Christmas Tip

Dear Parents,

I am writing to share with you a fun and free Christmas item you may be interested in doing for your family members. I discovered this last year and my children were thrilled to watch these customized videos from Santa Claus. At Thanksgiving this year they started wondering when they'd hear from Santa again and whether or not Daddy would be on the naughty list again. (We have a spunky sense of humor in our house.)

I'm attaching the video I created for Jocelyn to this email if you'd like to see an example of a finished product before you spend time making one of your own. If you find it something that fits your family, enjoy. I can just imagine the delight on your children's faces.

Megan Millington

Jocelyn's Santa Letter/Video

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

Wow. One major holiday down and suddenly, another one's at the door. I cannot believe it's Christmas time already. Christmas is my favorite holiday. Your little ones are super excited and I have crammed our shortened school month with a lot of learning crafts and fun activities with the Christmas theme.

A few items we've been studying:
1. The concept that some animals hibernate while others stay awake all winter.
2. Counting syllables in words. We say a word or name and clap for each syllable.
3. We're still playing a lot of sequencing games, Alphabet Bingo, Memory (with North American Animals, with Blues Clues, etc.) and we practice adding.

The beginning of December found another reason to celebrate: two students from the Tuesday/Thursday class and another one from our Wednesday/Friday class have earned their Alphabet Crowns. I loved getting to give them a big hug and lead our class Hip Hip Hooray's for them. Your children are so kind, so sweet and so enthusiastic for each others successes.

Now that the majority of our students are sounding out short vowels and consonants, I plan on beginning to add sight words. Each week I'll feature two words such as the and and in addition to practicing our early reader skills. As your student moves from flash cards to early readers (books), you'll notice that fluency will increase and they will start remembering high frequency words. We work on these in class, but the take home allows them additional practice with an older sibling or with Mom and Dad. As they gain confidence and practice, the next Reading Bling item they will earn will be their Blending Button.

A quick note for the Wednesday/Friday class. Class will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday this coming week (6th-10th) to make up my sick day on Wednesday. Thank you for understanding.

A look ahead:
Christmas Parties will be on the 16th and the 17th--which are the last days of school to coincide with Alpine School District's winter break.

Thank you for your support.
Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

This week we have begun learning about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday for spellers! In class we’ve sounded out words like turkey, pilgrim and pumpkins as the children identify the sounds we make with our mouths and then decide which letter of the alphabet makes those sounds. We continue to count, draw and read.

At the request of several parents, I’ve made a copy of some of the songs we sing at school for your child to sing at home. I hope you enjoy them. The first few songs are extremely helpful for understanding the hows and whys of early reading. I know they aren’t the best copies, but when I purchased the school kit from Challenger years ago, the audio wasn’t the best. My apologies, but the kids don’t seem to mind.

I’ve also added a touch of homework for our little ones in the form of short vowel and consonant letter cards.

For example: ed The student should say eh as in egg and then add the duh sound for the d, blending them together to say “ed”

This is not only great practice for reading short vowel words, but it also gives them a chance to practice the sounds of the alphabet letters with some variety thrown in. I will change out each vowel group when you send them back to me, eventually exposing the students to each short vowel sound and most of the consonants.

Each child progresses at their own pace. I hope these flash cards help keep your student excited about the learning process. Please practice a time or two each day, but let’s not press him or her. She is learning, even if she may not choose to “perform” in front of you or may not do so for me sometimes. Learning is fun!

Halloween Fun

Preschool is the perfect age to play with. They have vivid imaginations, are full of trust and are easily spooked. They were in for a good time as they used their sense of touch to identify miscellaneous objects.

I presented to the class that I had borrowed some things from a witch that she uses in potions. To make this concept plausible, we had colored potion bottles, sketching spiders, snakes, flowers, and miscellaneous liquids. We had read witch stories like Hoodwinked by Arthur Howard and Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, paying close attention to icky stuff in the illustrations. (These are my two favorite Halloween stories for kids.)

And then the fun, the squealing and the laughter began--and the kids had fun too. Placing their hand under the towel, they each took turns touching the eye balls (grapes), the finger bones (peanuts), the finger nails (raisins), the leg bone (celery), the worms (pasta) and the brain (peeled grapefruit.) Some of my students whom I had taken for timid were the most brave and vice-versa.

The funniest reaction was to the "worms". Those hands shot backwards at million miles per hour and were happily wiped off. The kids laughed at their own reactions and at each others.

The laughter got even more boisterous when I revealed each true item to them.

I hope your little ones enjoyed our Halloween Party.

