March 2020 Dickinson College Children's Center
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Dickinson College Children’s Center
March 2020
We are getting closer to Spring every day! It has been lots of fun using the Big Room, allowing the kids to continue with
their large motor play even when it is too cold or rainy to go outside.
The Children’s Center Kindergarten Program still has two openings for the 2020-21 school year. If interested in the Kin-
dergarten Program, full day or Kindergarten only (9-3PM), please contact the center office. We have added some new op-
tions for tuition as well. We continue to work with the college to implement a cultural program as well as a language pro-
gram within our Kindergarten curriculum.
It’s that time of year again to start preparing for our Summer School Age Program. Both camps will be held from June 1st to
August 13th. We will be hiring a few new teachers to help us out for the summer and we can’t wait to get started. Current-
ly, we are scheduling buses, field trips and activities for the camp programs. If interested in enrolling in the Summer
School Age Program, please feel free to call the center office.
There will be a 2% tuition increase that will go into effect on July 6. Your child’s new rates will be shared on an updated
agreement form at the end of April.
We want to welcome Antionette Halabi as she will be working with us as a substitute:
My name is Antoinette Halabi, I am married with 2 daughters and a baby granddaughter! I am originally from Lebanon where I went to
school for Early Childhood Education and have been a French teacher for over 20 years. I love working with children and have been
working in specifically in childcare for about 6 years. I speak French, Arabic, and learned English when I came to the United States
about 25 years ago and enjoy flying back to see loved ones.
During February, all staff and substitutes were trained in both Fire Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Staff reviewed the
hands on steps in using a fire extinguisher and discussed evacuation procedures. Emergency Relocations and the steps in-
volved in an Intruder Drill were also discussed and reviewed at this time.
We have been working very hard on our projections for our fall class assignments. Information about the fall move ups and
classroom changes were shared at the February Parent Meeting. An email will be sent out within the next few weeks to
notify all families of their child’s classroom placement for next fall. Spring conferences will be offered in the evening on
April 21st and the 23rd and will be a great time to discuss your child’s move up, review and resign their paperwork. Now
that all of our groups are set, we have begun the enrollment process for the new children.
The Children’s Center will be closed on March 13th for a training day. Some of the teachers and substitutes will review
their Pediatric First Aid certification while other staff will renew their Child Abuse and complete their Teaching Strategies
Gold Introduction online trainings. At the end of the day, all staff will attend a staff meeting and complete the day with a
training; Self-Care for Teachers-Developing a mindful practice to enhance the classroom environment.
On March 19th DCCC will hold the annual Pigeon Palooza for center preschool and Kindergarten families from 6-7:30 PM.
The preschool teachers together will read the stories of Mo Willems and provide crafts and literacy activities for families to
participate in. A special snack will be provided to all children. The center received funds from a Family Engagement
Grant offered through Success By Six of the United Way of Carlisle in order to offer a free book to all those center children
that attend the event.
We are excited to share that we will be hosting our first Art Show on Thursday, April 16th . and Grandparents Day will be
on Friday ,April 17th. We will send out details closer to the date.
Have a great month and enjoy the weather!
~GINA VANKIRK, DIRECTOR
Dates to Remember:
Friday March 13—DCCC Closed for Staff Training
Thursday March 19—Pigeon-palooza for Preschool and Kindergarten
6:00—7:30 p.m.
Pancake Breakfast totals
Tickets $2,842 Silent Auction $2,225
Bake Sale $205
Total: $5,153.91 Book Fair $800 in free books!!
Pancake Breakfast 2019 $5,097
Fundraising Total So far: $12,698.05
Still to Go: $2,301.95
We have so many exciting and EASY PEASY fundraisers coming up that par-
ticipation will be irresistible! Do you love the Li’l Angels pictures of your
kids, especially in Spring? Do you need to make dinner? Do you appreciate
when it’s already made? And healthy? Do you love to treat yourself or your
kids to dessert? Do you love to order artwork that your child created to
have a keepsake for yourself or as a gift?
Then these Spring fundraisers will be perfect for you!
Li’l Angels was here March 3rd for infants, toddlers, & siblings, then March 4th for
preschool/Kindergarten. The smiles were precious and we can’t wait to see the
portrait proofs!
We have started the sandwich fundraiser with Gary Ulrich Fundraising. You can
purchase sandwiches or subs. Be sure to take these to your department at work!
They package them up and label them for you, so no work on your part at all!
Plus!.. the classroom with the highest amount sold will win an hour to them-
selves on the playground with special activities!
April 28th is Chipotle Night Out!!
