New Developments

Okay, so far we have started about 4 - 5 different projects! 

Some of the children are working on butterflies, moths and their life cycles.  As you can see here....

Kaelynn is in the process of making a caterpillar!  Ashley started to make a butterfly, and now the children are writing a list of all the colors they need to paint.  They are working very hard to find things in the room that have the colors spelled out.  They are trying to read the words on the crayons and markers to find out how to spell the colors they need.Ricky liked the "worm" instead of the caterpillar.  He drew a beautiful picture of one and then wanted to paint it, you can see him making "circle legs" for it now!!!

Some of the other children fell in love with the spiders......

We are drawing them, making a spider web, and spelling "spider" and counting the legs and eyes!  Did you know spiders have 8 eyes????  We just found that out!!

Look at this spider and spider web.  We put "too many eyes and legs"!

So we drew them again, and this time we drew slowly and counted the eyes and the legs so we have 8 of each!  We love the number 8 now, we can even shape some of our bracelets in our class to look like the number 8!  "How awesome!"

And of course, it seems that we will never leave our "ocean" project, or should we call it our "shark project" ;0)  We love love love sharks!  We want to talk about them, draw them, and read about them all day long!  Lucky for us, Alexandre brought in a REAL shark!  We got to see the fins, the gills and the eyes UPCLOSE!  It was so exciting, and it made us love sharks even more!

Keep checking in on us to see what direction we are taking our projects.  Parents, remember we love to have your help, so any ideas, books, or materials you think would contribute to our program we would love to have!!!

We also have the handouts from our literacy program today, so make sure you ask your child's teacher for one!  The kids love the program and we are very excited about it!

new year, new projects

we are excited with all of the new things that are beginning to take shape in our class.....

it looks like we will begin investigating trains, the anatomy of animals and humans, and more sea life!  Stay tuned to see how all of our projects emerge!

Extra Curricular Activities

The new school year is almost here & in celebration we have a brand new extra curricular activity starting...whoo hoo! We are excited to be offering a literacy program, please read below to find out all about it.

Little Wonders Literacy Program

Little Wonders is now implementing a supplementary early literacy program. In addition to the reading program that is currently running, we will now have an expert in children’s literacy skills come to Little Wonders once a week to help expand and support our curriculum.

Heidi Anderson, who is currently the Youth Services Programming Administrator for the Houston Public Library will be running the program. She oversees all programming and services for children and teens ages 0–18 in 40 Houston Public Library Neighborhood Libraries. She has a Masters of Art in Library Studies, and her areas of expertise are children and young adult programming and services in public libraries, children and young adult literature, and early literacy.

The Pre-Literacy Skills that the program will focus on are:

· Print Motivation: thinking that books and reading are fun

· Vocabulary: knowing the names of things

· Print Awareness: recognizing print and understanding how the books work

· Letter Knowledge: understanding that each letter has its own name and sounds

· Narrative Skills: being able to tell stories and describe things

· Phonological Awareness: being able to recognize and play with the smaller sounds that make up words

We will have Biweekly Story-Time with a Children’s Librarian: This story time will be offered for toddlers in toddler 1 and 2, and for the preschool and preK classes. Preschool and PreK story time is a traditional library activity that includes sharing books, singings songs and using rhymes to introduce new vocabulary, strengthen letter knowledge, narrative skills and phonological awareness while reinforcing print motivation. Toddler Time is similar but has a focus on shorter stories that develop vocabulary and letter knowledge while reinforcing print motivation and print awareness. Toddler story-time features a lot of movement and interaction, including use of a parachute and bubbles. Story-Times will be every other Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., beginning on August 11th.

Monthly Parent Take-Homes: These take-homes will share with parents what stories their children listened to during story time, what songs and rhymes they did, and will give suggested other books and activities to share as “extenders”. They will also offer pre-literacy information and tips.

Monthly “Baby and Me” Story-Time for baby and parent: An interactive 20 minutes to spend with your baby singing and playing before you separate for the work day! This story-time introduces print motivation right from birth, as well as offering a special little jump start to your day (and a chance to interact with other parents!) Classes will be on the first Wednesday of every month at 9:00 a.m., beginning on Wednesday, September 1st.

Listed below is all the of the extracurricular activities we offer with their day, time, fee & how to find out more about each program, so please don't forget to register today!

Monday- 3:00 Art Class with Marjon Aucoin
http://www.marjonart.com/
$70- 6 weeks

Tuesday- 10:00 Soccer with Coach Mario
mrmadrigal65@latinmail.com
$50 per 5 session

Tuesday- 11:15 Dance Class with KT Dancing, Inc.
KTDancingKim@aol.com
$45 a monthWednesday- 9:30 Literacy Program with Ms. Anderson
Provided by Little Wonders Learning Center
1st Wednesday of every month baby and me classes with Ms. Anderson provided by Little Wonders Learning Center
(parents must accompany his/her child for the class)

Thursday- 9:30 Gymnastics with Alpha Omega Gym
http://www.alphaomegagym.net/littlewonders.html$55 a month

Friday- 11:00 Computer Class with i kids inc.
http://www.ikidsinc.com/
$60 a month

anatomy of a shark

The shark's skeleton might be different than other animals, but it still has the same insides!  We got this puzzle of the shark and put it together to see the organs inside of it!We could see things like the stomach, the gills, and so much more..........

the children drew pictures and talked about what they saw......

look closely and you can see such great detail in our drawings of the different organs

JenniferSamKaelynnSiriMateo

These are amazing drawings for children at such a young age!  We can't wait to see what else these kids will have in store.....

inside the shark

Most of you have seen our skeleton project evolve and take a turn to sharks.  Investigating the cartilage of a shark has lead us to studying the inside of a shark.  We are looking at a model of the shark to see the anatomy of the shark.  Look at how hard we are working!  We can't wait to let you see all of the drawings that came out of this project.