Storyteller, January 2011
Observations
“If children perceive that you admire them for thinking, then that is what they will do.”
-Elena Giacopini, pedagogista, 2011
Dear Families and Friends,
With great enthusiasm and anticipation, we will very soon be welcoming you and the children back to our classrooms. It has been our experience each January that once children again feel comfortable in our settings after the holiday vacation, the growth that follows is both fascinating and astonishing. The curriculum, built primarily upon teachers’ observations of children’ s play, really takes off!
As the teachers and I reunite this month in our meetings to discuss our observations, our interpretations of the children’ s play, and our ideas for developing curriculum around children’ s, families’ and teachers’ interests, we have a good deal that we must thoughtfully consider. In addition to what we know about each child and the hopes we share for each child’ s development in all domains, we are also mindful of our declarations of intent for this school year and, especially, of the core values articulated in our hallway (our version of a piazza, a space where the school’ s identity and values are visible).
The start of the new year presents an opportunity for us to reflect upon these central values that guide our work with young children and their families at Palisades Preschool. At the core of our values and basic to our approach is the image of the “meaning-seeking” and “relationship-seeking” child. In each play scenario, we ask ourselves, “What are children seeking to know?” “What relationships are children seeking to establish?” (–There are usually many possible answers to these “what” questions.)
Next, because it is one of the central roles of adults to activate children’ s curiosity (Giacopini, 2011), we wonder together about how we will engineer experiences for children that will inspire them to explore, to ask, to theorize—and then continue this circular process of investigation. The many materials, or languages, are a significant part of the solutions to our “how” questions—and so is the small group work, fundamental to the theory of social constructivism. Environments play an additional role in supporting the play that takes place in small groups within classrooms and studios—and in our outdoor settings, as well.
Essential to how we keep the game of learning alive is the role of the teacher—not just in selecting materials and preparing settings, but also in listening and asking the right kinds of questions (trying not to give information, but to provoke a variety of answers or solutions). As teachers, we are always part of a learning process and we must develop our ability to know when to enter the children’ s explorations and when to stay back and observe. . .In this almost intuitive way of working, we learn more about how children carry out their research and we are able to construct our knowledge together with the children. We are all learning how to learn, developing a research attitude and creating “possible realities” (Giacopini, 2011).
We encourage parents, as children’ s first and most important teachers, to also engage in our game of learning, honoring children’ s—and adults’ —right to “meaning-seeking” and “meaning-making.”
Warm wishes for a healthy and happy New Year,
Nancy
Click on the links below or scroll down for this month’s topics:
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Thank You
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Food, Toy and “Warm Sock” Drives
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Music Committee Updates
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Welcome, Sarah and Lori!
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Lunch Possibilities at PPS in the 2012-2013 School Year
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Health Reminders
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2012-2013 Preschool Year—Class Placement Information Meeting
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2012-2013 Preschool Year—Tuition & Calendar Information
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An Afternoon with Teachers
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Sensory Processing
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CPK Day for PPS
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Winter Session Hundred Languages Small Groups
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Calendar
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Preschool Mission Statement
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Pictures from School Events
Thank You
The holiday celebrations in each classroom were wonderful! “Thank you” to the parents who shared their family traditions with us last month, bringing in lovely and interesting stories and photos, songs, candles, delicious foods and treats. Your participation in the classroom celebrations supports the children’ s developing sense of community and budding appreciation of diversity within each class.
Food, Toy and “Warm Sock” Drives
The December Charity Committee members, the Westside Food Bank and Connections for Children would like to express appreciation to PPS families for your generous response in the form of food, toys and donations for the purchase of warm socks. These local organizations distributed our donations to less fortunate families in the greater Westside community. Committee chairperson, Mary Nadler, was able to place an order of about $300 for warm socks for residents of a shelter in our area! –Special thanks to Annaka Harris, Lisa Fitzgerald, Simona Patierno, Kristin Grannis, Dalit Toledano, and Luciana Souza.
