BFA Preschool Newsletter

Picture re-takes are scheduled for Wednesday, October 9th. If your child attends preschool on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday (MWF) or Afternoon(M-F), we’ll make sure they get their picture taken for the yearbook if they missed the August session.

If your child attends on Tuesday/Thursday (T/TH), and you missed picture day in August, you’ll need to bring them to school on October 9th for their re-take. We want to make sure everyone is included in this year’s yearbook!

REMINDER: If you have questions or concerns about payments please contact our business manager, Halsley Hoff. She will have access to your accounts, I do not have that access.

Safety Discussions for our Preschool 3's & Pre-K:

I will be focusing on the importance of staying safe while we’re at school. Throughout the year, we will practice three different types of safety drills. I take time to thoroughly explain each drill the first time we do it, helping the children understand what to expect. My goal is to reduce any fear by making sure the children feel prepared, rather than frightened. I emphasize that the more we know, the less scary these situations can seem. After our initial discussion, we’ll continue practicing the drills with gentle reminders throughout the year.

This week, I introduced the tornado drill and identified our safe spot in the classroom. We also talked about what we should do at home if a tornado were to occur. The state requires us to complete a tornado drill during the months of August-October and March-May time periods. Next week, we’ll cover the fire drill in depth, and then practice it again. We already had a school-wide fire drill in August, which some of our preschoolers participated in. Moving forward, we’ll practice fire drills once a month—sometimes with the entire school and other times just within the preschool.

In October, we’ll address our last drill: the lockdown drill. District officers will assist our staff during the first drill to ensure everything runs smoothly. To make this drill less intimidating for the children, we turn it into a game of hide-and-seek, where we pretend to be quiet mice. This approach helps children understand the importance of safety without creating fear.

By the end of these exercises, our goal is for the children to feel safer, confident, and to understand the importance of knowing how to stay safe in different situations.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Lori Hafner

🪙 September 15 - Tuition due on MySchoolBucks

🏠September 20 - Professional Development Day- NO SCHOOL

🍁September 30 - Fall Festival

📷October 9 - Picture Retakes

🏠October 11 - Professional Development Day- NO SCHOOL

🏠October 14 - 18 - Fall Break- NO SCHOOL

Ms. Eframo is so excited to be a part of the Ben Franklin Academy preschool team! She lives in Littleton, Colorado with her husband Steve, and their 3 children, Brittain (22), Christian (14), and Rowan (11). She enjoys watching her kids play sports, traveling with her family for her son’s lacrosse tournaments, walking her dogs, hiking, skiing, and spending time in the beautiful outdoors of Colorado with her family. She studied Elementary Education at the University of Kansas and has been in the education field off and on for over 20 years.

Ms. Eframo began her career working as a parent educator for the Parents as Teachers program in Summit County. She has been a preschool teacher, working in Head Start and Montessori classrooms. She has also worked in the kindergarten classroom as an instructional aide for several years, including 4 years at BFA.

She has such a strong passion for working with young children and is so excited to be involved in helping children succeed in the preschool classroom!

We are excited to announce that our preschool has partnered with a wonderful volunteer from the Douglas County Library, who is eager to become a cherished part of our classroom community. Leanne Lauren, a passionate reader and storyteller, will join our Happy Camper class every Thursday afternoon to share her love of books and foster meaningful connections with our students. This is a fantastic opportunity for our children to enjoy stories from a new perspective, while also building relationships with a special guest from outside our school. We look forward to the joy and excitement this will bring to our classroom, and we are thrilled to welcome Leanne into our Happy Camper family!

Social and Emotional Learning (Preschool 3's & Pre-K):

This week, we focused on the importance of staying focused and paying attention, discussing how these habits make us better learners. During our reading of The Tortoise and the Hare, we talked about how the tortoise stayed focused and, against the odds, won the race. In contrast, the hare got distracted and lost, even though he could have easily won if he had remained focused. This lesson helped our students understand that focusing on a task can lead to success, just like the tortoise!

