As we wrap up another Friday before the break next week, we want to take the opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that it might include some restful time with your families over the break as well as some time for celebration. It seems that life gets very busy these days, and we all need to take a break to catch our breath, spend some quality time with family and friends, and if you’re like me, catch up on work around the house. Our JK Feast of Favorites was a wonderful celebration of our efforts to practice kindness and gratitude this month. The children worked so hard putting together our turkey costumes and cutting all of those feathers…one for each kind act! It was so wonderful seeing the children enjoy time with their special guests. How they loved to have their people here for lunch! The excitement could not be contained throughout the morning. We also enjoyed chatting with you and watching you all get to chat with each other. From the weather to the delicious food, it was a wonderful afternoon! Thank you all for your helping hands with set-up and/or breakdown, bringing such delicious culinary treats, and your continued support of our JK program. We couldn’t do what we do without you, and we are SO very thankful for our parents. This is one incredible JK FAmily!

Here is a video that we made of all of your sweet children singing a song that we learned this week about our Thanksgiving Feast!

Have a wonderful weekend, Parents and Families!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

As our country got out to vote last Tuesday for election day, so did JK! We talked about what it means to vote and that every person gets one vote and one choice. It’s also very important to let everyone have their own choice and the one that gets the most votes wins. We even set up our own little voting booth as the children arrived.

Here are some pictures of us casting our votes!

Which is your favorite lunch choice, pizza or tacos? We counted the votes using tally marks, a new concept for our JK students. They caught on very quickly and counted by 5s to count the number for each category. Pizza was the winner! As a special treat, Mrs. Estes ordered pizza for a special lunch!

We also have a new student. Please welcome to our class, Adira Lindsey! We are so happy to have her join our class!

Lastly, our Cross Country buddies were off to the State Championship and we sent them off in style with a decorated bus! Mr. Biscamp (our bus driver) took JK for a ride around campus before the team was off. It was really fun!

Have a great week, Parents! We’re looking forward to having you all as our special guests on Friday for the Feast of Favorites from 11:30-12:30. Please remember to bring your child’s favorite food (a portion large enough to serve 6-8 people) ready to serve and eat (we will not have enough time to cook anyone’s dish) with a serving utensil. Please head directly to the Lower School playground (same as Halloween) and the children will meet you outside. Our lovely room parents, Mrs. Clendenin and Mrs. Davis, will be outside to help find a spot for your child’s dish. It’s going to be a Feast to remember, for sure!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

What an exciting day it was on Halloween for all of our FA students! We started our day with our annual Halloween parade with the whole school in the gym. We had so much fun clapping, waving and “high fiving” our friends and family!

Here are some pictures of us before hitting the parade route:

After the parade, it was so much fun to come back for an awesome party put on by all of our lovely parents. A very special thank you to our room moms, Ginny Clendenin and Amanda Davis, for coordinating all the necessary items to pull of an awesome party and for set-up and clean-up. Another “thank you” goes out to all of the parents for supplying items! We could not do it without all your help and support!

Here are some pictures from our party:

Have a fun and safe Halloween, all!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

What is “Take Me Outside Day” you say? It is a day to help raise awareness about the importance of outdoor learning. Learning can take place anywhere and anytime. While we do have inside learning activities such as Letterbooks and Calendar time, much of a JKer’s “work” is play which oftentimes takes place outside. When we are playing, they are learning to be good friends, to share, how to have a conversation, learning to be good citizens and so many more skills. Even “academic” or skill based learning can happen outdoors such as patterning, counting, art activities, letter sound recognition and color and shape recognition. We are learning and sometimes we don’t even realize it because outside learning is so much fun!

Here are some pictures of our day!

D is for DONUTS!

This week we also began Letterbook D. We thought it would be fun to do a very special letter d sound activity…make and eat donuts! We asked our JK neighbors to join us and had a donut party in honor of letter d. It was a great time!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

At Fredericksburg Academy, our students not only get to have two classroom teachers, but they also get to have SIX specials teachers that instruct the children in each of his/her specialized area. How lucky we are that we get to learn from the experts in Art, Music, Physical Education, Spanish, Library and STEAM.