In the early spring of this year, our Outreach Committee will be organizing opportunities for our community to help homeless families with children in cooperation with Upward Bound House, an organization located in our neighborhood, and to participate in a beach clean-up in partnership with Heal the Bay. Please look for more information about these two outreach initiatives.
Music Committee Updates
Members of our PPS Music Committee met last month to share ideas for enriching children’ s musical experiences at our preschool. Led by Julie and Tim Smith, the committee is encouraging parents to make appointments with teachers in order to visit classrooms and share their musical talents with the children. Julie Cantor is planning to bring her flute to the Rosemary room in the coming weeks and Emily Chase will bring her guitar and beautiful singing voice to the Sunflower room. Luciana Souza and Larry Klein have offered to begin a catalogued music library for our community! Please let us know if you would like to participate in the musical life of our school. You can speak with Tim, Julie or Nancy. Thank you.
Welcome, Sarah and Lori!
We are pleased to welcome Sarah Bieda to our faculty as a substitute atelierista while Summer Jefferson is on her maternity and childcare leave. Sarah has recently moved to Santa Monica from the East Coast where she was a working artist, showing her paintings in numerous galleries in New York and Maryland. She has a BFA from Pratt Institute, School of Art & Design, and held an independent studio residency in Florence, Italy—primarily in Painting and Film—a few years ago.
As part of her journey, Sarah developed a love of working with children. She has worked in the classroom setting, teaching art to children (ages 3 to 5) with a wide range of developmental disabilities including Autism, ADD/ADHD and expressive language disorders. Sarah also worked in private childcare for families with young children. In addition to art, she has studied psychology and cultural anthropology and is interested in taking more classes related to early childhood education.
We would also like to welcome Lori Gregorio to our faculty each Monday as a specialist teacher. Lori has numerous years of experience as a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teacher and is currently finishing her Master of Human Development degree at Pacific Oaks in Pasadena. Lori will be sharing her love of music & movement in our classrooms. She also loves to bake and garden with young children. (Her thesis topic is about the benefits of gardening in early childhood education!) Lori has taught at the Pacific Oaks Children’ s School and at Bella Vita, a small Reggio inspired preschool in Los Gatos, California.
Lunch Possibilities at PPS in the 2012-2013 School Year
As part of our continued wish to inspire children’ s learning and growth by creating a beautiful environment as the setting for their development, we are considering the possibility of serving a catered lunch for the children, Monday through Thursday of every week. This potential improvement was inspired, in part, by the recent trip to Reggio Emilia, where the kitchen and the children’ s meals are central to their educational experience.
In researching the possibility of cooking a lunch in St. Paul’ s Parish Hall kitchen each day, we learned that the regulations governing the lunch preparation would require very expensive renovations to the kitchen and the hiring of a certified person to do the shopping and cooking. Instead of undertaking this large scale project, we are investigating the feasibility and cost of ordering a catered lunch each day from a local restaurant or company that specifically offers children’ s meals.
Our vision is for the lunches to be served to (and by) the children in each classroom—with tablecloths and appropriate plates and utensils. (Our dishwasher currently sterilizes all of the children’ s plates and cups used for snacks –and we would also wash the lunch plates, cups and utensils in our dishwasher.) Healthful menus would be created in advance for the week or month and we would like for parents and children to take part in organizing the selections. We are trying to make the cost reasonable and not too much more than the cost of packing a lunch for children each day.
Ultimately, we would like for the catered lunch to become a part of our program—not be an optional service. Part of the purpose of the lunch is to create a civilized community-building experience for the children that encourages appropriate table manners and conversation. Lunch boxes and the many containers and kinds of food that are part of our present lunchtime do not really contribute to the kind of shared eating experience that we would like to offer the children—and teachers.
During this next month, we will be sharing more information about the possible cost of a catered lunch and special considerations for children with food allergies or other special diets. We will be asking for parent response via an email survey later in January.