Math Unit (Pre-K):

In our extended math unit this week, we explored how numbers are all around us. The students made graphs to collect information, graphing the pets we have at home, our favorite apples, and our favorite colors. We also worked with dice to discuss the concepts of larger and smaller numbers, playing a dice game to combine numbers and create a bigger number. To tie it all together, we talked about how counting slowly and carefully—like the tortoise—helps us get the correct number. Counting too quickly, like the hare, could lead to mistakes!

This week, the Busy Bees dove into a creative exploration of the letter "B"! The children practiced a directed drawing, where they learned to draw a bee, an important symbol for this classroom. They discovered many words that start with the "B" sound, explored the different parts of a book, and enjoyed some rhyme fun with "Thumbkin" while reinforcing classroom rules and the importance of kindness.

In addition, they identified words and sounds that were similar and different, began a fun unit on the five senses. For math, they focused on mastering numbers 1-5, laying the groundwork for future learning.

This week, our Preschool 3’s were filled with excitement as they learned all about the letter "B"! Naturally, that led to lots of bouncing and ball fun—it was a blast! For art, the kids got to marble-paint their apples, and the results were some really cool and colorful designs!

Our sensory tub was a hit too, filled with corn kernels and all kinds of interesting things to touch and feel while they are learning about their 5 senses. The kids loved exploring and discovering new textures—it was a week full of creativity, laughter, and hands-on fun!

Our Pre-K Happy Campers had an exciting week learning about different body parts—and what better way to do that than through body beats! We made some fun music by using our hands, feet, and voices to explore rhythm and movement.

The campers also reviewed numbers 1-5, practiced shapes, and explored words that are the same and different. It was a week full of learning, laughter, and rhythm!

We hope to see you at our parenting classes this fall. We have some great choices coming up. I am especially pleased to be offering a class especially for FATHERS.

Click here to see the full catalog of classes we offer.

Diane R. Smith

Executive Director

Douglas County Early Childhood Council

303-868-9099 cell

720-643-2472 office

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Basil is our beloved honorary librarian. She comes to school almost everyday and helps the students during reading time. She started coming this week and all the students can't get enough of this fluffy fixture in our library.

We are so lucky to have Basil at our school.

Book Fair will be held the week of Oct. 7th thru Oct. 10th the same week as Parent-Teacher conferences. We will post the times that parents can come with or without their children.

This year, Book Fair will be a NO CASH event. We are encouraging families to set up an e-Wallet account through Scholastic. We will accept credit cards, debit cards and Google/Apple Pay. Students can use e-Wallets only, unless accompanied by an adult.

We realize that the kids want to use their own money but every year we have had so many tears over lost money or the students feeling like they had to give some of their cash to a friend so that friend can buy something and then they have no money left to buy something for themselves.

We realize this is a big change so that's why we are getting the word out early. We will talk with the students about this change closer to the Book Fair.

Our Preschool Website can be found here.

It has wonderful information for parents and students. You can find lots of information on what your student is doing in class, what the upcoming week looks like and so much more.

We are actively updating the website so you have access to more information. So, visit often as we are continually updating the webpages each day.

September's Virtues are...

Silence – There is a time and place to speak up and a time to listen. You learn more by listening than speaking.

Justice – Be respectful. Give everyone a chance to work or play. Give others a chance to express themselves. Share. Remember that others are counting on you, so live up to your duty.

Mission:

Our mission is to create young adults with character like America's founding Renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin: well-read, scientifically curious, and civically engaged.

Vision:

Our students will excel academically through a challenging, sequenced curriculum that emphasizes math, science, the arts, and literacy. We will be a data-driven institution, focusing on individual students. Our students, teachers, parents, staff, and leaders will be held accountable for the success of our school. Finally, we recognize that an education is incomplete without fostering social emotional development, character, sports, and nature.

13 Virtues:

Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Purity and Humility.