Dear P3 Families,

Welcome back! We hope you all welcomed 2019 with a BANG! May the Year of the Pig give you lots of health, wealth, and happiness! It is so nice to see the children back fresh from the holiday break, it’s amazing how some of them have grown so much!

Before school resumed, the teachers had an amazing In-service day on “Developmentally Appropriate Practices.” We learned so much information to put in place in the classroom, and we would love to share some new ideas with you by recommending the following books:

Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline by Becky A. Bailey

I Love You Rituals by Becky A. Bailey

The Importance of Being Little by Erika Christakis

Becoming Brilliant by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

The children are getting settled into a routine again, ready to take on the second half of the year. We have begun our studies on the Solar System, Antarctica, and snow. We also welcomed two new friends, Nicolas and Saarth, who have already adjusted beautifully to our P3 community.

Nicolas also celebrated his birthday with us on his first day of school! Happy Birthday!

A big THANK YOU as well to Clark Porter for sharing a story with the children. May the Force be with you too!

Along with this cold and wet weather come the sick germs. Please practice and talk about the importance of thorough hand-washing with your children. We are doing the same in the classroom, along with practicing the proper way to sneeze and cough (into the elbow) and using a tissue. Lastly, please make sure they bring a labeled jacket until the weather warms up. Thank you for your help in keeping our classroom healthy!

Important Dates:

Mon, 1/21: MLK Jr. Day, NO SCHOOL

Wed, 1/30: Kindergarten Re-Enrollment Information Night 5pm

Thurs, 1/31: First Grade Re-Enrollment Information Night 5pm

Fri, 2/1: PTO Family dance 5:30-9:00pm

Tues, 2/5: Parent-Child Night 4:15-5:00 last names A-M, 5:00-5:45 last names N-Z

Fri, 2/15: Teacher In-service Day, NO SCHOOL

Mon, 2/18: President’s Day, NO SCHOOL

February Studies:

Fish and Marine Life

People, Plants, and Animals of Australia

Oceans

Sincerely,

Primary 3 Team

Dear P3 Families,

We cannot believe half the year has flown by! We hope your holiday plans go smoothly, and you all have a fantastic and relaxing break with your family and friends!

For this year’s Primary Service Project (Ca$h for Cash), we’ve decided to help one of our own. Our friend, Cash Martin (P4 and P3), is being treated for Leukemia and you all may have noticed the goodies being offered outside our doors before and after school for donation. Thank you so much for your support! The children have been taking turns “selling” the treats everyday, and because of their involvement, they have a thorough understanding of this particular cause. Again, thank you so much! On behalf of the Martin family, we are beyond grateful. It is amazing how we are not just a school, but a tight knit family, as well.

Baking and Selling for Cash:

We have had a busy month learning all about Europe, and the children have had the most fun learning to count in French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, and Dutch! Our older students are continuing to work on operations, place value, and measuring, while our younger friends are busy with their phonetic sounds and pre-writing activities. We recommend they continue to read, write, and count during the break to be better prepared for new challenges in January!

Our friend Arseny turned four this month! Thank you so much for celebrating with us!

We’d also like to send a special shout out to room moms Naysha and Alison for volunteering their time to read and do crafts with the children. Thank you for making these days extraordinary! Special thanks to Kaitlyn Tinsley, as well, for all the book donations to grow our classroom library!

January Studies:

Space: Solar System and Constellations

Antarctica

Polar Animals

Snow and Ice Studies

Martin Luther King Jr.

Important Dates:

Monday, 1/7: NO SCHOOL, Teacher In Service Day

Tuesday, 1/8: SCHOOL RESUMES

Monday, 1/21: NO SCHOOL, MLK Jr. Day

Wednesday, 1/30: Kindergarten Enrollment Information Night 5pm

Thursday, 1/31: First Grade Enrollment Information Night 5pm

The P3 team would like to thank you for your generous gifts. Your thoughtfulness and generosity is highly appreciated. Words cannot express how thankful we are! So whether you are crossing oceans or staying at home for the two week break, we wish you a very happy and safe holiday. See you next year!

Gratefully,

Primary 3 Team

Dear P3 Families,

We hope you all had a restful and enjoyable holiday. We loved hearing about how the children spent their very long weekend! We welcome everyone back and are working in full force for the last stretch of the first semester! Where did the time go?

Parent-Child Night was such a blast! It was amazing how all the children were so excited showing you their favorite jobs in the classroom. We hope that seeing the materials in action gave you a little snapshot of their day, as well as, seeing the variety of Montessori materials we utilize to teach them phonetic sounds, counting, simple operations, place value, etc. The children just love the 100 board, which is extremely important for them to master transition (29 to 30, 59 to 60) when counting, the reading boxes, the ever so popular step board; an amazing work that helps them with initial, middle, or ending sounds, spelling out  three letter letter phonetic words, long vowels, and blends. There will be other Parent-Child Nights coming up this school year, so please stay tuned for future dates! It will be a wonderful opportunity for families who were not able to attend, and a chance to see what new things your child is working on later in the year. In the mean time, enjoy these pictures from that evening!

The Primary classes also had the opportunity to watch “Animal Tales”, a very cute show where performers told stories which required lots of participation from the children and animal interaction!

To supplement our study on North America and the United States, room mommies (Kaitlyn and Alison) did a fantastic job leading a cooking project with the children. They made “No Bake Cherry Pie”, which even came with a story called “How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the USA” by Marjorie Priceman. It talks about a young baker who travels through the country to get ingredients for a cherry pie. It’s a wonderful story to learn about the United States!

We would also like to give a big birthday greeting to Sofia Casas, who’s now 5! Thank you for celebrating with us!

