Mini Miner Preschool Post

As life slows down, the children are grown and gone and you begin reflecting on your life, what do you think the most important heartfelt memories you would treasure might be?

My family recently went through a difficult season of mourning several loved ones. During each memorial the only thing we all wanted was more time. Time to hear their laugh, listen to their songs and thoughts, feel their hug and just be together.

Life with very young children, even older children, can prove challenging and difficult. Please remember the beauty of this time. You have the gift of building strong loving relationships with your family. Spend time, take a minute to play with your child, listen to them. Their humor might surprise you! Enjoy this season. All of the ups and downs - they are a gift.

Enjoy these FANTASTIC ideas that work miracles.

8 Ways to Strengthen a Parent-Child Relationship

As we continue in the second semester, our focus continues to be centered on teaching self-regulation skills as well as executive-functioning skills or social intelligence skills, while increasing targeted academics for kindergarten readiness.

Studies prove that when children have social intelligence or executive-functioning skills needs to be in place before big success in academics. The ability to focus, use working memory, label their feelings and work through emotions, along with the ability to be flexible are the keys to lifetime success in education, relationships, work hobbies.

Our teachers use observations of each child to create classrooms and individual lesson plans that target areas of growth so that children are ready to move on successfully. The classroom is set up intentionally so that every minute in school children are learning valuable skills and academics as well as providing each child individual teaching times with teachers.

We accomplish preparing each child for kindergarten through a variety of ways including:

• Individual meetings with your child's teacher at the beginning of the year
• Developmental screenings
• Social-emotional screenings
• Continued teacher education and training
• Targeted instruction
• Collection child progress through authentic observations
• Inputting child progress into state required tracking system
• Creating individualized learning plans based on progress observations
• Parent teacher conferences
• Daily and weekly communication with parents
• Following state academic education standards for preschool
• Partnering with elementary school to align our education outcome with kindergarten entrance requirements
• Utilizing state approved curriculum

These are just a few things we continue to do that provides quality learning for your children. If you have any questions, or would like more information, I am always available for you.

There's some great things planned to celebrate National Nutrition Month!

The health of your family is important to us! We work hard to provide healthy snacks at school, as well as recipes and nutrition information and cooking classes for you to help.

Here are some new and nutrition education materials for kids available from USDA’s Team Nutrition initiative!

These fun resources foster the development of healthy food choices and physically active lifestyles during a critical developmental and learning period for children—kindergarten. Now with more recipes, food cards, emergent readers, Spanish-language components, and fun new resources showing where food comes from!

Teach Kids to Cook

Read the whole article here!

3-5 year olds

Young children love helping out, but need very close adult supervision since their motor skills are still developing. Teach these youngsters the importance of washing produce and using clean appliances and utensils.

Appropriate Tasks:

• Wash hands with warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds. Make it a game by singing the "Happy Birthday" song together twice as you wash your hands.
• Wash fruits and vegetables in the sink with cool tap water.
• Wipe up tabletops.
• Mix ingredients like easy-to-mix batters.
• Brush (or "paint") cooking oil with a clean pastry or basting brush on bread, asparagus or other foods.
• Cut cookies with fun shaped cookie cutters (but don't eat the raw dough!).

Thursdays: Free Playgroups from 11:00-12:00 at ETE Preschool

February 13: Board Meeting 6:30 pm

February 14: Snowshoe Field Trip and Valentine's Day Celebrations

• Connect with your child's teacher for specific details

February 15: Early Release Day.

• No afternoon classes
• Full Day Classes Dismiss at 12:00 noon

February 20: NO School, Presidents Day

February 21: Little Learners Van to Alma

• Free playgroup from 2:00-3:00
• Special Guest: Liz Schwemlein, Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant

February 22: Little Learners Van to Hartsel

• Free playgroup from 2:00-3:00

March 13-16: NO school Spring Break

March 25: Free Gymboree for all families with children ages 0-3 years old

March TBD: Free parenting class, FLIP IT

• How to address challenging behavior

March TBD: Father Child Building Workshop

April 21: Annual Fun Fair 9:00-11:30 am

• Free for all families with children ages 0-6 years old!

May TBD: Parent and child Kindergarten Visit!

• Parents will be invited, with their child, to visit the elementary school and meet the kindergarten teachers
• Children will go on a class field trip to spend about 45 minutes visiting key components of the elementary school and in the kindergarten classrooms