Mrs. Dougherty's Class Connection

The St. Linus server is back up and so are the blogs! This week was a lot of fun as we celebrated Catholic Schools Week! Thursday was student appreciation day and the kids had fun playing all day inside and outside. We even got to watch a short movie, Arthur's Best Friend! It was a great day. Today was teacher appreciation day and while Mrs. Bittner and I were at our luncheon Mrs. Gambino and Mrs. Romo were especially generous to come and watch the class. We were so surprised to come back to a nice clean room and a beautiful poster made by the children...THANK YOU! In the afternoon we went to the gym to see the "Pocket Circus." It was a lot of fun and the children really seemed to enjoy it. This week we were also busy learning about the letter X. Next week we will start learning about the letter V and continue for 2 weeks.
Here is a look at next week..

Monday
Please remember to bring in a cereal box for your child if you have not done so already. We will be decorating them this week for our Valentine's Day Party!
In our sensory tub will be pink and red hearts on paper for the children to practice cutting out.
In the morning we will be playing, Pin the Heart on Cupid!
In the afternoon we will playing a heart matching game, where the children must match the broken hearts by number and corresponding dots.

Tuesday
Today is recyclable art. We will be graphing candy hearts both in the morning and the afternoon. In the morning we will graph how many of each colored hearts there are in a container to see which color has the most and the least. In the afternoon we will graph our favorite color candy heart. We might even get to taste a few too :)

Wednesday
For our art project today we will be making a heart butterfly. We will also work on our printing pages today for our portfolios. We will be doing a science experiment today where we place 3 white carnations in 3 different vases with 3 different colored water. We will all predict what we think will happen to the carnations over night. We might even need to wait until Monday to see if anything changes! We will also be learning new Valentine's Day songs this week. I'm sure you will be hearing them at home too.

Thursday
Today we have an 11:30am dismissal. AM preschoolers will still be dismissed at 11:00am.
Parent Teacher Conferences are today from 1:00pm to 4:00pm and then again from 5:00pm to 7:30pm. I am very pleased with the progress the class is making, if you feel you need a conference feel free to come in any time during the times mentioned above.

Friday
No School

Just a reminder that our Valentine's Day Party is on Tuesday, February 14th. Each child can bring in Valentine's for the class, but please remember to only have your child sign their name. This makes passing them out much easier. There are 26 children in our class.

Have a great weekend!!
Mrs. Dougherty

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend! Last Friday was a lot of fun at the Beach. If you look below this entry in the blog you will see a slideshow of pictures from Friday.
This week we started the letter W and the theme "Winter Wonderland!" What perfect weather we had today too for it, at circle time it started to snow and the children were so excited! This week and next we will be making many winter art projects. Most of them will be staying in the classroom to decorate it for the Catholic Schools Week Open House on Sunday, January 29th, so you will be able to see all of your child's artwork then.
*The 4 year old preschool class will be getting a report card, but it will not be coming home this Friday with the rest of the school. Your child will receive 3 evaluations throughout the year and the 2nd evaluation will come home on Friday, February 3rd.*

Here is a look at our week...

Tuesday
We started our letter Ww packet today and the children did a great job of coming up with words that begin with W. For our art project today we made snowmen out of our names! At the easel we are painting snowmen on blue paper with white paint. They are turning out very cute :) In the morning we also discussed hibernation. We read a book that told us all about different animals that hibernate over the winter. You might want to ask your child to name a few...we were surprised by some of them. In the afternoon we pretended we were snowmen and did a little song and dance until we melted at the end. It was a lot of fun, we even put on a little performance for Mrs. Gute.

Wednesday
We have a new student joining us today...WELCOME SECILIA!
Today we will be decorating mittens for our art project!
In the morning and afternoon we will be doing science experiments with ice. In the morning we will estimate how long we think it will take an ice cube to melt and in the afternoon we will make sticky ice out of ice, water, and salt.

Thursday
Recyclable Art Today
We will be working on Religion Chapter 13 today, and discuss how Jesus belonged to a family too. In the morning we will play the game, "Pin the carrot on the snowman." In the afternoon we will play a mitten match game.