Ducklings
In February we celebrated Valentine’s Day with heart shapes, hugs and kisses, stories, songs and mak-
ing some special valentines for our families. We spent lots of time playing in the big room where we
Reminders:
practiced using our large motor skills. We are moving and shaking in the room with a few walkers, a
bunch of crawlers, and a few scoochers! Thank you, parents, for your for your participation in the
*Please con-
annual Pancake Breakfast.
tinue to label
ALL bottles
and personal
clothing
items.
March is a fun month of transition to spring! We will watch for the early signs of spring, take nature
walks, and experience kite-shapes and green shamrocks in our classroom environment. We will paint *Make sure
and color in shades of green. We will listen to Celtic music, and dance with rainbow ribbons. We will finger foods
celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday with board book readings of fun, nonsensical, rhyming words. We will
are cut in ap-
continue to label our body parts and our feelings, as we learn more about ourselves. As of March, three
propriate size
of our classmates have entered officially into the stage of young toddler with their milestone first
pieces for
birthdays. It is a stage of increasing independence. We will practice washing hands, putting away our
your child.
toys, self-dressing, eating solids from spoons and forks, drinking from sippy cups and self-feeding
simple table foods. Young toddlers are ready to give up being spoon fed pureed foods and they love the
newfound independence of being able to feed themselves…great for their fine motor development and
their self-esteem! Always introduce new foods at home before sending them in to the Center to be sure
your baby doesn’t have a food sensitivity. Review the choking hazard list and remember we are a pea-
nut-free and tree nut-free center (this includes mango, which surprisingly is considered a member of
the tree nut family). Our one -year-olds will gradually wean themselves from their bottle feedings over
the course of the coming months. Our younger group of infants learn so much by watching and by
engaging in the activities of the older ones. Now, let’s get ready to celebrate spring!
~LACI, STEPHANIE, & MIMI
Yellow Pups
February was a fun month in our room! We focused on love, but we stayed busy incorporating lots
of subjects into the month! We talked about our body parts this month. We loved pointing to our
eyes, ears, mouth, nose, elbows, knees, and toes. We also talked about our teeth this month. We painted with tooth-
brushes, looked at our teeth, and talked about brushing. We spent time making pretty hearts, painting with paintbrush-
es, and creating some fun individualized Valentine’s day art. We hope you liked them!
March is going to be a month full of books! We will spend time listening to books by Dr. Seuss, Sandra Boynton, Eric
Carle, and our favorite series of touchy-feely books and we will create art to go with the books we read, sing many
songs that go with the books, and even eat some special snacks! Sponge painting, making handprint fish, and creating
butterfly art, are some of the activities to which we look forward. Perhaps most of all, we are excited to be spending
more time outside as it hopefully warms up a bit!
~ DIANA & ALISHA
FAMILY REMINDERS:
*Please remember to that raw vegetables, such as
carrots and broccoli, are a choking hazard. They
need to be cooked for us to be able to offer them
to children in their lunches. Also, grapes must be
cut into quarters.
Make sure you are checking your child’s mailbox
daily!
Dickinson College Children’s Center Page 4
Blue Puppies
March is here, and spring is on its way!
The Puppies love to look at books and being read to, so we will be enjoying lots of books from some popular children’s
authors and having fun with art activities. Here are some of the authors we will be enjoying weekly through out the
month….
Dr. Seuss ~ Eric Carle ~ Sondra Boyton ~ Iza Tampani ~ Eileen Christelow
If you have any books by these wonderful authors please feel free to share with us!
Don’t forget to wear your green on Tuesday the 17th. The puppies will be getting into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit by paint-
ing with green paint, counting leprechauns, coloring a shamrock, and listening to Celtic music (instrumental) during nap.
We are hoping to start taking some outside walks now that the weather is getting warmer and we will get to see some
signs of spring.
The puppies are doing great with identifying colors and counting, we will be doing some matching activities that help us
build on this skill. We also love building with Duplos (big Legos)! It’s a great fine motor activity.
REMINDERS:
~please make sure to label ALL items in your child’s lunch box.
~CATHRYN & DONNA
Yellow Honey Bees
February was the perfect month for us to talk about our emotions. Many of the children are becoming increasingly
social; and therefore are experiencing new emotional responses to interactions they are having with one another.
This month we helped the children understand the different emotions that they have, and learned strategies to use to
help calm themselves down. (Quiet area, read a book, breathing strategies, take a walk, talk about it). We also experi-
enced our first Valentine’s Day exchange. They loved the feeling of giving a Valentine to their friends.
Our theme for the month of March is Bonkers About Books. We will learn about authors and illustrators. We will
read many books written by Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, and Eric Litwin (The author of many Pete the Cat Books). We will
celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday, try some green eggs, and have a book reading competition with the Blue Bees. The
children will be able to bring in some of their favorite books from home.
