. You can email me at veronica.jasso@olmlancers.com or chat with me on the Playground APP. Let's talk all things Halloween!! Halloween is coming. We will celebrate in class with a special Halloween snack. The snack list was posted last week and was so generously filled up with signatures to contribute. Thank you. Our Halloween snack has been changed from Friday, October 29th to Thursday, October 28th. If you have signed up to bring something for our special snack, please bring it before Thursday, October 28th. If you are planning to bring a special treat to share in the kiddos Halloween treat bags, please bring it in before Thursday, October 28th. Please remember that treats to share must be store-bought and prepackaged. Please remember that Halloween costumes are NOT to be worn to preschool. Our school will be having a Drive-thru Halloween event the night of Friday, October 29th. Please plan on attending to support our school. More details to come. Our entire school will close early on this day. Pick up time for Friday, October 29th will be 12:30 for all students including preschool. We will attend Mass the morning of Friday, October 28th with Father John. Father John has been reassigned to Chowchilla and this will be his last Mass with our school. We wish Father John the best. One final note. OUR BLOG IS BACK!! You will once again be able to get all this weekly information by logging into our school blog at olmlancers.com. Click on OLM Preschool, click on OLM Preschool Faculty, click on Mrs Veronica, and then click on Pre-k Mrs. Veronica: Blog. Please resume checking the blog weekly for this weekly post on what's happening in our class for the week. Have a blessed week, Thank you, Mrs. Veronica Dear Pre-Kindergarten Parents,
Here we go.... I’m so excited!! This week, we begin our curriculum themes!! Our first theme is My Family. Our theme will be four weeks long. This 1st week, we will be talking about who’s in our family. We will begin with Friend of the Day. Friend of the Day is a new person each day. We will cheer each child’s name and then we will write it together in a large group. Each child will draw a picture of the Friend of the Day. I will make a book of the class drawings to add to your child's portfolios. This is a super fun way to get the children excited about learning how to write their friend’s names. I will be modeling the correct way to write each letter. This is great practice for writing letters. Please remember when your child is practicing their name at home that we write the first letter of their name in a capital letter and the rest of the letters are lowercase. All letters always start at the top. Please continue to work on the correct finger grip at home. Also, please remember to do finger strengthening activities at home. We will begin to learn about syllables. We will begin by clapping the syllable in each child’s name. In religion, we will learn about St. Mother Teresa. St. Mother Teresa’s Feast day is on September 5th. St. Mother Teresa is a wonderful example of living with love, kindness and caring for others. She teaches us to “do small things with great love.” In science, we will talk about how we grow from an infant through our life into an adult. In math, we will be working on shapes. Our Second Step social emotional curriculum will teach us about using Self Talk. Please continue to follow along at home online with unit 1, week #4. Pictures will begin on Tuesday, August 31st. If your child does not attend on Tuesday’s, they will take their picture on Wednesday. On Thursday, we will resume our visits with Mrs. Poole in the Library. Friday, we will attend Mass. Please continue to have your child use the restroom at home on Friday mornings and arrive prior to 8:00am so that we can leave for Mass promptly at 8:00am to get settled. The entire school, including Preschool, will be closed on Monday, September 6th in observance of Labor Day. This is a printed copy of my classroom Blog. Please remember to follow the Blog online each week. The Blog is updated at the beginning of each week to inform you of important information for the upcoming week. You can find this Blog weekly at olmlancers.com. Click on the three bars at the top, click on FOR CURRENT OLM FAMILIES, click on Google Classrooms and Pre-School blogs, and finely, click on PRE-K WITH MRS. VERONICA. Just a few reminders: please make sure your child has extra clothes at school. Please continue to apply mosquito repellent before school; the mosquitos do seem to be less noticeable. Please send a light sweater or sweatshirt for your child inside as we have to keep fans going and windows open to circulate the air. If your child is sick, please continue to keep them home. Parents or siblings that are sick should remain off campus. Please check in on the Playground app to see pictures in the chat. I will be posting pictures of the great work the kiddos have done. Their work is displayed inside the classroom for them to be proud of! They are doing a great job and I am really proud of them! Thank you to everyone who brought snacks this month. The new snack calendar will be on the table this week. Have a blessed week, Mrs. Veronica Dear pre-kindergarten families,
