Black Bears Newsletter: January 2024

Classroom Newsletters, Black Bears Newsletter
Hi Black Bear Parents!
We are in the heart of winter now! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season with your families and I am excited to continue the school year engaging with your children by continuing to do my best to promote positive whole brain development! 
This month, we will focus on the science of temperature changes discussing at what temperature water freezes, ice melts, how to read a thermometer and degrees in Fahrenheit. With this, we will incorporate math, writing numbers and sensory play with ice cubes, and discuss reasons why it is important to understand temperature. For instance, today I introduced the children to ice fishing and measuring the thickness of ice. We don’t want to fall into the ice when we go ice fishing! We have to make sure the ice is thick enough! 🙂 Today they learned that a T-Rex could walk on ice that is at least 30 inches thick! We will use rulers to measure different objects including natural materials from outside and objects in the classroom. We will use rulers together, learn how to read a ruler and practice creative methods to measure objects such as tracing their bodies and hands. They will learn that traditionally, people measured horses with their hands! ” How many hands tall is your body?” ” Did you know that from my thumb to my pinky- my hand is four inches wide?” ” How many inches wide is your hand?”
Literacy/Language- We will be reading a book titled “All about Matter” to gain a better understanding of liquids, gas and solids to tie into our discussions of ice and water. In addition, we will continue to work through the alphabet, focusing on the letter and sounds of M- P and writing our names. 
Socio-emotional- To tie in with our sensory play and discussions of all things water and ice, we will use sponges to soak up blue water and discuss how sometimes we feel as if we are filled with so many emotions it can leave us to feel heavy or weighed down. When we squeeze the sponges, your child will feel how releasing emotions, in a healthy way (crying is a healthy release, painting, drawing, moving our bodies) can leave us feeling lighter, more energized, and emotionally regulated/balanced. With this, their understanding of emotions will continue to develop. My hope is that your child will continue to develop these foundational skills to grow into more emotional resilient individual that can name their feelings, tame those feelings and problem solve for when a friend might feel sad or overwhelmed. Additionally, we use a “feelings thermometer” as a visual aid to identify and express their emotions on a scale just like we can with temperature! 
As a final note, please remember to bring your child to school each day prepared with cold weather clothing. Names on any jackets, hat, gloves, etc is extremely helpful for me. 
Thank you so much. As always please feel free to connect with me over Procare messages or at drop off and pick up with any questions or concerns. 
Respectfully,Lissy McNiece