You’re invited to our
Preschool OPEN HOUSE!

Tuesday, January 24
&
Thursday, January 26

Sprout Academy would love to meet you & your little one! Come play with us & learn why Sprout is an amazing preschool.  Our classes are offered at an affordable price and are conveniently located in Southwest Community Center!   Please see the attached flyer for details & how to sign up. 

Call 503-823-2848 to sign up, spots are filling fast~

Dear Sprout Families,

During December we teachers observed a lot of enthusiasm toward our Sprout classroom jobs!  We have been seeing a lot of helpers — helping each other.  Have you noticed any change at home?  Here is our current “Helper’s list”: helper’s/helper, door holder, recycler, plant water person, outside sweeper/rake person, time-keeper, circle starter, worm feeder, line leader, and station-dot giver.  Try it at home… it is a lot of F U N and helps with self esteem too! 

The children have also been excited by new discoveries of the written word; early reading, WORD-games and Rhyming.  See “Resources” for a great list of books which will aid in word awareness and excitement.  

The Log play area has given Sprouts a lot to move, jump and shuffle about on! It is a great addition and provides a unique type of natural obstacle course.  For indoor days, we have been trying out our yoga twice a week!  Some of our favorite poses are: Sprout’s unique pose: “seed to sprout to tree” and “frog” in sitting and in jumping pose! 

Winter Crop December harvest: Kale and Mint! Recipe for Kale chips:   Ingredients; 1 head kale, washed and thoroughly dried, 2 tablespoons olive oil, Sea salt, for sprinkling     Directions: Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. Remove the ribs from the kale and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces, lay on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil and salt. Bake until crisp, turning the leaves halfway through, about 20 minutes. Serve as finger food.   More healthy-eating come January 2012.

Sprout Woolly-Pocket School Garden update:
The sad news is that our efforts to take care of the remaining Wooly Pocket School Garden funds ($769) through a local grant, was recently declined.  So, we are back to the drawing board… brainstorming on how to raise funds so that we can install the Woolly-pocket vertical school garden …by March 2012!  This investment would for allow hundreds of Sprout students to enjoy gardening for years to come!    You can also make a personal contribution of over $5.00 at:  http://www.woollyschoolgarden.org/sprout-academy-green-preschool.html  

January-Classroom Highlights: Our kitchen will be transformed into a Veterinarian office!

 See all the fun pictures & her entire newsletter here!

We’ve had a busy, busy month! Our big news this month is our outside play area “make-over.” The play area is constructed out of logs donated by the Urban Forestry Dept. The logs were dropped off around Thanksgiving (some of you might have seen the big crane drop them off!).  The kids really seem to enjoy trying to walk on the little log steps (they are arranged in a circle so they can walk on and on and on…).  

This month we also wrapped up our discussion on animals with a Bear Hunt!  For the past few weeks the children have been helping make the obstacle course little by little (painting butcher paper blue for the river, brown for the mud etc.) On Thursday we set up the Bear Hunt in the multipurpose room using the pieces we made in class. The kids got to walk through grass (green crepe paper) and all the rest! They could follow the path of the map using footprints stuck to the ground that made a path leading to each obstacle. It was so much fun to watch the kids run around and run screaming from the scary bear (a stuffed teddy Teacher Molly borrowed from her kidsJ). We had a blast!  

After we get back from winter break we will start to think about the winter season.  We’ll introduce some new winter words and do lots of fun art projects!  

See the rest of teacher Rachel’s December newsletter here!

Hello Sprout Families!

 I feel like the time is just flying by! We’ve had a bit of an odd month, with no school on Thursday the 10^th and no school next week, but once we come back from break we will resume our normal schedule.

This past week we also started to think about animals. We started with just labeling and learning animal names, and then we will move into describing the animals. At circle time we have been telling the story “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?” to the children. Rather than use the book we use a felt board story and put each animal on the board one-by-one. The kiddos then yell out the name of the animal (Teacher Molly and I usually ask the color once they name the animal). The kiddos loved it! I think they had so much fun partly because they like the story but also partly because usually they have to have a “quiet mouth” at circle time and we were letting them yell out loudJ. We’ve also started using animal sounds while telling the story, by asking the kids “what does the _____ say?” Everyone does a great job with frog (“ribbit!”), cat (“meow!”) and dog (“woof!”) but for some reason everyone tends to get stuck on horse. Some of our kiddos have started saying “yeeee hawwww!” for horseJ. Teacher Molly and I emphasize that while a cowboy says “yee haw” that’s not the noise the horse makes. We’ll continue with the story and the animal sounds over the next few weeks so hopefully by the end of the animal topic everyone will be “neighing” with the best of ‘em!   