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Old McDonald Had a Farm . . . . . We have been learning about the differences between farm animals and other animals. The biggest difference we discovered was that farm animals make food for us or help provide clothing for us.

In lieu of wool, we stretched and rolled cotton balls into thin threads and then observed threads in each other’s clothing. We also studied cows and made our own butter!

FYI: I used the term “made” when referencing animals and their food products. Cows “made” hamburgers, pigs “made” bacon, chicken “made” fried chicken. I will leave it up to your discretion as to how to present the killing aspect of how we get food on our tables for when you feel your little one is ready for such a concept.

Our letter focus this week was the letter Dd. Our classes are getting better every day at hearing and then identifying the beginning sounds of words. I can’t believe how far they’ve come in such a short time.

Show and Tell is really becoming such a big hit. I love to see them all wiggling with their item hidden behind their backs. They confidently jump up to share what their item is, why they like it and then some other piece of information. Question Day has lead to some truly fascinating questions, sometimes involving the hows and whys of things and other times we have discussions about fairies and other such creative topics. (I believe in fairies.)

Next week we will continue our lessons on farming, focusing more on crops.

If your child has come home talking about his “peanut butter” hand, please know that I will say this a zillion times to help students identify the letters p, b, q and d. P and b both have bellies on the right side of their sticks. The letters d and q both have bellies on the left side. If student sees a letter with a belly on the right side, it’s either a p or a b. The peanut butter hand!

Thank you for your support!

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

5 Senses, 5 Senses
We have them. We have them.
Seeing, hearing, touching
Tasting and smelling
There are 5. There are 5.

The five senses. What a fantastic, fantastic opportunity to introduce students to the world around them. Here are some of the activities we participated in on this astounding subject.

1. We went on a nature walk. We listened to the sound of windchimes, birds, leaves blowing and even my cat Puck greeting us in the front yard.
2. We also closed eyes and listened to the sound of a bell as it came closer and then drifted farther away.
3. We used our sense of smell, touch and taste in the kitchen.

• A glass of water and a glass of white vinegar looks very much the same. But one of them would not be the best choice if we were thirsty. Sniffing gave that away.
• Salt and sugar feel very much the same, neither has a sound or a smell, but it it very clear which is which using our sense of taste.
• We sampled different snacks while covering our ears. Did you know you can hear INSIDE your head and not just other people chewing?
  

4. We discovered that our sense of smell enhances taste by chewing a piece of bubble gum with our noses pinched. After 20 seconds we released our noses to enjoy a burst of flavor in our mouths.
5. Our sense of touch was used with a huge stack of Usborne touch and feel books. With eyes closed, the textures were enhanced.
6. We also created 5 Senses books with pictures of things each student liked to See, Smell, Touch, Taste and Hear. The students worked very hard on these drawings and sniffed those scratch and sniff stickers several times to determine absolute certainty if it should be placed in the like or dislike columns.

It was such a fun unit to cover these last couple weeks. We will be using our 5 senses during our Halloween Party in a couple weeks!

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

A brief note on what we’re working on. For the next few classes our focus will be on our five senses: Taste, Touch, Sight, Smell and Hear. We will begin with Hearing. Hearing is a very important skill for readers. As we work on beginning sounds, it’s very important for your student to be able to hear the sounds of the alphabet, to be aware that the words we say are made up of different alphabet letters. We play lots of games where they say a word and identify the beginning sound as “s” or “m”, etc. Or we change the beginning sounds of words to a letter “f” sound. Instead of dinosaur, we’ll say finosaur. It’s a silly game, but it helps preschoolers become more aware of the words we use.

This week we also practiced some common manners beyond please and thank you. We talked about how it makes someone feel bad to hear “I don’t like that” and came up with “No thank you, it’s not my favorite.” We practiced saying “Yes, please” when offered something they would like and also thanking the person for giving the item. We also role played what to do when faced with something at dinnertime. Yes, we take a bite. We also can add “it’s not my favorite—what should I do with it?” No tossing green beans off our plate, no stabbing the roll with our fork to show disapproval. We should leave the item on our plate in a nice way and follow parental instructions.

It was a fun activity to practice setting the table, practice table manners and watch their faces light up when showing courtesy.

I hope they can do so at home!

October is just around the corner. Halloween, fall activities abound for next month.

Thanks,

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

It was an exciting week here with your little one. I hope the visit from a Saratoga Springs Police Officer and all the accoutrement that went with it: lights, sirens, a brief ride and an honorary badge had them talking a million miles an hour when they got home. It was my first time in a squad car! So many buttons, computers and switches. Lance Funn was a fantastic volunteer for this enrichment activity, I hope your child enjoyed it.