We would like to base our decision regarding Lunch for the 2012-13 school year upon parent input, realizing that our annual tuition for the coming school year will already include an additional cost in the form of an 11th month in our preschool calendar. Please look for an email survey in the next few weeks. We look forward to your response. Thank you.
Health Reminders
The return to school this month signals to us once again the importance of maintaining a safe and healthy environment for the children and for the teachers—especially during the cold and flu season. We do our best to keep toys, plates, cups, and surfaces clean, following the guidelines required by our state licensing agency. We also make sure that children and adults wash their hands frequently during the school day.
We strongly request that parents also do their part to prevent the spread of illness and infection by keeping children home when they show symptoms of illness which may include:
- unusual irritability or fatigue
- fever
- a runny nose that includes green or yellow mucous
- a deep or persistent cough
- complaint of an earache
- complaint of an upset stomach
- an undiagnosed skin rash
Teachers and directors will call parents during the day if we observe signs of illness and we will request that children go home early. Please check with Karen to make sure that we have current contact information for the adults listed on your emergency contacts form.
Please be sure to call or email us when your child is absent and we especially ask that you notify us right away if your child is diagnosed with a particularly contagious illness. Children should remain at home until they are fever-free for 24 hours—or, in the case of contagious illnesses such as chicken pox or conjunctivitis, for example, a doctor’ s written confirmation that the child may return to school is required. Thank you for your cooperation and consideration.
2012-2013 Preschool Year—Class Placement Information Meeting
Recent changes in California’ s admission age for public kindergarten will impact our own classroom organization for the coming school year. We anticipate that several 4 year old children in the current Dandelion room with fall birthdays (who will attend PPS for a third year before starting kindergarten in the 2013 school year) will move to the Sunflower room in the coming fall, causing some reorganization of the current Cherry Blossom and Rosemary children when they move up to the Dandelion and Sunflower rooms for the 2012-2013 school year.
Choices about the placements of Cherry Blossom and Rosemary room children will be based primarily upon birthdates, but we would also like to take into consideration children’ s friendships, as well as balances of boys and girls per class. It is our plan for at least one teacher from each team to move with members of her current group to the next classroom, respecting the importance of relationships between children and their teachers.
Parents whose children are currently in the Cherry Blossom and Rosemary classes are invited to meet with Nancy on Tuesday, Jan. 10th at 9:15 in the Library (or Parish Hall) to talk about possible class placements for the next school year. Please RSVP to Karen by Monday, Jan. 9th. Thank you.
2012-2013 Preschool Year—Tuition & Calendar Information
Our administrators and Board of Trustees are currently involved in the process of figuring the tuition and fees for the 2012-2013 school year. Letters with this information and applications for the coming school year will be mailed to returning families on Friday, January 13th.
As announced last fall, PPS will be adding an 11th month to our annual calendar, starting school in mid-August of 2012 and ending the school year in mid-June, 2013. The extension of the PPS preschool calendar will be reflected in the new tuition amounts.
Applications for returning children are due to Karen by Friday, Jan. 27th.
Enrollment Agreements will be mailed to returning and new families on Friday, Feb. 3rd.
The signed Enrollment Agreement and $500 registration fee are due to Karen no later than Wednesday, Feb. 15th.
We will then know if we have spaces for any additional new families and will be contacting them in late February to let them know we are offering their child a space in our program. With a full toddler program and many applications for the new school year, we will need to adhere to our deadlines so that we can make timely enrollment decisions for 2012-2013.
The June, 2013 tuition payment will be due on June 1st, 2012.
Please keep in mind that we ask that children in the Dandelion and Sunflower rooms attend school 5 days per week. And, please speak with Nancy if you are interested in applying for financial assistance; we do give priority to returning families when awarding financial aid each school year. Please contact Nancy if you have any questions. Thank you.
An Afternoon with Teachers
Rosemary Room Teachers, Nathalie Fournet and Tanya Folsom, invite the parents of children in their class to join them and additional members of our faculty on Wednesday, Jan. 11 from 1:20 to 2:30 p.m. in the Rosemary Room. The meeting’ s focus is to look together at selected examples of recent documentation and to share information about the process of documenting the children’ s play for the purpose of creating curriculum based upon the observations. The teachers will post an RSVP for this event. Childcare will be provided free of charge.