We also did more painting! We covered the tables in butcher paper and put all our animals out on the table. The children dipped the animals’ feet in plates of paint and made “animal tracks” all up and down the paper. We came upon a brilliant discovery; each animal’s foot leaves a different track! Amazing! Of course after about 10 minutes the children decided that they were done with animal tracks and began to smear the paint with their handsJ. Naturally it covered all the animals’ tracks but toddler art is all about exploration! Some of the children even began to paint themselves (see the pics below!). The kiddos are becoming more and more comfortable not only with the purpose and the feel of paint, but also with how to navigate group projects. They are becoming better at recognizing personal space and switching the materials. Of course they still need guidance, but all in all I think the project was a success!

Thank You everyone for donating cans.  In total we had 42 cans!  The kids had fun counting them and sorting them into groups of 10.  When we were done counting them they were delivered to the Neighborhood House just in time for Thanksgiving.    

The Science area will continue to have color mixing and water exploration.  Both seem to be very popular.  We have a new weaving loom that will be introduced next week and dramatic play will turn back into a house.  The kids have loved the new logs that were added to the play ground.  They enjoy walked on the different levels of stumps and have enjoyed using the log table as a drum.  It’s so exciting to see what they’ll come up with next.  For some the sand box is still their favorite and all the rain has made it great for building sand castles and mud pies. With weather permitting, we will continue to open up outside as part of free choice time. 

The Sprout 3's class creating their very own game with the new logs in our play area!

Inclement weather?  We follow Portland Public Schools.  If they are closed, we are closed.  If they have an hour or two hour delay we will be closed.  If this happens I will send out an email that morning alerting everyone. I don’t like to miss school but it’s always fun to play in the snow!

We have a two week  Winter Break coming up.  If you are looking for ways to entertain the kids check out the SWCC Winter break camps in the winter catalog.  They are lots of fun! 

Check out the rest of the latest newsletter from 3′s class Teacher Molly here!

First, I would like to take this opportunity thank all Sprout families for meeting with me for family conferences.  For me it was an incredibly valuable time to exchange information and set goals for the rest of the school year!  I hope it was as equally helpful to you… as it was for me! Please remember you are always welcome to touch base with me on how your child is doing at Sprout. Quick emails or meetings on Tuesdays or Wednesdays after class are best.                                                                                                              

Thanks to our combined information shared, you will start to see a few modifications in our classroom such as: more instrument playing, partnering-job lists, family engagement during weekly sharing at Show and Tell to help Sprouts emphasize leadership skills and self confidence, more phonics games during choice time, more fine-motor games and more outdoor play on our logs and gym time with team sports, positive re-enforcement and leadership games.  In our Sprout courtyard, we are now able to offer more active-play because our logs have arrived from the Department of Forestry!      Thank you Department of Forestry for reclaiming our logs!                                                                                                                         

See our exciting pictures from the last two weeks of Letter G and H explorations: gardening with wheat grass, harvesting for stone soup and ivy-home crafts at our Family gatherings! It was a great pleasure having families join us in the classroom… More invitations to come! Read the entire newsletter here!

Hello dear Pre-K families,

Despite the short timeline we had, we interviewed & hired someone that will be a wonderful addition to the class & program overall. Teacher Catherine & I are happy to announce our new aide in both Pre-K classes…….Ming Hom!

Ming was originally hired on with Portland Parks & Recreation for the Summer Playground Program last summer (awesome free program, ask me for details if you haven’t heard of it!). She was so fabulous in her role creating art & playing games with young children that the manager at East Portland Community Center who hired her for Playgrounds wanted to keep her on board after the seasonal job ended.

Upon seeing my job posting while working at EPCC, she was very excited to learn of the job opportunity here at Southwest (she lives less than 1 mile from the center, so she is already part of our community!). In 2010, she graduated from Willamette University with a BA in International Studies & a minor in Spanish, and has studied abroad in Spain. In addition to her summer playground experience, she worked with children for 2 years at Bush Elementary in Salem as an America Reads/Counts tutor where she had multiple responsibilities in the classroom aiding the Lead teacher. Ming plans to go back to school in the next couple of years to pursue a Masters degree in a yet-to-determined field that allows her to continue working with children.

When you meet Ming, you will be able to tell from her demeanor that she genuinely enjoys spending time & interacting with young children as well as parents, so that makes teacher Catherine & I very happy to welcome her on board! We think you’ll agree.

Have a wonderful holiday, we are excited to see you all again on Monday!

We have been working on the letters G and M for the past two weeks.  Thanks to Teagan we are on the Case of The Missing Muffin with magnifying glasses and all!  The science area has pumpkins to explore.  We opened up two pumpkins and have been working on sorting and washing all the pumpkin seeds.  We cut up a pumpkin, sprinkled some brown sugar and cinnamon on it and baked it and boy was it good!  Most of the children tasted the pumpkin.  There were mixed feelings about it, some loved it and had seconds and thirds, others weren’t so sure about the taste.  We made pumpkin muffins last week in preparations for our costume parade on Monday.   As a reminder, kids can come in costume or bring their costumes to change into before the parade at 11:30, whichever would be most comfortable for them.