I will email a few photos I took of the children with the police officer to you. This is the first time I’ve taken pictures at preschool and will only do so on rare occasions like this visit. If you have any concerns, please let me know. Please check your email for some sweet smiles.

Your child continues to become familiar with identifying the numbers on the phone keypad. I feel it is not enough for our children to know the number to dial is 9-1-1 if they can’t find the buttons on the phones themselves. We practiced on their paper photo copied phones and on an uncharged real phone for both their home phone number and 9-1-1. I encourage you to find some time to practice at home. It could very well save a life!

While nothing could really top a real live policeman, the latter half of the week found our class learning about taking care of our teeth. We watched a short clip from PBS’s Sid the Science kid (pbskids.org), tried to brush pretend teeth (boiled eggs) that had been stained by soda and for snack time ate different food to see not only which snacks helped clean our teeth, but which snacks stuck in between them. Yuck!

We have added the letters Aa, and Tt to Mm, Nn, Cc, Rr this week if you’d like to practice at home. I’m including our optional homework again.

There are a couple students who are very, very close to earning their Alphabet Crowns. It is very likely that a classmate doing so will get your child even more excited to learn at home. I test on their ability to name a lower case letter as they will encounter far more words in lowercase than upper in early readers (or in any book for that matter!) Once your child can identify the letter, I ask them “what does it say?” A child only need identify single sounds (no soft “g” or “c” at this point) for consonants and the long and short sound of vowels.

Next week we’re moving on to manners, table setting, etc.

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

What a fun week! I hope your child has enjoyed learning to be safe. We toured the rooms in my house to identify hot things: light bulbs, outlets, oven, stove top, hot pans, faucets, an iron, etc. We talked about how to adjust water temperature in a faucet by looking for a red and blue band area in sinks and tubs. We learned about fire fighters, visited a fire hydrant (at the end of my driveway) and practiced calling 9-1-1 on a phone.

We continued to work on the letters n, m, c and r and identify beginning sounds of words we use. We end the week celebrating National Playdoh Day. This year it falls on Saturday the 18^th so I encourage you to get out the Playdoh and have fun. We used our doh today to form alphabet letters we’ve been learning.

The doh in your child’s bag is made from a natural home recipe I found online:

• 1 cup flour
• 3/8 cup salt
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Create your own colors with things you have around the house like cocoa, beets, paprika, turmeric. To create use 3/8 cup hot water (more or less as needed) and 4 tbs cocoa powder, or 1 tbs paprika, 1 teaspoon turmeric. This will create great fall colors in yellow, orange, and brown.

You can also add color to your Play Dough using vegetable or fruit juices. To do so, divide dough into different sections, warm 3/8 cup of the juice and then add to the dough mixtures. Try using carrot, spinach, or tomato for vibrant colors. Combine the ingredients in mixing bowl, including the colors. Knead dough for a few minutes on flour covered surface. Store in air tight containers in the refrigerator.

Thank you for your support and for sharing your little angel with me! I have included a work page in this newsletter if your child would like to sit at the table with older siblings to “do homework.” If they return it, I’ll stamp it to “grade” it for them like big kid homework. -This is totally elective.

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

This week your child will continue to learn about germs--following up on our experiment conducted last week. We rubbed a peeled potato with our hands after our outside recess/snack time, washed our hands and then rubbed our clean hands on another peeled potato. We will explore the differences in each potato (sealed in a plastic baggie) and later this week we will attempt to wash a piece of clothing with and without soap to show that hurrying up and just getting our hands wet doesn't really get us clean! It is my hope that we can all be motivated to keep as clean as possible and enjoy less illness in our class in the coming months.

This week's primary focus is Safety. I highly recommend a book for your home library titled "Not Everyone Is Nice" --Helping Children Learn Caution with Strangers by Frederick Alimonti and Ann Tedesco, Ph.D. (Available at Amazon.com) This book likens the beauty of a sea anemone to that of a friendly looking stranger handing out candy. The anemone uses its beauty to trick the fish and catch it. We will read this book along with "Don't Talk to Strangers" and "Your Body Belongs to You." I've used these in my home for years with my children. They are easy to understand and offer fantastic illustrations. We've used these books for family night discussions and for general reading because they don't scare the daylights out of the child while tackling a very serious topic.

This week will also find your child beginning to work on common letters of the alphabet that they'll see in many short vowel words: n, m, c, r, f, b, d, g s, t, and j. We will cover these letters over the next few weeks and start some basic testing to see where each child's abilities lie.

