May Newsletter
2017 - 2018 Academic Year
Of all the special joys in life, The big ones and the small, A mother's love and tenderness Is the greatest of them all.
Mother's Day Tea
On Friday, May 11th, The Cottages will be hosting a Mother's Day Tea for all the loving Mommies that we have at The Cottages. Moms are invited to spend time with your child in their cottage at 3:30pm for a special tea to honor this holiday. A sign-up sheet is posted in the front to RSVP if you are able to attend this event. We wish all of the wonderful Moms and Grandmothers a very special Mother’s Day!
Teacher Appreciation Week
Teacher Appreciation Week is scheduled for the week of April 30th - May 4th. We feel so incredibly blessed to have such an amazing teaching team at The Cottages. They truly go above and beyond to ensure our kids have the best care and education. Please join us in celebrating our teachers for all their hard work and dedication. TCMLC teachers are the BEST!!! Thank you to all our families who helped make this week extra special and amazing for our wonderful teachers!
Spring Portraits & Class Pictures
Summer Camp Is On It's Way!
As the academic year comes to a close, preparations are underway for Summer Camp. The summer calendar is almost completed and it’s looking like it’ll be another fun-filled summer at The Cottages! Keep an eye out as a Summer Camp Info Packet will be coming home later this month in your child's classroom folder. You will want to keep it handy throughout the summer as it will outline special in-house field trip days, water play days, theme days, and much more!
Memorial Day - School Closed
Just a friendly reminder that The Cottages will be closed on Monday, May 28th in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. We will reopen on Tuesday, May 29th. We wish you a fun and safe holiday weekend!
VPK Graduation - School Closes Early @ 3pm
Our Dragonfly Cottage students will be graduating on Friday, June 1st! This is a reminder to all families that The Cottages will be closing at 3:00pm this day in preparation for the big event.
Mark Your Calendars
- 4/30 - 5/4- Teacher Appreciation Week
- 5/11 - Mother's Day Tea at 3:30pm
- 5/28 - Memorial Day TCMLC CLOSED
- 6/1 - Graduation Day. School Closes Early at 3:00pm
- 6/11 - Summer Camp Begins!!!
- 6/15 - Man of My Life Celebration
May Birthdays!
” Wishing you a day filled with happiness and a year filled with joy.”
- 5/4 - Easton I.
- 5/6 - Owen K.
- 5/6 - Vincent T.
- 5/13 - Cameron C.
- 5/15 - Grayson C.
- 5/23 - Christopher H.
Happy Birthday to our friends born in May!
Cricket Cottage News
Mother's Day
The Cricket Cottage would like to wish all of our hardworking moms a special Happy Mother's Day! We are blessed to know you and your little ones in our care.
Sign of the Month
During the month of May we will be learning the sign "more". Place your hands/fingers as shown and tap 2 of them together 2 times.
Beyond Twinkle Twinkle: Rebecca Parlakian with Claire Lerner
For very young children, music has power and meaning that go beyond words. First, and most important, sharing music with young children is simply one more way to give love and receive love. Music and music experiences also support the formation of important brain connections that are being established over the first three years of life. Thoughtfully planned music experiences can support and nurture each of the domains of development such as social/emotional, physical (motor), cognitive, language, and literacy development. To read the full article, check out http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/201003/parlakianweb0310.pdf.
Sensory Play- Splish Splash!
This month with our younger infants we will be introducing water play by having them splash water with their feet and with older infants splashing using their hands. This helps in the development as we talk about how it feels and sounds when splashing.
At Home Play Activity
In a clear bottle, combine 2/3 cup light corn syrup with 1/3 cup water. Sprinkle in some glitter and hot glue the cap on the bottle. Let your child shake and swirl the glittery mixture.
Ladybug Cottage News
Welcome Friends!
Welcome to the Ladybug Cottage, Anna and Marcela! We are so happy to have you join us!
Spring Forward
Spring is here and we're shifting gears to the world outside. Everything begins blooming around us and the children want to be a part of these magical experiences. Topics this month will include the Butterfly Project (where we will watch the caterpillars turn into butterflies!) and Gardening. We will be exploring the school garden, growing plants, and taking buggy rides outdoors. These experiences encourage the children to observe the world around us and take part in the joys of spring.
We Love our Mommies!
We want to start off this month by saying Happy Mother's Day to all of our amazing cottage moms! We appreciate and value what you do each and every day. We are so glad to have such a great group of mommies to show our appreciation. We will be working with our friends on a very secret project from us to you.
Circle Time
We will be reading stories and singing songs this month in the Ladybug Cottage. We will be reading the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. This story features a caterpillar who eats its way through a variety of food before it starts its transformation into a butterfly. We will also be singing the song, Five Green and Speckled Frogs. Here are the words to the song if you'd like to sing along at home.
Five green and speckled frogs
Sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool
Where it was nice and cool
Now there are four green and speckled frogs
(Continue song counting down until no frogs are left)
We will continue five green and speckled frogs with felt board activities and repetitious rhyme with adorable frog characters. Puppets will be added one by one as they hop off their speckled log to one very cool ending.
May Flowers
This month we will plant some flowers. Our ladybugs will help scoop the dirt and push the seeds into the soil. We will also water our flowers and check throughout the month to see how plants grow. We will also grow bean seeds in a bag taped to the window so the children can watch as it sprouts and grows as time goes on.
Requested Donations
- Butterfly plants
- Bird feeder
- Bird seed
Caterpillar Cottage News
April in Review
April was such a fun month for us and our caterpillars. We spent much of our time outdoors planting and gardening as well as learning about how we can take care of our planet. “The Lorax” was a huge hit and we incorporated the theme song “Let it Grow” into our music and movement. The children created “Truffula Tree” art using recycled paper towels rolls and worked hard making flower impression art. One of our favorite activities this month was cleaning up the school garden after the trash monster dumped all his goodies there.