We had a really good week! We continue to work on pre-writing strokes in our fine motor journals. Please use the handout from our meet and greet to support your child’s crayon grip at home. If your child’s crayon strokes are very light, your child may need to strengthen their fingers. Planing with play-dough, small legos, picking up cheerios with their pincer grasp or removing clothes pins hanging from a piece of twine or the bottom of a clothes hanger can help. We have continued to take turns being the leader in the morning as we work on our morning message. The morning message is an initiative teaching method that introduces students to the writing process. We also had an introduction to our classroom trampoline. It was a lot of fun jumping and counting! We also learned a new good morning song that has quickly become the kids’ favorite. You can find it on Youtube. It is called Good Morning Time by Orange Kids Music. We also had a wonderful time visiting Mrs. Poole in the Library. The children enjoyed her story about the Pigeon and her beautiful songs. The children were so well behaved at Mass! It was so nice to get together with Father John and the rest of the school to celebrate Mass. On Thursday of this week, Father John is going to come back and extend a Blessing on the children and our classrooms. We are very excited. Mosquito abatement came for a visit and we have a plan to hopefully reduce the amount of mosquitos! In other good news, our classrooms received air purifiers!! This week, we will learn about how much Jesus loves us and how to be Super Friends as we continue to read social stories that help us learn the rules and routines. We will be drawing self portraits and continue to build scissor skills by learning about scissor safety, cutting snips and learning to use our glue bottles. In our Second Step social emotional curriculum, we will be learning about Focusing our Attention. You can follow along by logging in and seeing the post about week 3. Looking ahead to next week. Picture day will begin on Tuesday, August 31st. If your child does not attend that day, they will go down for their picture on Wednesday. Thank you again for being patient with us, please be assured that we are doing the best we can to ensure that our procedures run smoothly in accordance with state licensing. Keeping your children safe is our number one priority. Please help us all to stay safe and remember if you or your child are feeling sick, it is best practice to stay home. Sick children, parents or other family members should not visit the campus. Thank you, and may you have a blessed week! Mrs. Veronica Dear Mrs. Veronica’s Pre-kindergarten class,
We had a wonderful first week!! It has been so exciting getting to know your children. They have been building friendships and learning about rules and routines. It was unfortunate that Mass was canceled this past Friday. We will look forward to attending this upcoming Friday. This week, we will continue to reinforce rules and routines. Our preschool rules are nice hands, nice feet and nice mouth. Rules are established to keep us all safe and routines help the children feel comfortable so they know what to expect. We will continue to learn about them through social stories and classroom management songs. This week we will learn about personal space and breathing techniques used to calm down. We will continue to practice using our three fingers to grip our crayon as we continue to explore pre-writing strokes in our Fine Motor Journals. We will also continue learning about our classroom centers and begin building scissor skills by ripping paper and using our glue sticks. In our social emotional curriculum, we will learn about the listening rules. Our Nursery Rhyme will be Humpty Dumpty. Most importantly, we will have an introduction to the Bible, and learn about the importance of God’s words in the Bible. Please check for this weekly update on our classroom blog weekly at OLMLancers.com We would like to thank you all for your patience as we continue to learn about our new Playground app. It has been challenging and will continue to evolve. We want to continue to give it a fair shot. This week, Mrs. Mary would like everyone to sign in on the teacher's device. I will ask the health questions, record the temperature and log each child in. I will then pass you a stylus pen to sign in with. Please remember that it is required by licensing for us to acquire a full complete signature. The signature must include your full first and last name. Again, We thank you for your patience. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Please remember to apply mosquito spray to your child before school. If your child feels cold inside the classroom, please have them bring a light sweater. We keep the fans going to circulate fresh air inside. Please remember that open-toed shoes are not allowed at preschool. If you have any other questions or concerns, please contact me at veronica.jasso@olmlancers.com or chat with me on the Playground app. Have a blessed week Thank you, Mrs. Veronica Dear Pre-Kindergarten families,
