TCNS E-NEWS

Just some quick reminders...

Parent Child Meditation Workshop:
Friday, April 20^th   2:00 – 2:45. 
Cost $5 / pair. 

Children must be at least 4 years old.  Space is limited! 

RSVP to sue@trinitywilmette.org

Emerald City Theater Troupe is coming to Trinity on May 3 at 4:15 to perform If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.   

Friends of Trinity welcome!
Admission is a new or gently used book. 
We will be collecting books for the entire month of May and donate them to Bernie’s Books, an organization dedicated to promoting literacy in underprivileged areas. 

If you are purchasing Grocery Dollars and Giftscards, the forms are due on Friday, April 20^th

Have a wonderful week!! 

TCNS e-NEW & Behind the 4am & 4pm

TCNS e-News Week of April 2nd

We are in the home stretch, but there are LOTS of fun things ahead! 

 Take out your calendars and make note of the following UPCOMING EVENTS:

Parent / Child Mediation Workshop on Friday, April 20th: 
For ages 4 and up only. 

This 45 minute workshop is a follow-up to the March 8th Parent Workshop on Building Resilience.  

Fee is $5.  Space is limited so register early to sue@trintywilmette.org.  

Reach Out and Read Kickoff on Thursday, May 3rd at 4:15. 

The Emerald City Theater Troupe will be on site to present
"If You Give a Cat A Cookie." 

Admission will be one new or gently used book that we will donate to Bernie’s Books, an organization dedicated to bringing books to underprivileged kids. 

We are proud to partner will Bernie’s Books to promote literacy!   Friends and alums welcome!
 

End of the Year Celebration on May 20th: 
Dennis DeBondt will return to entertain our kids with his hilarious brand of magic!

Optional pizza party to follow. 

Behind the Classroom Doors...
4AM & 4PM

Fun things are happening in class! 

The classes kicked off their art unit with Van Gogh. 
They learned about still life art and painted a still life in the style of Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. 

Soon they will learn about Picasso, Monet, and Matisse, and our art gallery will GROW.

This was a busy week with Centers, Music, Spanish, and….. Cooking!


The kids cut corn tortillas, painted oil on them and baked them for homemade tortilla chips!

They used the chips to dip into their homemade guacamole. 

Thank you, Miss Laurie, for the fun cooking projects!

Of course, they also had lots of time to play with their friends – both inside and outside!

If you have not already done so, please stop by your local school to register for Kindergarten. 

The District will conduct the AM/PM lottery later this month.

Behind the Classroom Doors 3PM & 4s (3/23/12)

A look behind the classroom doors of 3pm, 4am & 4pm...

3 PM

We had the BEST time during our nutrition unit and we saved the very best for last!  

On Monday the kids dictated responses to the questions,

“What did you, learn about food?”
and
“What was your favorite activity during our food unit?” 

All the hands on cooking was a big hit with everyone! 

On Wednesday we took a pretend trip to the Trinity Restaurant.  

We moved one of our little tables to the parlor and set it with a tablecloth plus a vase with flowers.

We explained to the kids that the teacher would be a hostess, waitress, chef, and cashier. 

Lillian then said,
“But then you change back into a teacher, right?!”  

Each child had a menu and enough money to order 1 of everything on the menu. 

When the check came they needed to figure out how much to pay the cashier.  

It was fun and challenging!!  

One aspect of the trip to the restaurant that is hard to capture in words, is how they took on a “fancy restaurant persona.”

  
Picture the kids with their napkins on the their laps displaying manners fit for a king / queen! 
It was so fun!

Today we donned chef hats and made personal pizzas!! 

They were DELICIOUS!!! 

I strongly recommend Trader Joe’s Pizza Dough!! 

And, if they wanted a pizza with the works then every food group was represented!

Combine all that fun inside with lots of running around outside... and you have a great week!! 

The 4s AM & PM

We blasted off into fun territory – space!! 

We are learning about the planets and the sun, and using the appropriate vocabulary such as orbit. 
(The planets orbit the sun!) 

We enjoyed acting this out – one child is the sun and several children are the planets. 

The planets rotate as they orbit. 
All of a sudden – these words have meaning to the children!!   

The absolute best part of this week was that we spent lots of time outside in our playground! 

Wow – what a gift!!

 

More from 4AM

Had a visit from Kari for Spanish and Valerie Dashiell for science. 

We had 3 centers on Centers Day.

At one center the kids played alphabet sound bingo.  

At another center the kids did a dot to dot and number tracing worksheet using the numbers 1 – 20. 

At the third center the kids worked together to write a story. 

Every child added to the story. 
Then they acted it out. 

We will be doing lots more of this after break!

 

4PM

On Tuesday we used the letter vests to sound out short A words. 

The kids are getting GREAT at this – they are starting to crack the code!!

We also had a visit from Kari for Spanish and Valerie Dashiell for science.   

 

We had 2 centers on Centers Day. 

At one center the kids did a dot to dot and number tracing worksheet using the numbers 1 – 20. 

At the other center the kids worked together to write a story. 

Every child added to the story. 
Then they acted it out. 

We will be doing lots more of this after break!

Drum roll please...

Our fundraising team has been very busy reconciling, calculating, and crunching numbers and …. 

the grand total of our Benefit is $49,000 net! 

 Thank you all so VERY, VERY much for your generous support of our school!  

 The money raised from our benefit will be used to finance our Music Programs,  Science Program, Spanish, Teaching Assistants and special projects.   

We could NEVER have done it without YOU!!!!  

Speaking of the Benefit

Here are some great pics taken by 

Michelle Flood, Kimberly Newman and Alton Smith...

