Welcome to Pre-K!

My name is Marie Russell and I am the Pre-K teacher here at St. Peter’s. This is my first year teaching here which is very special to me because I am a graduate from St. Peter’s! I also graduated from Bishop McNamara High School and received my bachelors degree from the University of Maryland College Park. I love working alongside educators whose faith is something they incorporate within daily lessons. I very much love flowers. Almost weekly, I have a new bouqet of fresh flowers on my desk (as well as fake flowers). I also love spending time with my family. I have three nephews and one neiece who I adore so much! I also love to bake and read.

This is my aide, Delani Norman. She has been apart of the St. Peter’s community for many years. She has three daughters and one is currently in the fourth grade at St. Peter’s! She has her bachelor of fine arts degree from St. Mary’s College.

“I love you, O Lord, my strenth” Psalm 18:1

September

So far in Pre-K, we have been having so much fun becoming good friends and learning the rules of school. I rotate weekly jobs for the children to be a paper passer, line leader, caboose, door holders, weather person, lights, and teacher’s helper. The children love showing how helpful they can be! We also had a science experiment taste testing two kinds of apples. They each tried a slice of red gala and a slice of green granny smith apples. I told them it was a super-secret science experiment so that they could only tell me which kind they liked better (so that they were not influenced by each other’s decisions) and they loved it! Our results showed us that, as a class, Pre-K likes green apples more.

For the first day of fall, we went on a leaf hunt! We looked outside for our favorite leaf to use during an a leaf art rubbing project! The children loved watching their leaves appear!

October Here is Pre-K after we made our Johnny Appleseed hats! We had a lesson on Johnny Appleseed for fall and made hats in the shape of pots, just like Jonny Appleseed! During October, Pre-K has been working hard on classroom projects, listening skills, and enjoying learning! We continue to remember our classroom rules while in school and prove to be great explorers! During center time, the children are able to showcase how wonderfully they paint with watercolors at art center, build the largest of buildings at block center, pretend play at housekeeping, and sort objects in muffin tins at math center. Their imaginations are endless!

Every week,the students learn a new letter for the week. Here is a picture of the ducks we made during our week on the letter “Dd”! The uppercase D was used to make the ducks body and the lowercase d was used to make the ducks neck and head! Doing different activities help the children more with letter recognition and creativity! Upcoming in October, we are looking forward to our

pumpkin patch field trip with kindergarten at Shlagel farms! The children cannot wait for all the fun we are going to have! We also will continue to learn a new letter of the week, shape of the week, color of the week in November! We also will be talking all about the Thanksgiving holiday when the time gets closer! Ms. Russell’s favorite season is fall so look for more fall related activities to come in November!

In those chilly Winter months…

November Back in November, Pre-K celebrated Thanksgiving and Grandparents Day! We shared what we were thankful/ grateful for and what our favorite Thanksgiving foods were. We loved making crafts for with our grandparents and sang a song to tell them how much we love them! We really enjoy singing songs and doing arts and to crafts to show our families what we worked on at school!

December

December was a fun-filled month! We made our own “Magic Shoes” to start off the Christmas season for our bulletin board. We read the story from our language arts unit “The Elves and the Shoemaker” to get inspiration. The children love learning new stories from our language arts curriculum we use called “Happily Ever After”. They learn book handling skills, matching letters, phonics, following directions, and so much more! One science experiment we did was a fizzing peppermint candy cane experiment! We took baking soda and mixed it with peppermint extract, vinegar, and food coloring, then watched it fizz! The children observed what sounds they heard and what was happening to the candy canes over the course of the day! They are great observers!

We also had a Polar Express Day! We dressed in our pajamas, got our own golden tickets hole-punched for a trip on the Polar Express train, drank hot cocoa, and enjoyed the movie! The children loved when they got back to the classroom at one point and found bells on their desks just like the movie!

This is our classroom elf visitor, Softie! We read the book “Elf on the Shelf” and voted on our class elf’s name! Softie wrote notes to let Pre-K know he was watching to make sure Santa knew who was being a super great listener! The children loved Softie so much and worked hard for Softie to see them making good choices daily! We also had our Christmas pageant and talked all about Jesus’ birthday!

January

Switching seasons and celebrating a new year were exciting changes for Pre-K! They were very excited to learn all about snow! On a cold, snowy day they even painted snow! They love exploring new things and creating. We talked about what kind of animals live in cold habitats and what things look like when they are frozen verses when they are melting.

We celebrated Catholic Schools Week in January! We had pajama, dress as your favorite book character day, and wacky hair/ hat day!

February

We celebrated 100 Days of School! The students got to their goal of counting to 100 and

we had a celebration!

We had a Valentine’s Day party celebrating by eating yummy healthy snacks, counting heart shaped items, and talking about who it is that we love! They even swapped valentine’s cards and loved sharing with their friends! They talked a lot about being kind and made a fun valentine’s day stuffed heart craft!

We also talked about dental hygeine! We did a science experiment testing what happens to a hard-boiled egg when it had been soaking in soda, vinegar, and water all day. The children made hypothesis of what they predicted would happen! They were very shocked by the results! The egg soaked in soda was very stained and we tried brushing it very hard to get the color back to what it was, but they could tell it wasn’t an easy job!

It's Time to Spring Forward…

March In March so far, we have celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday! We read stories like “The Cat in the Hat”, “Green Eggs and Ham”, “The Lorax”, “One Fish Two Fish”, and more! They decorated their own Seuss-tastic hats, used “Truffula Tree” paintbrushes, made paper plate Cat in the Hat’s, tried green eggs, and even designed a new home for the Lorax! We had such a fun day rhyming and celebrating what a fun writer Dr. Seuss is! We also received ashes on Ash Wednesday! The students learned all about why we get ashes, what lent is , where the ashes come from, and the procedure of what to do when they get ashes. I was very proud of all them!

Coming up in March we will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! We will have a class party and learn about who St. Patrick was!

What’s to come, Ms. Russell?

We will also continue to discuss Lent and Easter through April! When Easter is arriving, we will be making arts and crafts to understand what Easter is really about! We will also go on an egg hunt. With the season beginning to change, we will dive into what kind of weather Spring typically is like! We will water our class plants, catch bugs in our bugcatchers, pick flowers, and do other sensory activities to develop their exploration! In May we will be celebrating Mother’s Day! I have many arts and crafts projects I plan to do for our mom’s! We will have a Mother’s Day celebration! They will also have wrapped up their goal of learning all beginning sounds, so we will be reviewing until the end of the year through fun classroom activites. I have already seen them grow so much and I am excited for what is to come for the rest of Spring time!