Colors
Our caterpillars have been doing such a great job with color recognition! Not only have they been identifying colors in English, but they have been learning the names for colors in Spanish as well. Susan Lang shares in the article https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/05/learning-second-language-good-childhood-mind-medicine, “Learning a second language does not cause language confusion, language delay or cognitive deficit, which have been concerns in the past. In fact, according to studies at the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab (CLAL), children who learn a second language can maintain attention despite outside stimuli better than children who know only one language.”
Potty Training
Many of our friends are very excited to try to use the potty. To encourage this, we have created sticker charts for the children who display interest in using the potty often. Here’s an article with more potty training information we enjoyed reading.
Shapes
After a month bursting with colors, we will be shifting our focus into shapes this month. Loose part activities with shapes, shape stamp art, and a shape walk are just a few of the ideas we have planned. Stay tuned for more!
Bird Feeders
Our children noticed that not many birds have visited our birdbath. After brainstorming together, we decided that food is the best way to invite our feathered friends over. We will be making our own bird feeders to hang outside and doing some bird observation this month.
Donations needed:
bird seed
flour
corn syrup
cooking spray
cookie cutters
Butterfly Cottage News
April Recap
We celebrated the earth during the month of April. We planted our new seeds in the school garden and are excited about the sprouts we are already seeing! We created cool Planet Earth art and made some yummy dirt cups to eat. We also created some cool science this month by using giant bubble wrap and food coloring. The children were amazed watching the liquid colors being injected then popping the bubbles to see the colors mix together to see what new colors it made!
May
During the month of May we are going to be enjoying the weather outside and having a blast during our last month of the academic year! We will be cooking up a storm and getting creative with some out of the box art such as human spinographs!
Mother's Day
Our butterflies are excited to celebrate our wonderful mothers! we will creating a lovely gift all by ourselves to give our mothers on this special day. We will also be learning some Mother's Day songs to show our moms how much we love them!
If You Love Your Mom and You Know It (tune: If You're Happy and You Know It)
If you love your mom and you know it, blow a kiss
If you love your mom and you know it, blow a kiss
If you love your mom and you know it and you really want to show it
If you love your mom and you know it, blow a kiss
If you love your mom and you know it (give a hug...give high fives...do all three)
End of Year Recap
Our butterflies are incredible! We are so proud of everything they have done this year! They have learned their alphabet, they know their first and last names, and are smart beyond their years! We are so glad we have been their teachers this year and can't wait to see what else they do the last month of school!
Reminders
- Please apply sunscreen on your child every morning. We are spending a lot of time outdoors lately.
- Please bring in a water bottle for your child to use throughout the day. Please make sure their first and last names are on it.
- If your child comes to school in sandals, please make sure they have a backing to them. Regular flip flops are constantly being run out of small feet on the playground.
Bumblebee Cottage News
April Recap
Our first month into our Construction Inquiry flew by! We delved deep into materials such as lumber and where it comes from, as well as the uses for it and glass in buildings. We explored the Ca d'Zan in Sarasota and the Palazzo Ducale in Italy. A big thank you for the donations of cardboard, large and small. This allows for even more possibilities with relation to imagination, construction, and design. The Bees have used these cardboard pieces to explore another structure of deep interest - ramps! This marries math and science well as they learn hands-on about construction, speed, incline, height, and more. It is for this reason that we are only too happy to extend the inquiry into May as per our original plan!
Construction Inquiry Continuation
We will be closing out the year with our Construction Inquiry. We have just touched upon one of the Bees' favorite structures, ramps, and will open May with a variety of ramps and their purposes. From this, the Bees continue to take the lead into which structure and components of architecture we will be studying next. We are still accepting donations of cardboard, both small tubes and large appliance boxes, as imaginations take over and construction is further explored.
Alphabet/Number Review
We continue to hone recognition of letters of the alphabet as well as recognition of numbers. We count down the days until "Pizza Friday" or a special holiday or event, helping us to recognize each numeral. Writing invitations continue on a regular basis in our classroom with a combination of tracing and copying opportunities. We are so proud of our not-so-little Bees!
Fine Arts: Artists of the Month/Week
The world is our oyster as we consider famous structures around the world. This allows us to combine Social Studies and the Fine and Performing Arts as we continue to feature a variety of cultures and ethnicities where each structure is located. Math and Science are featured as structures are built and their integrity tested. This inquiry is fertile ground for continuing to support each child's growth and development.
Dragonfly Cottage News
April Recap
We had a great month of learning all about how to be Earth friendly! We really sparked a passion for recycling and ways to keep the earth clean. The Refuse the Straw challenge is still going on! Our earth friendly art projects of "trash" turned into extremely creative art!
May
We can't believe our year is almost finished! We want to thank all of our families for such a great year! We will never forget our little dragonflies. We are so proud of everyone! They will all rock in kindergarten! See you all at graduation!
Skill Review
During the month of May we will be working extra hard on reviewing our skills we've learned this year. We will also continue practicing for graduation which will be during our morning meeting time. Please have your child dropped off at school no later than 8:45am so they don't miss practice. We will also be working on our Teaching Strategies Gold Spring assessment and our Spring VPK Assessments.
Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day to all our sweet Dragonfly mommies! We hope your day is fabulous and you are spoiled! Please mark your calendars for the Mother's Day Tea on Friday, May 11th at 3:30pm. We look forward to tea time with you!