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What's New
- Documents Available Online
- Important Dates to Remember -April 2010
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Wed
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Fri
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Sat
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Easter Parties
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School Closed |
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Easter |
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School Closed |
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School Closed |
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School Closed |
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School Closed |
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School Closed |
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Week Of the Young Child |
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Storyteller
Clem
Bowen
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Character
Dress up
day
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Chapel
Pajama Day |
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Chapel
Ice Cream Party
Spanish |
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Surprise Visitor
Spanish |
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Music &
Movement |
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Music &
Movement |
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Spanish
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Spanish
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Music &
Movement |
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Music &
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Storyteller from Woodlawn Library |
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Spanish
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Spanish
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- School News
- ZEEC
Summer Camp
Each year we offer an extended school or "summer camp" to coincide with other elementary schools in the area. This year there is sufficient enrollment and we will be offering this program from May 24th through May 28th and June 1st through June 4th. This camp is always a lot of fun with special themes and interesting specials. It's not too late to sign up. Please contact the office for information.
- Justified Help
Thank you to all
those who contributed to
Justified Help for Haiti. I was
so proud to send them a
check for $200.00 thanks to
your generosity.
- Registration for 2010-2011
Our classes are filling up for next year. If you have not registered your child and plan to return to Z.E.E.C. please do so as soon as possible.
- Week of the Young Child
Each year, the National Association for the Education of Young Children sets aside a week to honor those wonderful people in our lives; preschool children. At Zion, we try to make that week special for our students. This year we have some special guests who will be visiting us, and fun days to celebrate. Please check the calendar for those dates.
On one of these days, Tuesday, April 13th we are asking that everyone dress up as their favorite storybook character. This does not require a full costume or clothing at all. It could be an object that tells a story, or a picture or anything that represents your child's favorite story.
- Spring Arts Night
Please mark your calendars for May 5th at 7pm. This is Spring Art Night, which is a great opportunity for all our families to visit the school to see some of the great work your children have done. This year it's Special Children's Story Night at ZEEC. Each class will make a famous children's book its special theme. Everyone is invited to this fun filled night.
- Thank You!
Mr. Blanck (Jordan and Kaylee's grandfather) for fixing our circle/cycles
Mr. Veasey (Erik's dad) for fixing our cabinets
- Classroom News
- Two Year Olds
Mrs. Oldham and Mrs. Carini
There were a lot of adjustments for the children to make these past few weeks, but they handled it all so well, we were very proud of them!
We had a lot of fun while learning about the colors orange, purple, black and brown. We discovered that when you mix red and yellow paint it makes the color orange and when you mix red and blue it makes purple! While learning about the color orange, we painted with orange halves and ate oranges for our snack. While painting with purple we made grapes and learned about the shape circle and had fun playing with orange and purple play dough.
During Saint Patrick's Day we glued gold coins to make pots of gold and made shamrock puzzles that we glued together. We read about Saint Patrick's Day and made rainbows out of fruit loops. Boy was it hard not to eat them all but we did save some for our craft! We had our Saint Patrick's Day party with lots of yummy treats that our parents had sent in.
When learning about the color black, we made some scary spiders that we had climbing up our walls in the hallway and we were really good at finding things in our room that are the color black.
While learning the color brown, we made cinnamon scented brown teddy bears that smell delicious enough to eat! We learned about Easter and made cute little bunnies by painting with our fingers and feet. Our brown Easter baskets that we glued are filled with colorful Easter eggs which we learned are like the oval shape. We dyed eggs for our Easter basket that we decorated, had a delicious Easter Party and had fun on our Easter egg hunt!
During our Circle Time, we had fun sharing the things we brought in from home for the color of that week and played matching color games. We were so proud when we matched up the right colors in our bear game and Winnie the Pooh color cards! We all had fun helping to tell The Three Little Pigs, Five Little Monkeys and Old MacDonald stories on our flannel board. All of the children were so great at playing the "who came to school today" song which really helped Mrs. Oldham learn all their names much faster!
We were sad that Mrs. Terranova had to leave for a while, but we were so happy to hear about her new baby and we will be so happy to see her when she comes back with us after our Easter break.
