We have  news of our Kindergarten Registration May 11 and 12.  Please call the school where your child will register for details and an appointment if you do not already have one for your child. Please be sure to have an official birth certificate and record of immunizaations along with the paperwork you were sent.

Pre K Registration will be May 19 at the school where your child will attend Pre-K.  If your child's name was drawn for the lottery for Pre-K, you will recieve a packet of information and papers to bring with you on your may 19 appointment.

Sherwood Heights

Park Avenue

Fairview

Walton

East Auburn (including Washburn area)

Our Pre K program will operate 4 days a week, M, T, Th, & F. We will have a morning session and an afternoon session.  Breakfast will be offered in the morning session and lunch will be offered in the afternoon session, in accordance with the Auburn School Department hot lunch program. 

*****

 Note: Please be sure to protect your child from illness. Here in Pre-K we stress washing hands and sneezing and coughing into our sleeves as a way not to spread germs. Please be sure to reinforce good health habits with your child.  Your child's health and safety are important to us.

*****

 
News from Pre-K
Office of Consulting Teacher for Early Childhood
Auburn School Department

Dear Pre-K Parents and Guardians,

The year 2010 is off and running!  Our Pre-K's are keeping up with it all!  You may have noticed your child is learning a lot and really eager to come to school each day. 

Through a federal ARRA GRANT, our Pre K teachers had some professional developmet sessions on providing your children with the very best of skill development in fine and gross motor activities.  These activities work on the small and large muscles of the body and strengthens a child's ability to use school materials, maintain stamina for a day at school, and work on his/her self-help skills.  We received the training and ordered new materials to help with the skill development that research shows children need for large and small muscle control.  Your child may talk about using new balls, walking on balance beams, and using tongs to choose letters.  If you hear this kind of comment, you will know that your child is getting new experiences in fine and gross motor skill development.

I would like to share with you more of the questions parents have asked me regarding their interest in Pre K.

Dear Mrs. Leiva,  I heard that there is a special way children should hold a pencil or crayon. I am concerned about my child who holds it with his fist. What should I do? Crayon Mom

Dear Crayon Mom, I am glad your child is developing experiences with writing and coloring tools. It is common when children first begin to use crayons, markers or pencils that they hold these tools with their fists.  Our Occupational Therapists tell us that we can easily encourage a proper grasp by limiting the length of a crayon to about an inch.  This forces the "pincher" or tri-pod grasp.  This grasp, over time, will be less tiresome an encourage proper muscle movement and development.  There are a variety of pencil grips on the market to encourage the three-fingered grip and you might consider getting one of those, but using a very short "nub" of a crayon does the trick very inexpensively.

 
Dear Mrs. Leiva, I am concerned about my child learning all the things she needs to know before she gets to Kindergarten.  I do not see a lot of work on letters and writing papers in my child's backpack. She is not yet reading. Will Pre-K be enough?  Signed: Eager Mom

Dear Eager Mom, 

Your child will learn many things in Pre-K and some of the best work done in Pre-K readiness does not get done by paper and pencil tasks.  Your child is learning how to sit in a group for story-time and for little mini-lessons where the teacher will explain an activity that will give her the practice in important skills. Your child will also experience many opportunities to make choices for play and experiences for skill development in fine motor control (which will help him/her in writing tasks in Kindergarten). Your child is learning to take turns and wait for others as they work in a group and learn to cooperate.  Your child is learning that people use language in many ways: both writing and speaking.  Your child is learning all about books and the ways many people tell stories. Your child is learning about weather and predictability. According to our Kindergarten teachers, all of these skills are important to success in Kindergarten. 


Dear Mrs. Leiva,  My daughter Velma has trouble speaking to others. Sometimes it is hard for people outside our family to understand her.  What should I do?" Signed, Velma's Mom.

Dear Velma's Mom,  I am sure you are worried about this. It is a problem many parents face in Pre-K. By now your child's teacher might have contacted you about concerns she may have about your daughter's speech.  In Pre-K we often give children a few days to adjust and then if we notice a child having difficulty in an area, the teacher usually calls the parent for a conversation about (in your case) the child's speech.  The teacher may suggest that she make a referral to Child Development Services (CDS) to get more information about your child's speech.  When this happens there is a time-line where CDS has to contact you, you have to give permission for an evaluation, and then meetings are scheduled.  If it is determined that your child has a Speech/Language handicap, then therapy will be designed specifically for your child and a schedule for when the therapy will take place.  Often this can be done in the school setting. It is also common to be done individually, in a speech therapist's office.  This same kind of thing happens with other disability categories as well.  It is not uncommon for parents to feel afraid or worried about such things. The best help you can be is to have an open line of communication with your child's teacher so that the very best program will be delivered to your child.

If you would like to have YOUR question answered, please email your question to: lleiva@auburnschl.edu and look for the answer in an upcoming newsletter posted on this website.

 

Our Pre K staff had a wonderful professional development session recently regarding social emotional development and building relationships in the preschool population. There was a quote that generated a lot of discussion. Uri Bronfenbrenner said, "Every child needs someone who is crazy about him." As teachers, we never know whose life we will touch in a way that might significantly impact that child's "forever." But, our hope is that we will all do our best to be "crazy" about our Pre K children! (We decided that is not hard!)

The following is what we spoke of in one of our earlier learning teams. It is good food for thought.

"If a child doesn't know how to read, we teach.

If a child doesn't know how to swim, we teach.

If a child doesn't know how to multiply, we teach.

If a child doesn't know how to drive, we teach.

If a child doesn't know how to behave,

we……..... …….teach? ……punish?

Why can't we finish the last sentence as automatically as we do the others?" Tom Herner (NASDE President ) Counterpoint 1998, p.2)

"