Cherry Blossom Room Teachers, Anne Roberts and Lisette Sandoval, will hold An Afternoon with Teachers on Wednesday, Jan. 25th from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m. Childcare will also be provided free of charge.
Sensory Processing
“Sensory processing refers to how people use the information provided by all the sensations coming from within the body and from the external environment. We usually think of the senses as separate channels of information, but they actually work together to give us a reliable picture of the world and our place in it. Your senses integrate to form a complete understanding of who you are, where you are, and what is happening around you. . .Sensory Modulation refers to how the central nervous system organizes the way it responds to sensory stimuli. If a person has sensory modulation difficulty, his responses to sensory input may be out of proportion to the actual experience, and he may be overresponsive, underresponsive or engage in sensory seeking behaviors” (Biel & Peske, 2005).
If this is a topic that sounds interesting to you as a parent, you might like to read Biel and Peske’ s book, Raising a Sensory Smart Child.
You might also like to join our guest speaker, Melissa Idelson, an occupational therapist from Child Success Center in Santa Monica, on February 3rd at 9:15 a.m. in our Library (or Parish Hall). Melissa is an experienced specialist in the field of sensory integration and sensory processing difficulties. She has spoken with our faculty about this very important aspect of young children’ s learning and development and we have invited her to share her expertise with our parent community.
Please RSVP to Karen.
CPK Day for PPS
On Friday, Jan. 20 the Santa Monica California Pizza Kitchen on Wilshire Blvd. will donate a percentage of each lunch and/or dinner tab to our preschool—with the presentation of the flyer for the event. This is a “fun-raiser” as much as a “fund-raiser” for our community and is something board member, Jennifer Mirner, arranges for us on 2 dates each school year. It is great fun to head over to CPK right after our 12:30 dismissal and have lunch with friends! –Flyers will be available the week of Jan. 17.
Winter Session Hundred Languages Small Groups
- Monday
Spanish with Sylvia from 1:45 to 2:15 - Tuesday
Ballet with Laura from 1:45 to 2:30 - Wednesday
Sewing with Valeria from 1:45 to 2:30 - Thursday
Karate with Carol from 1:45 to 2:15
After-school Small Groups start the week of Jan. 9. Please see Karen to enroll.
January Calendar
- Jan. 3—Teachers & directors return
- Jan. 4—Preschool classes resume for children
- Jan. 9—New Toddler Explorations session begins After-school Small Groups begin
- Jan. 10—Cherry Blossom/Rosemary parent meeting with Nancy at 9:15 a.m.
- Jan. 11—An Afternoon with Teachers—Rosemary teachers & parents—from 1:20 to 2:30 p.m. (Alfie Kohn to speak at Willows Community School in the evening)
- Jan. 12—PPS Board of Trustees meeting
- Jan. 13—Applications and new tuition schedules mailed to returning families
- Jan. 16—Preschool closed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday
- Jan. 18—Susan Stone, MFT, to talk with parents about Limit Setting at 9:15 in the Library
- Jan. 20—California Pizza Kitchen Small Fundraiser (from 12:30 through dinner hour)
- Jan. 25—An Afternoon with Teachers—Cherry Blossom teachers & parents, from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m.
- Jan. 27—Applications for the 2012-2013 school year due from returning families
February Calendar
- Feb. 3—Enrollment Agreements mailed to new and returning families Feb. 15—Signed Agreement and $500 registration fee due to Karen
Preschool Mission Statement
Our mission is to serve our community by offering a preschool experience for children and families that celebrates diversity, creativity and kindness. These values are embedded within a rich child-centered curriculum that provides individuals and groups with opportunities to investigate, explore and express themselves through meaningful play.
Pictures from School Events
Holiday Songfest
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Holiday Sharing
Teacher/Parent Meetings
Educator Tour