I would like to thank all of you for all the fun times I shared with the two year old class...I will miss you all very much! Also, a special thanks to Mrs. Carini for making every thing run so smoothly...no way could it be done with out her!
Happy Easter! Welcome Back Mrs. Terranova...We missed you!
- Three Year Olds
Mrs. Del Grosso & Mrs. Oldham
We had so much fun with numbers in February, we continued our "real life math" unit into March. We measured and estimated and made graphs and patterns. While learning about spatial relationships such as between, through, over, under, around and into, the children enjoyed some physical activities to reenforce these concepts. They slid under, crawled through, ran between and around and tossed a ball into a basket. After that we explored comparisons such as all, some, many, few and none. The boys and girls continue to have fun with math concepts every day. Next we focused on the alphabet with letter recognition, letter sounds, onsets and rimes (onsets are the letters before the vowel and rimes are the letters after the vowel), rhymes, alliteration and beginning sounds in words. As we were busy learning, a pesky little leprechaun made a mess of our classroom while looking for his pot of gold at the end of his rainbow! For one of our science projects this month, we made our own rainbow -- but there was no pot of gold -- just lots of beautiful colors! After all the St. Patrick's Day excitement we spent our mornings preparing for Easter making eggs, Easter baskets, chicks, bunnies and bonnets. Good thing we have a nice long Easter break to relax and rest up!
When the children come back from vacation we have lots of fun planned. We will be celebrating the "Week of the Young Child" with special activities and programs for the children to enjoy.
Spring is a great time to learn about plants and flowers and how some insect have jobs that help our gardens grow. At the end of April we will be focusing on literature and some of our favorite books and stories. Now that Spring is here and the weather is warm, don't be surprise to see us pop up at a t-ball game or two! We love baseball!
- Three Year Olds
Mrs. Robertson, Mrs. Jack and Mrs. Miller
Well March came in like a lion and went out like a lion! Rain, rain go away! We are happy to welcome Spring on the calendar! The warmer weather is making us all crazy to get outside and play! We are glad to see Old Man Winter pack up and leave!
We started March off with a tribute to Dr. Seuss and his many wonderful books!
One of the favorites was , Green Eggs and Ham! We mixed and cooked Green Eggs and Ham right in the classroom for snack and boy did we like them, Sam I am! The class enjoyed reading Hop On Pop and The Shape of Me and Other Stuff! We had fun tracing our hands and other items we picked from around theclassroom!
Once again we tried to catch the sneaky leprechaun but he got away again! Maybe next year!
The classroom was covered in painted rainbows and shamrocks that the classes cut out all by themselves-great job! Our St Patty's hats looked great and we were all Irish for a day! Mixing and eating vanilla pudding that we turned green and enjoying our St. Patrick's Day party was a fun way to celebrate ! Thanks for sending in the great treats, mmm mmm good!
We welcomed Spring on March 20th by painting flower pots and planting bright colored flowers- they look so pretty! We read a book, "When Will it Be Spring?" Now we are all looking for the signs of spring's arrival...melting snow, budding flowers, butterflies, and lots of warm sun!
April will be a joyous month with the arrival of Easter and the story of how Jesus has risen again! We will read the story of Easter and dye Easter eggs! The Week of the Young Child will be celebrated the week of April 12th-look for lots of fun activities scheduled at Zion!
We like to wish each and everyone of you a happy and restful Easter break! It is so hard to believe that April is already here, we are having so much playing and learning at school!
- Four Year Olds
Mrs. Burdett, Mrs. Zabielski and Ms. Arms
March came in like a lamb...surprisingly! We have had a very busy March in our classroom. In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday in the beginning of the month, we celebrated with plenty of good reading and a few crafts. We read many of his books, but had an awesome time with "The Cat in the Hat" and "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish". The children did a wonderful job decorating their poster and making a replica of the hat worn by the Cat in the Hat!
Then came our biggest task this year, catching that tricky leprechaun! We were fooled on a few occasions when we came in from recess. The leprechaun moved chairs, turned our names upside down and even left behind his hat! He left us gold coins, pencils, and even green pudding! On St. Patrick's Day we were sure we would catch that rascal with all of our clever traps, no such luck! He got away...again! We closed out our month discussing and reading about Easter. We not only celebrate Easter with bunnies and dyed eggs; we learned the true meaning behind this very special holiday. The children know that God died on the cross to show us how much he loved us. We realize this is a very delicate subject for the children so we work very hard to discuss it in terms they can appreciate.