My strongest suggestions at this early point in our school year would be to emphasize at home the importance of sitting when we are sitting and playing with us when we are all playing together. In a word: focus. Keeping focused will be an invaluable took for your child and some of the easiest games to play at home would be Mother May I and Red Light, Green Light to help them build concentration skills.

Your children are a delight to be with. Their enthusiasm, smiles and willingness to participiate are absolutely darling.

Thank you for your support!
Megan Millington

Kurious Kiddies

We are fulling licensed with the City of Saratoga Springs. License #10-282

Thanks for asking!

Our Tuesday/Thursday class is almost full but we do have several spots available on Wednesday/Friday.

Getting Ready for School

Can you believe how quickly September is approaching?

Still Accepting Students!

Yes, we still have room for students in both our Tuesday/Thursday class and Wednesday/Friday class.

Yes, class REALLY is 3 hours long.

Yes, it REALLY is only $80/month.

Enroll today!

Our open house and Meet and Greet is Wednesday September 1 from 1 p.m. -2 p.m.

Application deadline is August 27th, but placement is on a first come, first serve basis. Don't delay. (Tours available upon request.)

First day of class for Tuesday/Thursday students is September 2, for Wednesday/Friday students will be September 3.

Online Tour

A few pictures of the playground in the backyard and the toy room where we'll hold preschool (not currently set up as the classroom.)

Reading Bling

Alphabet Crowns. Blending Buttons. Digraph Diamonds. Oh my!

Your preschooler will learn the sounds the alphabet makes (two sounds for vowels) and earn her sparkly Alphabet Crown. She will have a chance to decorate it herself and have her name put up on our preschool wall. This is a BIG accomplishment that is a small, simple step to reading.

Her next skill to acquire will be recognizing a combination of a short vowel sound and a consonant.

a + t = at. And she's READING! Gaining proficiency in sounding out short vowels and consonants will earn her the next bit of Reading Bling: her Blending Button.

From there we'll focus on adding common digraphs like sh, th, and ck to her rapidly expanding reading skills. Be sure to applaud, ooh and ahh when she takes her Digraph Diamond out of her bag when she comes home. Before you know it, your little reader will be reading to you at night.

These are the three basic pieces of Reading Bling your child will earn as he learns. Without realizing he's "working" he'll become a skilled reader. The more your child is ready to tackle, the more Bling will be available: Sight Word Sword, etc.

Come Play With Us!

Thank you for visiting Kurious Kiddies. Last year I had the absolute pleasure of participating in a neighborhood coop for preschool aged children. These delightful four year olds were a joy to be with.

I love to create enriching opportunities and found the preschool experience very rewarding. I have decided to hold an educational playdate twice a week in my home during the 2010-2011 school year. I do not have a teaching degree, but I can guarantee that your child will learn much at Kurious Kiddies preschool.

Why send your child into my home twice a week, entrusting me to help them socialize, love learning and play? Here is a short list of reasons you may consider.

My home is stocked in children's educational materials:
Workbooks, videos, flashcards, early readers, games, music, developmental toys and a home library featuring over 2500 children's books.

I have a ten year old son in the gifted program at Saratoga Shores and both my ten year old and five year old attended preschool at Challenger Schools. I have learned a great deal about teaching children from working with my own and from observing successful teachers.

I love education and have tried to create a child friendly home: safe to explore, things to discover and unexpected surprises are threaded throughout. We will be holding our preschool in our 480 square foot toy room. My yard is fenced. It is a smoke free home.

During their 3 hour playgroup, we will explore a variety of subjects. I will send a newsletter home each month on what we're covering: animals, ocean, holidays, safety, plants, space, dinosaurs, etc. At our weekly ask the teacher question, each child will be encouraged to bring any question they have. My children at home spend their lunches asking me "How do they make glass for windows?" and "Why does it rain?" and "How did the soda get bubbly?" Send your little one each week with a question and if I don't know the answer, I'll get it for them.

I believe curiosity is imperative to learning.

Your children will sing, do art projects, work on writing skills, work on reading skills and have plenty of time to play, snack and stoke their imaginations.

Please feel free to look at some of the posts on this blog to get a feel for what is in store for your child when you sign them up to Kurious Kiddies. The lessons featured are from last year's preschool and each of these children are Kindergardeners for the 2010-2011 school year. (I intend on repeating these lessons with your little ones.)

Classes are Tuesday/Thursday or Wednesday/Friday
9:00 a.m. - 12:00
September-May
$80 a month
One time $12 application fee
Snack provided
Canvas school bag given to each child to personalize (No need to purchase backpacks or school supplies.)
Parents are encouraged to drop children off ten minutes early each morning.

Please contact Megan Millington at 766-1343 or herdofmillingtons@hotmail.com.