 

 

e-News March 9th, 2012

Parent teacher Conferences are March 15 and March 16.  

There is no school or Lunch Bunch those days.  

The TCNS families are invited to a St. Patrick Potluck at Trinity Church on March 18 at noon.  

There will be a performance by the Sheila Tully Irish Dancers, which will have you dancing in your seats! 

Please RSVP to Heather Hester or (847) 251-1485 and let her know if you can bring a salad, main dish, dessert or beverage as well as how many people will be attending. 

This will be a very fun family event and a great way to introduce your little ones to Irish Dance!

Benefit Follow-up:  

Watch for your folder to arrive in your child’s cubbie!  

Your folder contains any certificates you won and contact information for parties and other auction items.  

Due to a problem with the server in TUMC, we have not processed ANY of the credit cards.  

The repair on the server will be completed today and credit cards will be processed next week.   

To make your payment by check, simply put the payment in the fundraising basket in your classroom, or give it to your teacher. 

Watch for a separate email regarding a fundraising survey!

Your input is crucial to our planning!  When your survey arrives, please take the time to fill it out and return it to your child’s teacher/classroom.  Thank you!

Now let's go behind the classroom doors...

3-4s Classroom...

Hi Everyone!

Our nutrition unit has been providing lots of hands on fun!

On Monday we learned about the Dairy Group.  

We made a list of the ALWAYS foods in the group, and noted that even though ice cream is in this group, the added sugar makes it a SOMETIMES food.  

The kids really get it!

Our activity for Monday was a personal favorite of the teachers.  

We filled vinyl gloves with water, hung them with a clothespin on our drying rack, and put pin-pricks at the fingertips.  Then the kids squeezed on the fingers and aimed for the bucket below them.  

Can you picture it???  

YES!!  
We “milked a cow!!”  
They loved it! 

On Wednesday we learned about vegetables.   

We studied the shape and color of an eggplant, tomato, carrot (with green top!), and green beans and captured our observations in a still life painting.  

Check them out on our bulletin board!
Your kids did an amazing job!  

On this same day we also made our own garden salad to take home!
Your kids enjoyed the slicing and dicing!  
We hope they enjoyed the eating!

Finally, we learned about fruits and made our own fruit salad.  
There was a lot to slice, and most kids enjoyed eating the fruit with their regular snack.

4-5s Classroom...

Ah….. we had a taste of Camelot this week!

We had Knights, and Kings and Queens and Princesses!  

It was all very enchanting!  

To add to the excitement, Mr. Louis set up our life-size castle in the room on Monday night!

We cancelled Spanish this week because of the ball, but Miss Kari returns on Tuesday!

At centers this week the activities were a number recognition and number value lesson with graphing;  a letter recognition activity; and storytelling plus sequencing.  

This last center is very timely because after conferences the children will begin to work together in small groups to create short stories and then act them out!  

We plan on sharing 3 of these mini-plays with parents at the end of the year.  
More details to come in April!
___________________________________________
 
And that is a peak into our 3/4s and 4/5s classrooms from last week.
 

Thank you for sharing our wonderful children with us!!  

We are so proud of their accomplishments!!!

Behind the 4-5s Classroom Door... (March 1st, 2012)

Life is so wonderful in our classes – you might even say it’s a bit like Camelot!

Your kids are enjoying all the discussion of castles and life in the middle ages.  

This will culminate with our Camelot Ball on Tuesday, March 6th. 

Parents are invited to join us for the last 15 minutes of class to enjoy the dubbing ceremony and the dancing.  

We had an especially FUN time at Centers today. 

One was an art center and the children decorated castles. 

One center was devoted to graphing jelly bean stickers to match a corresponding number.  

The final center was a blast!
The children were shown picture cards and as a group they named the initial sound.   Then, they wrote that letter – in shaving cream!

FUN!!!!

Kari Grace comes once a week to do a Spanish circle time complete with songs and movement activities.  

The children know colors, numbers, some weather words, family words, and common nouns. 

And they are learning it all while having FUN!
 
So….. that’s a peek behind our doors.......  into Camelot!!

Behind the 3PM Classroom Doors...

3pm Class Update

It’s been a while since our last class update and there is LOTS to report!!   

We never told you how ADORABLE your kids were at the Valentine’s Day party.    

We made a circle of chairs and each child went around and mailed their own cards.    

 They loved it!!

 Your kids really enjoy cooking!

We are now studying nutrition, or as we call it - 

Food That Makes Your Body Grow.    

We begin by introducing the concept of healthy food  as food that can be eaten always, and non-healthy food as food that can only be eaten sometimes and in small amounts.    

 

Today each child was given a picture of food and they needed to decide if their food belonged on the SOMETIMES or ALWAYS side of our chart.

We will soon learn more about each food group.   

We will slice, dice, cook, and taste our way through this unit!  

 Our studies will culminate with a trip to the Trinity Restaurant!  Fun never tasted so good!!

Miss Laurie recently delighted us with 2 cooking activities.  

 Check out the recipes below.   

CHOCOLATE DIPPED PRETEZLES

Put peppermint candy in sealed baggies and crush them with toy hammers.

Melt chocolate chips.

(Adding a spoonful of Crisco to the chips before your melt them ensures that the chocolate stays soft.)  

Roll pretzel logs in melted chocolate

Sprinkle peppermint candy on top

 

SOFT PRETZELS

 Mix and let sit 5 to 10 minutes:
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
2 tablespoons brown sugar
 
Mix together and combine with wet ingredients:
1 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup bread flour
3 cups regular flour

Knead and shape into pretzels. (We made our initials)   Bake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees or until done.
 
Have fun!