Friday
For art today we will be decorating snowflakes for our windows. In the morning we will be counting mittens and putting them in order by number. In the afternoon we will be making special snowman treat using rice cakes, frosting, chocolate chips and a carrot!

I hope you have a great week!
Mrs. Dougherty

Our Beach Day! on PhotoPeach

Outside the classroom will be some chairs and a carpet for those students who are wearing snow boots to school and need to change into their regular shoes. This way the snow is not tracked into the classroom. Please remind your child to stop at the chairs before entering the classroom. The snow came just in time for our beach day! :)

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful weather we are having! We are so lucky to still be getting out for recess in January! Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day :) This week we are continuing to learn about the letter O and the ocean.
Thank you to everyone who brought in the additional supplies, especially all the cleaners! With all the flus going around, we are keeping our room nice and clean!

Here is a look at our week...

Monday
**We have a new student that joined our class today in the afternoons...WELCOME KAYCEE!**
For our art project today we colored octogans and glued them on the letter O.
In the morning we read a story about different octopuses that live in the ocean, we then watched a short video that came with the book. The video showed cameras underwater taking video of the octopuses in their natural habitat...the kids loved it!
In the afternoon we worked on our letter O packet and also played a game to welcome Kaycee to our room and hopefully help her learn all of our names.

Tuesday
**We have another new student joining our class today...WELCOME T.J.!**
Recyclable Art
Today we will do a science experiment with salt and fresh water. We will fill two bowls of water, one with salt and one with out and on Wednesday observe to see what has happened. In the afternoon we will also be tasting saltwater and freshwater to see which one we like best! We will graph our results.

Wednesday
We will be making a paper plate octopus today.
We will work on printing our names for our portoflios today.
In the morning we will play a game acting our different ocean animals. In the afternoon we will play "Feed the Shark."

Thursday
Recyclable Art
In Religion today we will be discussing how we all love one another. We will discuss how we show our love to one another and to God.
We will also play some ocean games today like, "Pass the Fish" and "Fish, Fish, Shark."

Friday
*Our Day of Fun in the Sun*
Today is our beach/ocean day! A letter went home on Monday describing today's events! Over the weekend I will post pictures that shows what we did at our day at the beach. If you have any questions regarding today, please let me know. It should be a lot of fun! Please remember to have your child dress for the summer today, but no bathing suits.

Have a great week!!
No School on Monday!
~Mrs. Dougherty

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year! Everyone was so excited to be back at school and to share everything they did over break. We also discussed our favorite gift we received, it sounds like everyone was very good this year :)

Thank you to everyone who brought in supplies today. Here is a list of supplies that we are in need of....
*2 rolls of paper towels
*1 box of crayons
*1 box of markers
*2 glue sticks
*Also, if you have any extra cleaner we would be very appreciative :)
If you have not already gone shopping, no hurry, we received a lot of supplies today that will keep us stocked for a while. I will let you know when we are running low again.

Here is a look at our week...
Wednesday
Our theme for this week and next is "Deep in the Ocean with an Octopus!" We are learning about the letter O. We really only concentrate on the short o sound, however we do discuss the long o sound briefly.

Thursday
In our sensory tub we have blue water with ocean animals in it. At our easel we have different shades of blue and green paint to make ocean pictures!
We will be working on our Religion Packet today.

Friday
Please have your child bring in a present they received from Christmas to school for Show n' Tell. The toy should be kept in your child's bookbag or in a separate bag. The toys will only be brought out for show n' tell.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Dougherty

Yesterday Afternoon, we read the story of the 3 Wise Men coming to visit Jesus. We discussed the gifts that they brought to Jesus and how special these gifts were. Everyone had a turn to tell the class what gift they would bring Jesus if they were there when Jesus was born...I thought I would share them with you :)

Amanda ~ a cat
Ava ~ a baby sister
Jordan ~ a rubber ducky
Ronin ~ a crown
Emily ~ a lalaloopsy
Julianna ~ a diamond necklace
Katelyn ~ a real candy cane
Kaitlyn ~ a baby bed (so he didn't have to sleep in the hay)
Peter ~ a baby bottle
Keith ~ milk for the bottle
Allyson ~ a teddy bear
Thomas ~ a toy monster
Aidan ~ a truck or an airplane
Charlie ~ a baby monster truck
Nickolas ~ a toy kitchen

It is our second week of celebrating Christmas and it is going great!
A few notes went home today regarding the next couple of weeks. One was regarding the Christmas Program and one was about replenishing school supplies. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Here is a look at our week...