In April, we will begin learning about new life! In honor of new life we would like for each child to bring in a book pertaining to the subject to share with the class. It can be about any animal, plant life, or even the new life of a baby.
We will discuss spring in more detail, from flowers blooming to baseball. We will finally do our unit on the human body. March was too busy to cover it fully.
We are just about done with our numbers and have just a few more letters to go before we are finished with them as well! Please continue to practice with your children at home as we do in the classroom. Also, scissor skills are improving but we could all use extra practice. Please allow your children to practice cutting at home.
I want to again thank all the parents and children for doing such a wonderful job with our student of the week project. We have had 100% participation from each student so far. Thank you Thank you Thank you!
Please remember if April is your juice month to send in your juice!
Have a wonderful April and enjoy the Springtime
- Four Year Olds
Mrs. Hawk, Mrs. Sadowski and Ms. Henry
Well, we made it through a rough winter, but it looks like clear sailing from now on. The birds are back and the days are getting longer. We really loved the snow, but enough is enough!
That philosophy would have gone right out the window if we had found that leprechaun. We had great plans for that pot of gold. We even wrote a book about it. There were some new houses on the lists, a few trucks and one new book. But, even though we had the best traps around, he was just too slippery for us. We did have fun making plans and looking for clues. Maybe next year the luck of the Irish will be with us.
We were very lucky to have a wonderful trip to the Mary Campbell Center. The four year old classes were invited to the center for an Easter Egg hunt and storytelling. It was so much fun! Everyone found a lot of eggs, and the stories were great. Then we went on a tour of the center and saw a pool that has a floor that rises and falls so that people in wheel chairs can use it. We even played on the playground that had really cool interactive play areas. It was a great trip and our students were awesome. Everyone at the center continued to say, "Wow!" "They are so good!" And they were great! I was so proud of them! Thank you also to Mrs. Esposito, Mrs. Ruff and Mrs. Wolanski for helping us on our trip.
We haven't needed any help recognizing our printed last names. First names were too easy, so we identified our last names. We mastered that, and now we are learning to recognize our addresses! Next it will be phone numbers. We can do it all!
We did all the decorating for Easter. How did you like our matching eggs and chicks? It took a long time to decorate our eggs, and then we had to decorate our chicks to look just like the egg. It makes sense right? A striped egg would hatch a striped chick. Ok, maybe just at Easter time. Easter time was also a time to learn about Jesus and his love for us. Christmas was about Jesus' birth and Easter is about his death. We learned about the people who listened to Jesus' message and those people who didn't like that. We discovered that even though Jesus died on the cross, he rose again to help us and show us his love forever. He came back, just like the birds, grass, flowers and trees come back each year at spring time. So, like Santa at Christmas, and the bunny at Easter, we all know the real reason for the season.
This is a magical season. We're planting seeds that hopefully will sprout, and we can learn all about how plant growth begins. We will also learn about what plants need to grow. I'm sure a few experiments are in order.
There's a lot more to come. We may need a little more time. How do you feel about going to school until August?
- Kindergarten
Miss Piner
Spring is here! Our kindergarten class is eagerly waiting to see the changes of the season begin. We celebrated
a few of our beautiful Spring days by taking our class outdoors. We learned the colors of the rainbow and
we used sidewalk chalk to practice drawing a rainbow. We drew a "detailed portrait" of our school and neighborhood.
