Specials are Spot On

Preschool students continued our animal theme this month! We pretended to go fishing in a pond in the music room. During this activity, we made sounds with our voices and then sang a counting song called “Fish Alive”. We pretended to be in a sinking ship during the song “Our Gallant Ship”, took turns choosing a stuffed animal and being the subject of a song in “Here Sits a Monkey”, and looked at the singing book “Fiddle Eye Fee”!

Kindergarten students have focused on long and short sounds for their musical comparisons this month. We echo-clapped long and short patterns, arranged long and short pictures, and analyzed new and old songs to find the patterns. We learned a group dance and song called “Billy Billy”, told the story of “The Bear Hunt”, and more. We also learned the “Cheetah Pride” song about Memorial School! Ask your student to sing the song for you and show the actions! Please feel free to email with questions or comments!

Mrs. Maldonado

This month with Mrs. Flannery, K students are working on comparing fiction texts. We read the book, Corduroy by Don Freeman and the book, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems and discussed the similarities and differences of the two stories. We also discussed the term 'personification' and learned what a Venn Diagram is. Students then worked individually to create a Venn Diagram out of paper plates to help compare the two stories. Students did a great job and even came made some observations that Mrs. Flannery hadn't made!

With both Mrs. Flannery and Mrs. Hill, students have participated in the following read alouds:

Please Open This Book by Adam Lehrehaupt

I Am Henry Finch by Alexis Deacon

The Story of Fish and Snail by Deborah Freedman

In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming

Where Is My Book by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

P. Zonka Lays an Egg by Julie Paschkis

Press Here by Herve Tullet

Click, Clack, Surprise! By Doreen Cronin

Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems

Somebody and the Three Blairs by Marilyn Tolhurst

The Dragon’s Cold by John Talbot

On Meadowview Street by Henry Cole

Pig’s Egg by Katherine Sully

Don’t Push the Button by Bill Cotter

And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano

You Can’t Have Too Many Friends by Mordicai Gerstein

This is a Serious Book by Julie Parachini

Poodlena by E. B. McHenry

The Cow Who Wouldn’t Come Down by Paul Brett Johnson

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

Corduroy by Don Freeman

Livingstone Mouse by Pamela Duncan Edwards

The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater

We Are in a Book! By Mo Willems

If you have any questions in regards to your child’s library experience. Please don’t hesitate to contact us or locate more information on the library webpage.

Mrs. Flannery and Mrs. Hill

Hi everyone!

Things are going great in PE class, the children are working very hard, showing much improvement, and having a lot of fun! We spent March playing cooperative games and using the scooters, and, as always, working on our fitness, flexibility, balance, coordination, strength, and power.

In mid April we will set up for our longest unit of the school year, gymnastics, a favorite of all the children! We are fortunate to have actual gymnastic equipment and we spend about 5-6 weeks on this unit.

Just around the corner, we will be sending home volunteer forms for our end of the year finale, Fun Days! Fun Day for PreK/K will be June 5th, with the makeup date June 9th, if necessary. Fun Day takes place for the whole day, with many fun activities and stations to visit and enjoy. We have always been very, very fortunate to have a great parent and family turnout to help with making Fun Days the great day and success it has been for decades now. Keep your eyes open for these forms, coming home just after April vacation, we hope you are able to lend a helping hand, it is a lot of fun and the children love to see their parents and people they know spending the day having fun with them!

Enjoy the April vacation, hopefully the weather will be great and everybody can spend the time outside having fun and getting in a workout in as well!

Coach Boscarino and Coach Ruel

This month, with Miss. Pinto, the students in Preschool and Kindergarten are investigating flowers and the spring time! We have been going outside on nice days, and explored the beautiful flowers in bloom while noticing their shapes, colors and delicacy! It’s so relaxing to spend time appreciating the beauty and ambiance of nature!

Then we began a mixed media work of art representing the blooming springtime, while learning about different kinds of paper! Tissue paper, wall paper, cardboard paper straws, and construction paper, all have different thicknesses, uses, and qualities. We really liked how tissue paper was see through, and could overlap to make different colors!

After cutting our tissue paper up into itty bitty pieces (we call it “confetti”), we then cut construction paper into “funky” shapes. We discussed how shapes don’t always have to be “normal” shapes, like squares, circles, triangles, etc. but that we can create our own silly shapes. We all agreed that these “funky” shapes make us think of things in nature, like rain puddles, clouds, and animals.

Once we had all of our paper pieces cut out, we began gluing all of the tissue paper pieces onto our funky shapes. We last took cardboard paper straws and snipped them to create stems! When we attached the stems to our funky shapes, they transformed into blossoming, colorful flowers!

We have one last step that we are currently working on! We have to create a place for our flowers to go! The students not only know that flowers can be found outside growing in a garden, but that they can also be found inside our homes in a vase! We even got to look at some famous flower still-life paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Jean-Baptiste Robie! We can’t wait to finish our final additions to these mixed media works of art and take them home to share with you!

Miss Fausette's PK and Kindergarten classes have been experiencing the forms of flowers. Children have been able to look at and feel the circular patterns of petals on silk flowers and the long lines of their stems. Students then used tissue paper pieces and glue to express what they had learned and enjoyed about the flowers.

We are patiently waiting for our clay to have it's turn to be fired a second time in the kiln. The change from wet clay to fired clay was exciting, we are looking forward to see what happens when the glaze is fired.

Miss Pinto and Miss Fausette

Email: rflannery@easthamptonct.org
Website: www.easthamptonps.org
Location: Memorial School, Smith Street, East Hampton, CT, United States
Phone: 8603654020
Facebook: facebook.com/MemorialElementarySchool
Twitter: @EHPublicSchools