Thank you again for coming in last week. It was really a pleasure to have the opportunity to get together. I am really looking forward to this upcoming school year. We really have a lot of great things to look forward to. Please check into our school blog each week to get all the information about what we will be doing for the week. Please go to olmlancers.com, click on the three bars at the top, click on FOR CURRENT OLM FAMILIES, click on Google Classrooms & Pre-school Blogs for Parents, then click on PRE-K WITH MRS. VERONICA. This will take you to our classroom blog. Please make sure that you have signed into our new Playground app prior to school on Monday. It is important for you to add all the people that will be picking up your child. If you do not have a smartphone or someone picking up your child does not have a smartphone, I will have a device that they can sign in and out on. We will also have a sign in sheet for the first week in addition to signing in on the app. Please apply mosquito repellent and/or sunscreen to your child prior to school. Inside we will have fans running to circulate the air flow. If your child gets cold, please have them bring a light sweater or sweatshirt. Please write your child’s name inside any jacket or sweater that they bring to school. The first few weeks will be all about learning rules and routines. We will use social stories and songs to establish clear expectations for classroom procedures. Our main rules for preschool are nice hands, nice feet, and nice mouth. Everything falls under those three reminders. This week, in addition to rules and routines, we will be learning about the proper way to hold our crayon as we begin to write in our Fine Motor Journals. We will be learning about letters vs numbers and we will begin our social emotional curriculum. Please use the information from the handout I gave you to sign into our Second Step program each week to follow along at home. We will also be learning about how to attend Mass. If your child is scheduled to attend school on Fridays, our class will join the main school as we attend Mass every Friday. Please have your child wear their blue OLM t-shirt once we get them. It is important on Fridays that your child arrives early so that they are able to use the restroom before we leave for Mass. We will leave the classroom just after 8am so we can get situated. Mass begins at 8:15. Again, thank you for choosing Our Lady of Mercy Preschool for your child’s education. I look forward to getting to know your child. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call the preschool at 209 722-6657, email me at veronica.jasso@olmlancers.com or chat with me on the Playground app. May God bless your family and our school with a happy and healthy school year. Thank you, Mrs. Veronica Dear Pre-Kindergarten Families,
Welcome to the 2021-2022 school year! I would like to thank you for choosing to send your child to Our Lady of Mercy Preschool. I feel blessed to have your child in my class for this upcoming year. My name is Mrs. Veronica, and this will be my 14th year working in this pre-kindergarten classroom. I would like to welcome new families to OLM, as well as, returning families of older children I have taught in the past. I have been a part of the OLM family for the past 19 years, first as a parent and then as a teacher. My daughters are both graduates of Our Lady of Mercy School. It has been my pleasure to serve our school by volunteering my time and talents. I have served as a Parent Club Co-President and I served on the Parent Cub for 9 years. I have been blessed with meeting and working alongside many wonderful people that I call my OLM family. We have a very exciting year planned. Our theme this year is Bubbles! Who doesn't love bubbles?? Bubbles are beautiful, wondrous, unique and come in all sizes and shapes. When we blow bubbles, we blow air into a bubble and give it life. It grows and lifts off into a wondrous adventure. Some bubbles are strong and seem to float far away; some bubbles pop very quickly. Do you ever wonder where a bubble goes? When we blow air into a bubble, we can be reminded of how God has given each of us the gift of life. The Bible says, “God breathed life into us.” In Genesis, we are reminded that “God breathed the breath of life, and man became a living creature.” As bubbles are different shapes and sizes, we are reminded that we are each unique as well with different purposes according to God’s plan. The Bible says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” As beautiful as bubbles are, we know that they are fragile and lack strength, and as they come into contact with objects, they break or pop. Sometimes, we are fragile and weak like a bubble. We need help to become strong. We can ask God to help us be strong through prayer. During these past few years, I know that I have asked God to give me strength to get through this pandemic. God can give us amazing strength to face and overcome any challenge. As we blow bubbles, think of them like prayers: put your prayers in a bubble and float them right up to God! During this next year, we would like to lead each day with prayers of faith, hope and love. Thank you to all the families that were able to attend the meet and greet last week. It was so nice to have an opportunity to sit down together this past week. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at veronica.jasso@olmlancers.com I am truly looking forward to the upcoming school year. Together with you as their primary teacher, I hope to partner together to help facilitate your child into becoming an active faithful learner. God Bless you, Mrs. Veronica |
AuthorMrs. Veronica Archives
January 2022
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