February and March news letter

February and March, 2009

Dearest Parents,

The winter months are progressing along with wonderful weather and plenty of rain.
We are sure to see a fantastic spring, and with that will come allergy season. If you are able, we do need more boxes of tissues donated to the classroom, expectation of this season.
Well we do have so much to learn in the next two months, and as we have a two week recess in March for spring break, I thought it best to include that month into the current news letter.
We are going to finish up our studies with the continent of Africa, and to honor this we are going to focus our story time on the Anansi spider stories. We will read many books about this tricky little spider, but we will focus our author studies on the Anansi books by Eric A. Kimmel. The artist that we will study in the next two months will be Degas, and we will be discovering the music of Vivaldi this month. The next continent that we will also begin to introduce and learn about, is the continent of Asia. We will again introduce different peoples of this continent, introduce the puzzle map and name the countries of this continent, and lastly, we will be introduce the children to some animals from this continent. In our zoology studies we will move our learning towards the amphibian, introducing the children to different kinds, and to learning the parts of a frog. In our botany studies, we will introduce the children to the parts of a leaf, the purpose of a leaf for a plant, and we will begin learning the names of different leaf shapes.
As you know we have two holidays this month, the first being Valentines day. We will be giving and receiving valentines on Friday, February 14th, but we will not be celebrating a holiday. We will talk to the children about he significance of this holiday, and go into a little bit of the history for it. We also have Presidents day on February 16th, and will be talking to the children about the importance of this day as well.
Again, I would like to give all of the parents who help donate the snack a big thank you, as the children are so very happy to get snack.
If you are able, our classroom is in need of some supplies, to help us clean up after lunch. Currently we are in need of baby wipes, so if you are able to help us with this, please send some with your child to school.
Thank you to all the parents who helped donate paper bags, plastic zip lock bags and fabric to our classroom. These items will be put to good use.
I also wanted to let all our families know that we will be having our field trip to the child’s museum in march, and will be sending out the permission slips and more detail very soon.
I would like to extend a warm welcome from Sara Lipp, our new class room A.I. Please say hello if you see her. She is very happy to be working with our class, and is very excited to meet and work with your child.
Again if you have any questions, feel free to talk to Mrs. Niederhauser at:
Heather.niederhauser@phxelem.k12.az.us

With the fresh and flowering happiness of spring.
Mrs. Niederhauser and Ms. Lipp