In Music, Mr. Santulli can be seen working with the children on rhythm, beat and tempo oftentimes, with instruments in hand. They are almost always singing, dancing or moving their bodies to the rhythm and beat!

In STEAM, Mrs. Larochelle helps the children to use their imaginations to build or construct amazing creations. Here some of the children are learning about slope. What seems like a big concept to them is merely discovery through play…JK’s favorite way to learn!

In Library class, Ms. Atkins chooses books that provide an extension of learning from our classroom themes. They also learn how to be attentive and respectful to the reader, raise their hands to share ideas, and wait until the end of the story to ask questions. They are also learning about the jobs of authors and illustrations and how to turn pages in a book. With that, Ms. Atkins is modeling left to right progression as well as top to bottom. The children are always talking about the great stories their have heard when they return from Library class. They also cannot wait until they too will become a reader!

During our P.E. class, Mrs. Wimble has the best games and activities to help the children move their bodies. Helping the children to work on gross motor skills is Mrs. Wimble’s specialty. Getting some exercise is just what we need to start the day off right!

In Spanish, Senora Higgs knows just what to do to help her students to learn the language of Spanish. Anytime you enter her classroom, you will see her leading a song, dancing or acting out a Spanish story to help her students learn vocabulary and conversational Spanish. We always have a blast in Senora’s class!

In Art, Mrs. Gath has so many fun ways for the children to express themselves creatively with all sorts of tools. One day they may be using crayons and another it might be tempera paint sticks. Yet another day, the children may be outside using chalk to make drawings on the sidewalk. Taking learning outside the walls of our classroom is a goal for all the teachers at FA. Learning in an outdoor setting is a fun way to learn and engage with nature!

Speaking of learning outside, during our Rainbow Week, we made our way out to the Playscape to create a very special project called rainbow lightning. Using food coloring, watercolor paper and a spray bottle filled with water, we were able to create a cool picture. It was really fun to watch the colors streak down the page!

Have a wonderful weekend, Parents!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

Last week, we have had some exciting adventures on our Sneads Farm trip! It was an amazing success and fun was had by all…even the teachers! The adventure began with a bus ride to Sneads. For some, this was the very first time on a bus so you can imagine the excitement that ensued when we climbed aboard. Once we were buckled and all of our items were safely stowed, we were off!

Upon our arrival, we headed straight to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin to take home with us. We learned about how a pumpkin grows on a vine and to make sure to pick an orange one because the green pumpkins were still growing. We also had to be careful as we walked through the patch so as not to hurt the plants.

After each person found the perfect pumpkin, it was our job to haul it over to the bus for storage. That was a tough job because the pumpkins were heavy. We were so proud that we could do it! Here are some pictures of some of us with our pumpkins:

Now it would be unfair to say that we just visited a pumpkin patch. Although that part was really cool, Sneads is so much more than a pumpkin patch! We had a little snack in their picnic area so that we could have enough energy to do all of the amazing things the farm had to offer. Next up was some playtime on the playground that surrounds the picnic area. Here are some pictures of us at play:

After our playground adventures, which included climbing into a real helicopter and over a bridge just like the Billy Goats Gruff (that was our story in the G letterbook!), we made our way over to the amazing giant slides. What fun it was to sail down the huge slides!

Next, we got to take a hayride and see the grounds at Sneads.

Here are some group shots in front of the gigantic pumpkins!

It was a great day to make some fall memories!

Have a wonderful fall break, all!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

What a fun week it’s been learning about blue and purple! We have really been working hard on our fine motor skills with cutting, coloring and painting. We colored blue jeans and painted Blue Birds. We learned that Blue Birds are a different bird than Blue Jays even though both have a beautiful blue color. The Blue Bird is mostly blue but it has red on its belly. Here is a picture of us donning our blue!

Learning about the color purple was also fun! We listened to a silly song called “The Purple People Eater.” It was so fun to dance to, and we even played freeze dance with our friends! We listened to a story called Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and made the “purple cat” from the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Here is a picture of us wearing our purple or red/blue to make purple!