What a great field trip to Lee farms.  It was nice seeing parents that we don’t see on a regular basis.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather!  It was however a reminder that the weather is getting cold.  We will try to go outside everyday so please dress your child appropriately.  It would be very helpful if you could write your child’s name in their coats, hats and mittens. Read entire newsletter  here!

These last two weeks were a bunch of   F  U   N  with letter F… full of fall colors, forest explorations, friendship games and Letter G; green- Gardening activities, spelling our names with soil and wheatgrass seeds! 

In this last week, we focused on playing group games which encourage the building of self-esteem and friendships.  We will continue these throughout the year! Problem solving is a tool which can extend throughout a life-time and I believe in it strongly. It is helpful in many areas of development.  In our classroom when a child is presented with a challenge to solve a problem, we offer choices, discuss them and then further explore the outcome. In general, yes and no responses are rarely heard from teachers, but instead, we ask “how can we do this in a different way so that we are safe and happy?”   Accepting change, transitions and differences is a challenge we discuss daily with everyone. We know every child is in a different place in their interests and development so it is definitely a step by step process. 

What have our 3′s been up to?
Wow, what a busy couple of weeks we have had in the 3’s classroom.  The children have been working hard on learning the routine and our classroom rules.  They have been doing great at circle time and have been really focused on their jobs (each child has one job a week).  As you will notice from the pictures we are learning to clean our classroom and take care of our toys. 
 
We had a special visitor today.  Jen from the SW Watershed Resource Center came to tell us about our new worm compost bin.  She shared with us that worms need many of the same things to live healthy lives that we need, a warm house, a little water, food (but only fruits and vegetables) and clean air.  At snack time some of us gave the worms our banana peels and strawberries.  We can’t wait to see what will happen next.
 
 Last week we focused on the letter A.  Ask your child what sound A makes.  We explored apples.  On Friday we made individual apple pies.  Everyone did a great job cutting the apples and making their own crust.  We look forward to more cooking projects.
 
We have started our monkey journal.  The class has named our monkey Friday.  Friday spent his first weekend with Sophie and it was a success, as Sophie says, “when it’s Christmas I hope Santa will bring me a Friday.”   We hope that everyone will love spending a weekend with Friday as much as Sophie did.  Thanks Sophie for taking such good care of Friday. Read the entire Oct newsletter from our 3′s here!

For November we will be focusing on family, friends and what we are thankful for, as well as continuing to explore fall and all of its wonder.  Weather permitting I’m hoping to walk through the park in the next few weeks as the trees are so beautiful right now.  We will be working on the letters C and T.  To begin, we will be having a Can Food Drive.  All of the donations will be given to the neighborhood house.  Not only will we be giving to those in need but the Can Food Drivewill also prove to be a great opportunity for our class to practice pre- math skills by counting, sorting and graphing.  Oliver really wants the class to count to 100 so that will be our goal!  We will count our cans daily as they come in.  There will be a basket by the sign in sheet if you choose to donate starting November 7^th- 18^th.  Read entire November newsletter here!

News from our 4 year old Sprouts!
What a fun first week at Sprout 4’s!  We teachers are working hard to provide your children with the most caring, fun filled learning experiences & environment possible! Gabriel Park (Sprout’s Nature-classroom) has a lot to offer!  Here are a few pictures highlighting the first week of Sprout adventures: apple harvesting and animal rolls down the hill! Everyone should be so proud! What great listeners, partners, hikers and helpers! Read the entire 9/27 newsletter here!
Letter B–BUG hunt and books appeared to be a hit!  Our special Guest Jamie (Ronan’s mom) and their Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches really made us giggle.   Every week we feature a song of the week and this week: “Five little lady bugs sitting in a tree” was a favorite!  Sprout Garden Song is: “We’re off to see the garden, we’re off to we garden, hi ho the merry o, we’re off the see the garden. First, we pull the weeds…then we plant our seed… then we water our seed… then we pick our veggies, munch, munch, munch.”
For our nature explorations, we now have our very own NATURE Baskets.  Big thanks to families for encouraging the RRRR: Rethink, Remake, Reuse and Recycle and bringing in milk jugs! Bi-weekly, we will be making re-usable crafts, so, keep it up please!  Read the entire newsletter here!

These last few weeks we have begun to see our Sprouts form fast friendships.  During class we talk about ways we can be friends with everyone, celebrating our similarities and enjoying our differences.  We practice taking turns, partnering and sitting next to others during art, circle, walks and games. Encouraging Sprouts to explore new experiences and have an adventurous day is one of our many aims!
 Making recycled crafts and caring for our earth are two big themes you will see repeating throughout the year.  We practice recycling again and again on a daily basis. It is always helpful to have SWCC Watershed Center Coordinator Jen Seaman’s come visit and give us lessons on how to take care of our Sprout worms and what they like to eat! Big thanks to Jen! The children seem more and more captivated by our very own worm composter! Our everyday practice of preparing the food scraps and caring for our earth worm friends, seem to have made a big impression. Read the entire 10/24 newsletter here!