Monday
Today we worked on a special art project that we will be making into a present for our families. We also discussed the story of Jesus' Birth. Today we practiced for our Christmas concert in the Church and the children did very well.

Tuesday
We will be working on our letter C packet today.
Recyclable Art

Wednesday
We will be finishing up our projects from Monday :)
Printing page for our portfolio today. The children are really improving on their printing and the pictures are always fun to see.

Thursday
Recyclable Art
Happy Birthday to Emily & Peter!!

Friday
We will be finishing up our letter C packet today. Although we will continue to discuss letter C next week and play games with the letter C, we will finish our packet today.

Have a great week!!
Mrs. Dougherty

It is Christmastime in Room 9...and what a wonderful time it is! It was a great way to kick off the Christmas Season in our room by going on our field trip to see Mrs. Claus! The children really seemed to enjoy it and so did I. A big thank you to Mrs. Lascody and Mrs. Hernandez who chaperoned our field trip, you were a great help!
Yesterday we had a fun time making decorations for the hallway, we will continue today too, and you may want to sneak a peak at the little angels in the hallway sometime :) We also have a Christmas Countdown that we started last week on December 1st. Each day we place an ornament on the tree, and the children know that when we reach the top number 24 ornament it will be Christmas!!
We are working on the letter Cc for the next 2 and 1/2 weeks. The children are doing so well with their letter packets and also recognizing the letters and sounds.
In our sensory tub this week we have shaving cream!!
At the easel we have red and green paint to make Christmas paintings. The children are making some great Christmas trees!

Here is a look at the rest of the week...

Wednesday
Today we will be finishing up our angels for the hallway and also making some candy cane decorations for our windows. All of your child's Christmas projects will be going home before Christmas break.
Each day we are also practicing for the Christmas Concert. We will be singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and so far we are doing great!

Thursday
Today we will be working on Religion Chapter 8 ~ caring for God's Creatures. We have also been discussing the birth of Jesus on Christmas and we have our very own Nativity Scene the children can play with during free play time.

Friday
For an Art Project today we will be making our very own stockings out of brown paper.
The Full Day preschoolers will be attending the Bake Sale today during Lunch time. If you would like your child to purchase something, each item is $0.50. Please send the money to school in your child's folder, labeled with his/her name. The items are difficult to take home because they are not wrapped, so we will be eating them here for dessert at lunchtime.

Have a great week!!
Mrs. Dougherty

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and weekend! This morning we started to decorate our classroom for Christmas, I love the Christmas season and it seems like all the children do too.

Here is a look at our week...

Monday
We started learning about letter Nn today. For our art project we glued noodles onto the letter Nn. In our sensory tub we are stringing different colored noodles on string. I loved the patterns the kids were making today! We also read a few nursery rhymes and even started memorizing some.

Tuesday
Recyclable Art
We will be matching pictures from different nursery rhymes in the morning and the afternoon, however we will be doing it with different nursery rhymes.

Wednesday
Today for our art project we will be making Humpty Dumpty pictures. We will also be working on printing our names and the date. Today we will be discussing rhyming words and make our own rhyming books.

Thursday
We will work on matching rhyming words today.
Recyclable Art

Friday
We will be making a mobile today for art using the nusery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle."
In the morning and the afternoon we will be making a graph of our favorite nursery rhymes.

Just a few reminders...
*Scholastic Book Orders are due by Friday.
*Our field trip is on Monday, December 5th!! All am preschool children can get picked up at noon, and all afternoon preschool students will need to arrive to school by 9:15am. If your child does not attend school on Mondays, please drop them off at 9:15am and pick up at 12:00pm. Thanks, we are all so excited and I think this will be a great way to start our Christmas theme!

Have a great week!
Mrs. Dougherty