Space is limited to eight children per group.

Beavers!

My theme for the next four sessions is Animal Homes. Today we reviewed the letter M, and the color orange, reviewed vowels, learned to draw spiders and watched a clip from Life of Mammals about beavers.





We learned that beavers can drag giant branches from trees, that the water in the winter time keeps the leaves fresh at right above freezing temperatures, thus explaining why beavers don't hibernate, and we learned that both dams and the beaver's home are made from rocks, branches, leaves and mud.





For snack time, the kids made their own beaver dams with rocks (chocolate chips), mud (a scoop of peanut butter), leaves (candy leaf sprinkles) and logs (straight pretzels.)

Jocelyn was our weather girl for the day but she didn't predict our snowstorm! It's definitely October in Utah.

Preschool Grizzlies and Halloween Fun

Preschoolers are so adorable. I love them. They want to learn, they're enamored by every detail and almost anything you want to teach them is new to them. That is my kind of student!!!

Today we reviewed the letter N, added 'th" to "sh" that we learned on Tuesday and noticed that "th" tickles our tongues. We continued identifying vowels.



The animal home we learned about today was a cave in Alaska where grizzly bears spend their winter. We learned about hibernation and the big difference between beavers staying awake all winter from our last class to why our great big grizzlies need to sleep all winter-there's just not enough food around to keep a large mammal fed in the middle of the blizzards. The Life of Mammals segment showed a grizzly sleeping--and snoring! Grizzlies lose 1,000,000 calories. Yes, that is ONE MILLION calories while they hibernate for 5-6 months and wake up very hungry. It was neat to learn that they eat roots (we eat carrots and potatoes), then grass (we eat salads), then on to meat (like us!), berries (really, really like us!) and then on to salmon (like most of us who eat fish.) By the end of the summer salmon run the bears were big, fat and hairy again. Wow!

Then our little preschool grizzlies hibernated and woke up to spring finding themselves starving.









We enjoyed cookies (The Bumpy Little Pumpkin was the inspiration for not so perfect jack o lantern cookies) for snacks, Halloween stories were read, Halloween Bingo was played and then they experienced the toy room with the lights off, fog machine on and adorned with glow necklaces.

Happy Halloween Millington Style!

Desert Life

What to say about today? Stir crazy kids. (To be fair, Trey was his usual focused self.) Between Noah running around like mad and "helping" and Jocelyn being contrary and everyone seeming to have spring fever today, I hope the kids got something out of today's lesson on deserts.

We tried really hard to focus and pay attention and worked on getting our wiggles out with an extended outdoor playtime, Hullaballoo and the Hokey Pokey.

We learned that some deserts get rain, lots of it. We watched time lapse photography from Planet Earth as the Saguaro cactus swelled immensely after a rain storm. We also saw various animals from the Australia, The Gobi, The Sahara and other deserts such as camels, fennec foxes, elephants, birds, lizards and kangaroos try to live in such harsh environments.

We reviewed letter "o", we added "ch" and "wh" to our other digraphs, and the kids made their own sand art. Some chose to do sand dunes, some created sand mountains. Super cute.

I think Thursday we'll cover elephants!!!!!

Elephants!

Elephants, elephants, elephants!

Preschool was awesome on Thursday. We learned so much about elephants and the places they live. We watched a few minutes of Life of Mammals and Planet Earth. On Planet Earth we watched desert elephants in the Sahara dig up roots of grasses to eat. Desert elephants only have to drink every five days! The Life of Mammals segment showed elephants actually knocking acacia trees over to eat the leaves at the top where there are few if any spines.

We read two books based on a real life elephant: Nosey. My Aunt was a child in Fresno when the children raised money through bake sales and collecting their coins to purchase Nosey for their zoo. Our preschoolers thought it was really neat to read a book about a "real" elephant!

We reviewed our digraphs: ch, wh, th and sh, reviewed and practiced writing letter "p" and did some cute elephant puzzles and finally assembled an elephant flip book.

For snack time the kids got their very own elephant trunks: bananas and ate peanuts just like elephants do! We practiced holding tails like a baby elephant does with his Mommy and curled our trunks (arms) to greet each other. Super fun, super cute day.

























The cutest elephant:

Valentine's Day

Today was Jocelyn's preschool Valentine's Day Party. So much pinkness, so little time. Big thank you to Amy for setting it up! And the cookies were unbelievable.

The kids played games, decorated cookies, made Valentines to deliver to Sister Southworth (and delivered them), exchanged Valentines and ate as much sugar as possible. All in all, a successful preschool party!

















































































































Little brothers, big cupcakes!