Just a few reminders-
-The Center will be closed on Friday, March 13 for staff training.
-Spring conferences are on April 23. More information will be coming.
~BARB & MICHELE
Dickinson College Children’s Center Page 5
Blue Busy Bees
In February, the blue bees explored many emotions – happy, sad, angry, surprised, excited, scared. They talked about
how each emotion makes you feel and what it looks like on your face. They also had fun with many feelings projects
that required them to think about how the emotion makes a person look on the outside and feel on the inside. Our best
emotion was the emotion of Love the week of valentines. The blue bees felt happy and were very excited to pass out
their valentines to each other. We ended the month of February talking about community helpers. We discussed the
type of jobs that community helpers do, how they dress for those jobs, what they do while working at their job,
weather they must be brave to do their job and if they would like to grow up to do some of these jobs.
In March, the blue bees will be talking about books. We will learn about authors and illustrators, how to han-
dle books to keep them clean and in good repair. All of our projects and activities will center around the books that
we are reading. Please feel free to bring favorite books the entire month to share at school.
Also in March we will also be introducing some more challenging toys since we will
all be three!!. Some of the new toys will be small legos for building, more fine motor art tools,
matchbox cars to enhance our block area, higher thinking math and science manipulatives,
smaller blocks for building and more challenging floor puzzles.
In the room, we continue to work on the Big 3 (Be Safe, Kind & Responsible). Please
help us by helping your child to Be Safe, Kind & Responsible when in the hallway with them at
drop off and pick. Remind your child they must use walking feet, always stay with an adult,
watch for others in the hallway and that it is the parent’s responsibility to open the front door using the buttons, sign
the child in and out and open the classroom door as they enter.
Potty Training Update & Tips:
We have been working so hard on using the potty at school and if you haven’t done so
already, we ask that you be sure to encourage potty use at home as well. A good place
to start is sitting your child on the potty shortly after arriving home from school, at night
before their bath, before bed and in the morning after they awake. As your child begins to
progress, continue to follow our schedule (about every 1.5 or 2 hours) during the
day, when your child is not at school, to help create the consistency that your child
will need between home and school in order to be successful on the potty. Once your child has been in “big kid”
underwear, at home for a full week including the weekend, with very few accidents please feel free to send them in
underwear to school as well. Send a lot of extra clothes, just in case!
**Once your child begins to successfully wear underwear, please do not go back to diapers or pull-ups. We will
send home any leftover diapers or pull-ups for you to use at home.
**Some parents prefer to use pull-ups as a transition from diaper to underwear. If you choose to use pull-ups, we ask
that you use the brand with the openings on the sides in order to help make the changing process much easier and
quicker.
As of March 6th all the Blue Bees will be three. We would like at this time add an additional outside time at 9:00.
During this outside time those children that are wearing underwear will be able to visit the big playground if they
would like to. We will divide as a group and one teacher will take children over to the big playground and the other
teacher will take children to our current playground.
Reminders:
*If your child needs a fork to use at lunch time, you must provide it for them in their lunch box.
*Toys brought from home must stay in the car or go into your child’s cubby upon arrival.
Thank you for your cooperation and Happy Potty Training! Please let us know what questions
you have!
~JODY & CASSIE
Page 6 Pancake Breakfast News
Yellow Bear Cubs
The Teddy Bear room was a very busy place in February! We
talked about our feelings, and how to keep our friends feeling happy! We
now have a Solution Station in our room to help us solve our problems
when our feelings become unhappy! We had our dental week the last
week of February!
It will be a rhyming good time with our Dr. Seuss/rhyming weeks to kick off the
month of March! Our Balls unit will be next, and we are going to integrate and focus on colors as well! The
balls unit is where we will be talking about different balls, what they can and cannot do, their shape, color,
size, and more!
Teddy Bear Reminders:
* The weather will be transferring to spring (HOPEFULLY)! Dress your children in lay-
ers so as the weather turns warm throughout the day, they may be comfortable.
PLEASE UPDATE THE EXTRA CLOTHES BINS AS WELL!
* We are into our classroom birthdays, please take the time to review the birthday policy
in the parent handbook, feel free to be in contact with me on any questions or sugges-
tions if you would like to do something at school for your child.
Please remember that toys are not to be traveling from home to school except ONE SLEEP TOY to cud-
dle if needed! Our cubbies are rather small and overflow rather easily!
The center will be closed on Friday March 13th for staff development! ~MANDY & BRI
Blue Bears
We will begin March by celebrating Dr. Seuss
and many of his wonderful stories. We enjoy
being silly with the things we wear to school
and the silly activities we will do. Please check
our weekly lesson plans for more detail.