The students did very well with drawing what they saw outside. We studied Ireland in March. We
learned about the Blarney Stone, the Claddaugh symbol and the meaning of a shamrock. We talked about the
tradition of wearing green on St. Patrick's Day or you might get pinched! We even watched some Irish dancers
on the computer. Our kindergarten students are getting really good at word searches! We will begin studying
the story of Easter and what some of the Easter colors stand for. We began subtraction. We used our peg
boards to help us figure out our math problems. We also used the pegboards to help us count by 10's and 1-
100. We celebrated our 100th day of school by coloring a big poster, making a headband, 100 sunglasses and
counting 100 objects for homework. We learned how to place objects in rows of 10 in order to make counting
easier. We highlighted sight words and rhyming words in our 100th Day poem. We celebrated Dr. Suess' birthday
by making a cat from the story "The Cat in the Hat". We watched "Green Eggs and Ham". We have turned
over letters "Hh", "Ll","Kk" and short "Ee". We made lions for letter Ll and hedgehogs out of potatoes for letter
Hh. We dyed Easter eggs for short Ee and made kites for Kk. The students are doing very well with blend
sounds(bl,cr,sl,etc...), digraph sounds (wh,ch,sh,th) and ending sounds. We talk about the ending sound "Ph"
and "ing". The students find blends, digraphs, endmarks, commas and proper nouns each morning on our
morning news board. We have studied compound words and we play many games with beginning sounds, ending
sounds and we even played a compound word game. Boggle was a fun game we played to help us sound
out three letter words. We still try to have our healthy Tuesday snacks. We have discussed ways to keep our
eyes healthy and we will study the food pyramid and the life cycles of the butterfly and ladybug. I hope everyone
has a wonderful Easter! Remember to sign your child up for Spring sports!
- Extended Care
Mrs. Hultberg, Mrs. Zabielski, Mrs. Robertson, Miss Dryden
Summer is sure creeping up on all of us. We loved the snow and could have forgotten all about the rain-no water shortage this year.
We hope everyone had fun on our St. Patrick's Day party. Who doesn't like pizza? It was fun having a scavenger hunt. That leprechaun was too tricky for us, but we had a good time following the clues.
We will be blasting off into space soon. Visiting Planets that support life is something we will be learning about. Gravity is fun when you tape blocks to your feet so we won't float away. We are lucky to live on earth.
We all hope you have a great Easter and see you after the break!
- Espanol
Senora Robertso
Hola amigos! Marzo is over and it was a lot of divertido-fun! Bienvenidos a la primavera! Welcome to spring! Let's hope Abril is warmer and that los flores start to bloom and los parejos start to sing!
In Marzo we all learned las partes del cuerpo- the parts of the body in Spanish and even played Simon Says in class! Simon dice toca la nariz-touch your nose! Muy bien! We learned some St Patty's words in espanol- duende is leprechaun and arco iris is rainbow! We all read a story about how we are all different but also the same like Los colores de la arco iris! ( the colors of a rainbow)
The Kindergarten is having so much fun playing Bingo in Spanish! They continue to amaze me with their quickness to remember many words in Spanish. Excelente! In Abril they will be working on saying the names of special people in la familia and things we see around la escuela y clase de espanol!
The 2, 3 , and 4 year olds are busy counting! The 4 year olds counted all the way to 50 and want to go even higher! Muy bien! The 3 year olds are counting to 25 and perfecting los numeros! The 2 year olds can count to quince(15) and love counting the friends that come to school! They will also be learning the names of the special people in our families!
Everyone is doing a great job singing and dancing to the Latin American music and shaking the maracas! Our new favorite song is La Cucaracaa!The cockroach!) It is a traditional Spanish folk song made popular during the Mexican Revolution.
In Abril we will learn some words for la ropa y la comida! (clothes and food!) !
Tienen un Pascua feliz! Have a Happy Easter!
- Music and Movement
Mrs. Jack
The month of March has gone by incredibly fast! It's amazes me to see just how fast the children have grown! They have progressed in both their physical abilities as well as in their maturity. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of that development.
We were very busy this past month! We spent time working on our hand-eye coordination and our striking skills. The children worked on tapping balloons so that they didn't touch the floor and catching balls of various sizes. They also worked on hitting a ball off a tee. I think we have some budding baseball players in our midst! In addition, our four year old classes and our Kindergarten class worked on some volleyball skills. The volleyball games have been a lot of fun and the kids have done a wonderful job not only using their new skills but also working together as a team!
April is looking like an equally busy month! We will review and progress our ball handling and jumping skills. We will also continue to work on our throwing skills and our body control while running, walking and galloping.
April also brings us to our Spring Break. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a joyous Easter Season! Enjoy the time off together with your family and I look forward to seeing you back at Zion as we enter the home stretch of our school year.
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