The best part of the day was eating “purple cows” with our Cross Country buddies. They even came to play with us on the playground! It was so fun!

Thank you to our friends who braved the rain and came out on Tuesday to support our Cross Country Team buddies while they had their meet. It was fun to cheer for our buddies! Next week’s meet is at home on Tuesday, October 3rd around 4:00. Come out and cheer with us if you can!

Here are some of our runners posing for a picture!

Please look for some field trip reminders in your child’s backpack for tomorrow’s trip. The weather looks promising…fingers crossed!

Happy almost Friday!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

We have had a terrific week learning all about yellow and green. The week started out learning that yellow is another one of our primary colors and the last of the warm colors. We cut out some paper bananas complete with a “Chiquita” sticker, colored a cute yellow duck and painted a yellow submarine picture. All the children are even driving their own submarine! This is one of my favorite projects!

Here’s a picture of us all decked out in our yellow clothes on Yellow Day!

Yellow Day was also a special day because we got to cheer for our Cross Country Buddies as they headed to an away meet. They even taught us a “Go Bananas” cheer in honor of Yellow Day. We even got to use pom poms. Here we are gathering up getting ready to cheer!

Next up, we learned about how you can create green by mixing blue and yellow. Green is a secondary color because you must use two primary colors to mix it. It’s also our first cool color. Here are some pictures of us mixing up blue and yellow to discover green!

As if Green Day wasn’t already cool enough, we had a special visitor come to our classroom and she was all decked out in green for Green Day too. It was fun to take a selfie picture with her!

What an awesome week we’ve had! Next up…BLUE and PURPLE DAYS!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

This week we have begun our colors unit. Say “Hello” to red and orange! We have painted with red and orange and learned that red is a primary color and orange is a secondary color. Did you know that when you mix red and yellow together they make orange? It was like MAGIC! We were so amazed!

We created projects that are red such as painting red lips and a cutting a red stop sign and objects that are orange like orange carrots and made a face for jack-o-lanterns. We even learned how to say red and orange in Spanish. All of these wonderful projects will be kept safely for when the time come to put them in our “colors of the rainbow” book. Stay tuned and be ready to be amazed! Sampling red strawberries, red apples, orange clementines and orange cheese puffs was also a fun way to celebrate red and orange days. It’s been a very colorful week, for sure!

This week was also the beginning of a very important job…teacher helper! The teacher helper gets to lead the class in the Pledge of Alligence, help with the calendar, announce the news for the day as the newsreporter and announce the weather as our meterologist. It’s a very important job!

Here is a picture of Grant as our first teacher helper!

Have a wonderful weekend, parents!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂

This week’s first adventure was a trip to the Falcon’s Nest (our school store). Technically, it was our first “field trip” which of course always brings excitement! We got to meet Mrs. Wilson, the boss of the Falcon’s Nest, and she showed us all around and even let us shop for some of our own items to take home. It was so much fun!

We also got some play time outside at the Playscape, FA’s very own adventureland! There are bikes to ride, giant blocks to build, sandcastles to make, mudpies to bake and even a seesaw to ride. It is so much fun to go to the Playscape. I think it might be our new favorite play spot!

Lastly, in JK, we save a lot of your child’s work for our end of the year memory book. In doing this, we put together a wonderful keepsake for you and your child. However, that does mean that you don’t always get to see what we are up to or some of your child’s work until the end of the year. I thought I might give you a little preview of our “wall of art.” Your children work so hard each day to do their very best, and it shows with all this wonderful work!

Here is a list of some special events that we have in JK. I will send a hard copy along with some other important materials about our curriculum next week. I wanted to make sure everyone knows that JK (and PK) do not attend the Lower School Back to School Night. It will be for grades K-5. We will send some great materials next week so that we can keep you informed with all of the goings on in JK. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us anytime. We are so excited for all the wonderful growth that we will see from all of your children!

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Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Fischer and Mrs. Wilcox 🙂