Faith Lutheran Preschool eNews: Newsletter 10/1/14

Important Dates to Remember:
October 6th - "Making Life Better" class with Pastor Ewings; 6:30PM-8:00PM
October 17th - End of First Quarter; noon dismissal
October 24th - Faith's Harvest Carnival; 6:30PM-8:30PM

Special Notes:
The termination dust is back on the mountains! That means that snow is right around the corner. Please make sure you pack appropriate snow gear for your child when and if it starts to snow or become much colder.

In order to make it easier for you to attend the "Making Life Better" classes with Pastor Ewings, we will be providing free care for your child(ren) in our preschool room while you're upstairs attending class. Please speak to the director if you plan on bringing your children and need care!

We just experienced a strong earthquake last week. That brought to mind comfort kits. Please work on those comfort kits and bring those in to us as soon as they're ready!

THIS WEEK’S LITERACY EXPERIENCES
Morning Books
"The Very Cranky Bear" by Nick Bland
"Freight Train" by Donald Crews
"Hattie and the Fox" by Mem Fox
"Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr.

Afternoon Books
"Five Little Monkeys: Storybook Treasury" by Eileen Christelow

PLANNING & RECALL
This week during planning and recall time, we played “spin the bottle” with an old water bottle. At recall time, when children think about their work time experiences, they gradually begin to associate what they did with the plans before they started. They begin to develop a consciousness of purpose, realizing that planning prior to doing gives them control of their actions through the entire plan-do-review process.

BIBLE LESSON
This week we hear about the family of a man named Isaac, who was the gracious fulfillment of the promise of a son God gave to Abraham and Sarah. Isaac grew up and was blessed with a wife named Rebekah. They had twin boys named Jacob and Esau. Because of sin in this world, Jacob lied to his father Isaac to receive the blessing and inheritance that was meant for Esau, the eldest twin. When Esau found out that Jacob lied to receive the birthright, he was very angry and vowed to kill his brother Jacob. With more lies and deception, Rebekah helped her son Jacob escape, and used the reason of finding a wife from Rebekah’s homeland as a reason for leaving. They didn't tell Isaac the true reason for leaving – that it was to escape being killed. As Jacob traveled to his mother’s family’s land, he stopped to rest one night, using a stone as a pillow. That night God came to Jacob in a dream. In his dream, Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a stairway to heaven. At the top of the stairs stood God himself, who promised Jacob that he would give him the land of Canaan one day, that Jacob’s family would be large in number, and one day the Savior would come from his family. He promised to be with Jacob always, and to return him home safely one day. God loves us so much that he didn't let sinful men get in the way of his plan of salvation. Forgive us for our sins, Lord, and thank you for sending your Son Jesus to die in our place!

Bible verse: Isaiah 41:10 "Do not fear, for I am with you."
Bible song: "Cast All Your Anxiety On Him"

MUSIC
The new aspect of rhythm introduced this week is steady beat. Of all the basic individual abilities that are necessary to function musically, none ranks as important as feeling and performing the steady beat. Research indicates that if the ability to respond to and perform steady beats is not acquired by the age of four or five, little can be done later in life to acquire it. Simple ways to include keeping the beat in songs include clapping along, using rhythm instruments, and moving to music. We are clapping and using rhythm sticks to keep the beat to the song “Hey, Betty Martin”. In our other song “Seesaw, Margery Daw”, we use our bodies in a see-saw motion to keep the beat.

MOVEMENT
This week during Movement Time, we continue our work with ribbons. We review our song "Elephant Rainbow" to begin, and then move on to ribbon challenges such as jumping over our ribbons, making different shapes in the air with them, or touching them to different parts of our body. Our second song this week is “Kuma San”. This is a song about a teddy bear. Kuma San is his Japanese name for Mr. Bear. With this song, children have a chance to manipulate their ribbon wands as Kuma San tells us what to do—turn around, touch the ground, move our feet, keep the beat, jump up high, or touch the sky.

SMALL GROUP TIME
The KDI for this week’s small group activities is predicting. Young children are naturally experimenters and testers. As we observe children trying to make sense of the world around them, we see them using science processes such as observing, classifying, experimenting, and predicting. These are the early forms of the scientific method at work. This week's science focus is on predicting as we try to determine what will happen when we place skittles in water, and what happens to a bottle of Diet Coke when we place some Mentos candy in it. We watch pop rocks expand a balloon over a bottle of Coke, and we observe and predict what will happen as we make our own lava lamps and balloon airplanes.