We are concluding our studies on reptiles and North America. In addition to the flora and fauna, the children are also learning about Native American homes and having so much fun doing their own pictographs! In the math area, the concept of graphing has also been introduced by graphing the weather in circle every morning.

Always busy in P3!

December Studies:

Tree Studies

Europe

Important dates:

Friday, 12/21: Half Day dismissal @ 11:15

Monday, 12/24 – Friday, 1/4: NO SCHOOL, Enjoy Winter Break!

Monday, 1/7: NO SCHOOL, Teacher In-Service

Tuesday, 1/8: School Resumes, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Reminder:

Please label your child’s jacket and all other outer wear. There are sharpies at the door if needed.

Sincerely,

Primary 3 Team

Dear P3 Families,

The children did such an amazing job during their performance! We hope you were able to take lots of pictures! Thank you again for helping them work on their lines, and for showing massive support and encouragement. We are all so proud of our little ones!

We would like to thank P3 mommies, Jin and Alison, for volunteering their time to do crafts and read to the class. As always, the children loved it!

We’ve been very busy learning about reptiles and North America. The students love learning about the animals that live on our continent (especially the skunk), and we are also studying the flora and fauna found in our own Mojave Desert. We will go deeper into our continent study by learning about Native American homes and writing, as well!

The children are diligently working one-on-one with their teachers in language and math. If your child is learning phonetic sounds and you would like to practice with them at home, we ask that you only practice the short sound of the letter instead of the name. If your child is bringing a book home weekly from our Take Home Reading Program, we suggest asking simple questions about the story for comprehension practice i.e. “What were the names of the people in the story?” or “What was your favorite part?” The books brought home have already been read to a teacher in class. Please remember that the main focus of Take Home Reading is to foster the love of reading, and not to struggle with new words.

Here are your children hard at work!

What a typical work cycle looks like in P3:

We love our math and language!

Parent-child Night is on Thursday, November 15 (4:15-5:00 last names A-M, 5:00-5:45 last names N-Z). We highly encourage all families to attend, as it is an excellent opportunity for your child to show you what they are working on in the classroom. It is also a great time to ask questions about the Montessori materials. We hope you can join us!

Important Dates: 

Thursday 11/15: Parent Child Night, 4:15-5:00 A-M,5:00-5:45 N-Z and Picture Re-Take Day

Wednesday – Friday 11/21-11/23: NO SCHOOL, Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday 11/27: Kindergarten Field Trip to Red Rock 9:45-1:00

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Have a safe and fun holiday!

Sincerely,

Primary 3 Team

Dear P3 Families,

Fall festivities have definitely happened! Our Fall Festival was a BLAST! We would like to give a great big THANK YOU to our PTO and everyone else in our FMS community that made that event such a success. The children had a wonderful time getting their faces painted, and enjoyed watching professional circus acts as well. The raffle and silent auction spread was so exciting, and a big congrats to our Ms. Alisa for winning the hair dryer set! Some P3 families won some goodies too, but luck was not on Ms. Joanne’s side..maybe next year!

Birthdays were also celebrated during the last half of the month. Happy birthday, Tristan and Zoey! Thank you for celebrating with us!

We would also like to thank P3 moms (Jennifer and Naysha) for volunteering their time to do special projects with the children. You have no idea how much excitement is added to our children’s’ day when they know a parent is coming to share something special with them!

Celebrate America Day was perhaps one of the biggest events of the year. So much hard work and preparation was put into making sure the children had an amazing experience “travelling” around the United States. Thank you so much to our room moms, Alison and Jen, for organizing such a great team of parents! Whether it’s cutting things at home, preparing food, ordering supplies online, building props, or staying late the night before to transform our classroom into the Southeast, we are so grateful for the amount of time and hard work you all put in. Our classroom was incredible!

The children had a wonderful morning panning for gold in Alaska, surfing and making leis in Hawaii, sampling cheese and milking cows in Wisconsin, line dancing in the West, and making Mardi Gras masks and riding on a space shuttle in their very own Southeast.

Our busy month ended with a special assembly for the Primary Classes called “Project Wild”, an organization that works on wild life conservation. We learned so much about different animals! How do you tell the difference between legless lizards and snakes? Lizards have ears and eyelids, while snakes do not! Chinchillas also defend themselves by blasting a predator with a ball of fur. And while we grow one hair per follicle, they grow 50, hence their very soft fur.

Our Mother Goose Character Camp Performance is fast approaching on November 8 at 9am in the multi-purpose room. Please have your child come that day wearing their teal FMS shirts and dark, solid colored pants. If lines were sent home, please continue to practice with them! We are so excited to put on this show for you, and the children are having the greatest time singing and acting! We definitely have some Hollywood stars in the making!

Here are your children at work learning about the 7 continents and mammals, in addition to working hard in language and math!

Important Dates:

Thursday, 11/8: P3 Music Performance 9:00am Multi-Purpose Room

Monday, 11/12: NO SCHOOL, Veteran’s Day

Tuesday, 11/13: NO SCHOOL, Teacher In-Service day

Thursday, 11/15: Picture retake day: Parent/Child Night @ 4:15-5:00 last names beginning with A-M, 5:00-5:45 last names beginning with N-Z

Wednesday-Friday, 11/21-11/23: NO SCHOOL, Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, 11/27: Kindergarten only field trip to Red Rock 9:45-1:00

November Studies:

People, plants and animals of the Mojave desert

Reptiles

North America and the USA

Thanksgiving

Have a fun and safe Halloween, and we hope to see you all on November 8th for Mother Goose’s Character Camp!

Sincerely,

Primary 3 Team