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The Washington Star 🌟
November 30th, 2023
A message of gratitude...
Dear Washington School Families,
Although Thanksgiving has passed, we here at school still want to express how grateful we are for the opportunity to teach your children each day. We know just how precious they are to you, and we don't take it for granted that you entrust them to us during the day. Along with academic skills, we try to focus a lot of our time in school on social-emotional learning. With all that is so quickly and readily available at our fingertips each day, it can be easy for our little ones to to have a difficult time with such big concepts as understanding gratitude. This month, students worked with their teachers to create a beautiful Thanksgiving turkey that highlights everything they are thankful for! The turkey has been displayed in our main hallway for everyone to admire. They did an amazing job!
Our Thanksgiving Feast! 🦃
A BIG thank you to our PTO who put together a fantastic (and delicious) Thanksgiving feast for all 56 of our students! It was a big undertaking, but Mrs. Rodriguez (PTO President) and Mrs. Sproviero (Treasurer) worked efficiently and quickly to pull this all together with some of our staff members in the morning. All of the details were so thoughtful and we are so *grateful* that they donated their time to make this a special event for our students. Thank you to Mr. Velez for donating the chicken nuggets, too! We appreciate your generosity.
I would also like to thank the students and teachers of the MSHS SAIL program for lending a ton of helping hands to serve the food to our students! And not only did they serve, but they made a special dessert for us, too! As part of their life skills and community based instruction built into their program, our SAIL students made a grocery list for all the ingredients they would need to make the dessert and took a field trip to the grocery store to shop for everything. Upon return to school, they made this dessert special for our preschoolers. I love that our Saddle Brook School District encourages and facilitates such wonderful opportunities for our students within its own schools!!
Our little ones loved having a dance party with the big kids after their meal, and us staff members loved to see the older students taking responsibility for their assigned jobs/tasks. Their teachers are amazing and I just can not say enough wonderful things about this event! Thank you, ALL for being a part of it.
We are grateful for...Nurse Laura!
Nurse Laura is always taking care of our bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes, upset tummies, and even broken bones and allergies. Actually, I'm not sure there is anything Nurse Laura doesn't do! She is patient, caring, sympathetic, and super knowledgable. She is very dedicated to ensuring the health and safety of our students (and staff, too) and we couldn't do our days without her.
This month, Nurse Laura made her way around to all of the classes to do a lesson on germs...what could be more appropriate for this time of year?! She taught our students what a germ is and that they are one of the only things in preschool we do NOT encourage sharing! She reviewed proper hand washing and how to effectively cover our coughs and sneezes. Please be sure to reinforce these concepts with your little ones at home!
A friendly reminder from Nurse Laura to please get your child's flu shot by December 15th.
Miss Shayna's Speech Room! 🗣️
This month in speech, we read the book "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Turkey". We worked on recall skills, sequencing events in a story, expanding utterances and answering Wh questions. We prepared for the Thanksgiving feast by learning about how to set the table, what foods we eat on Thanksgiving and how we can cook them. We also loved learning about the different parts of a Turkey!
⭐ Spotlight on Specials! ⭐
Because our preschool is a part of the public school district, we are fortunate to have access to the same specials that our elementary school students do! We all LOVE Physical Education, Music and Art! Here are Ms. Katie's students in art class with Mrs. Wolfe. Mrs. Wolfe prepares such thoughtful and creative projects for our students. If you are ever in the building, please be sure to take a look around at her creations - we try to display all of them as they really bring so much life to our school. If you've ever been in our hallways you may have noticed her beautifully painted murals on the walls! She is so patient with our students and is never, ever short on ideas that capture how their creative minds work. She plans fun, developmentally appropriate activities and isn't afraid to get messy! Mrs. Wolfe is the BEST!
On this particular day, Mrs. Violetti paid a visit to Washington School and got to see our students in action making a beautiful project with Mrs. Wolfe!
PTO Corner
🍪 The Bang Cookies fundraiser is now Live! Place your orders by following the link below.
☃️ The PTO will be sponsoring Story time with Olaf at school on December 20th. Students will enjoy cookies and milk (or water), and receive a special gift.
🙋♀️Volunteers to participate on our PTO are still welcomed and encouraged so please reach out if you have an interest.
Ariana Rodriguez, PTO President
Brielle Barnes, Secretary
Imma Sproviero, Treasurer
Upcoming Dates:
Parent-Teacher Conferences will be held 12/4 through 12/7. Please note these are Single Session Days so Half Day students will be dismissed at 10:45 and Full Day students will be dismissed at 1:00.
Monday, December 18th: Wear your school spirit wear
Tuesday, December 19th: Wear your holiday/crazy socks
Wednesday, December 20th: Story time with Olaf! Wear your pajamas to school!
Thursday, December 21st: Wear your holiday best for our holiday concert in the gym! We will start at 10:45am.
Friday, December 22nd: Individual class parties and early dismissal.