Don’t forget about Pigeon Palooza scheduled
for March 19, 6-7:30. This is always a super fun evening!
We will do a short unit on colors the week of St. Patrick’s Day as it ties in with rainbows. We will conclude
the month with a unit on Balls. We will do all kinds of activities, look at the inside
of balls we use for sport, what are they made of, why do some bounce higher than
others, etc.
As we move closer to spring, the weather will also be warming up and we will be
spending more time outside. The spring temperatures can be tricky please watch
the weather, so your child has the right coat for the
playground.
We will also be on the lookout for that crazy little leprechaun that visits us and
creates a mess each year. St. Patricks’ day is always fun and full of surprises!
Please note that the center will be closed March 13, for a staff development day.
~ ANGE & KENDRA
Dickinson College Children’s Center Page 7
Bunnies
February gave us all the feels! What a happy time the pancake breakfast was and
it was so great to see so many happy faces attending! We heard so
many great stories from the time the students spent there! Then
came Valentine’s day, where we discussed ways to show other
people how much we care. We took the time to discuss all of our
emotions; big ones, little ones, and all the feelings in between. We
are showing our teachers how we can manage our own emotions
and how to seek help when our emotions get too big to handle all
by ourselves. It made us all feel so proud to fill up our 100 acts of
kindness chart by the end of February!
We will kick off March celebrating Read Across America! We
will celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday by having a special Seuss
themed week! Celebrating such a famous and creative author will be
the perfect Segway for our Creative Curriculum Books unit! We’ll
explore books inside and out!
Here is hoping March comes in like a lamb instead of a lion! March
will be a fun month learning about the weather. The students will put
their own spin on it by wanting to learn weather words in Spanish!
They will be able to tell you “sunny” in Spanish is “soleado”, “partly
cloudy” is “parcialmente nublado”, and “cold” is “frio”. Their favorite
weather word, which we forecast a lot is, “windy” which is
“hace viento”. We noticed that the weather temperature was starting
to gradually rise towards the end of February, and that the warmer weather signals to a
lot of the animals that were hibernating that it is wake up time soon. An animal that
hibernates is the frog! We will jump right into this study with a lot of interest! We used
non-fiction books to give us facts about frogs. We will learn about their habitats, what
the difference is between a frog and a toad, and that frogs are a kind of Amphibian! We
will also read some fiction books that are silly
but teach us useful life lessons! You might hear that
we have a special visitor in our room, who happens
to be a frog, and his name is Hoppy (Stuffed ani-
mal ). He helps us remember and rewards us
when we follow our DCCC 3B rules; Be safe, be
kind, be responsible!
~ SARAH & CARLY
Page 8 Pancake Breakfast News
Kindergarten Dolphins News
February has been busy but so much fun. We learned about friendships and feelings, dental
health and wrapped up the month with our first week of Dr. Seuss
learning. During our friendship and feelings unit we learned about
how to be a good friend and what that means. We also continued to
talk about and practice how to express our own emotions and rec-
ognize emotions of other people. We also discovered that talking to
other kindly is great, but it is also important to say kind things to
ourselves by using positive self-talk. We wrapped up or friends and
feelings unit with Valentine’s day and gave cards to our friends
and teachers to show them how much we care.
Dental health we learned about our teeth and how to keep them
healthy and strong by brushing, flossing, eating healthy foods, and
visiting the dentist. During the first week of Dr. Seuss we are
learning about who Dr. Seuss was, who his characters are and practicing our rhyming skills. In
addition to our various themes during literacy we are working on editing our sentences so that they have capital letters
at the beginning followed by lowercase letters, and punctuation at
the end. We are also learning how to add descriptive words to our
sentences to give more information and make it more exiting to
read. Also, we learned about the “king of ING” and practiced writ-
ing words with that ending. In writing we are continuing to work on
writing lowercase letters and writing on primary lines.
During math we have been working on addition by learning about
the “plus sign” and the “equals symbol” and continuing to work on
number identification and counting on.
In March, we will continue to learn about Dr. Seuss and
then we will move into a week celebrating Mo Willems and a
week on nursery rhymes.
Invitations for the preschool/pre-k/kindergarten PIGEON PA-
LOOZA went out and you will start to see some familiar charac-
ters popping up around the center. The teachers love this event as
much as the kids do!
Dates to Remember:
3/6-Dress as your favorite Dr. Seuss Character
3/13-DCCC CLOSED for staff training
3/19-Pigeon Palooza 6:00-7:30
MS. BRITTNEY AND MS. BRI
Page 9 Pancake Breakfast News
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