March 2021 Early Learning Center Where Families Connect to Learn, Grow and Play! Contact us at: www.bellevuecollege.edu/childcare 425-564-2240

Bellevue College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, language, ethnicity, religion, veteran status, sex, sexual orienta-

tion, including gender identity or expression, disability, or age in its programs and activities. Please see policy 4150 at www.bellevuecollege.edu/

policies/. The following people have been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Title IX Coordinator,

425-564-2641, Office C227, and EEOC/504 Compliance Officer, 425-564-2178, Office R130.

March 2021 Dear ELC Families, I want to thank you all for your continued support as we are coming up on 1 year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ELC staff continue to work hard as they are persistently following policies and procedures to help keep the ELC as clean and germ-free as possible. We are continuing to follow the guidance and directives from Bellevue College, DCYF/Licensing, CDC, and our local health department. With Spring break rapidly approaching, we recognize that some of you may consider travel in the next few weeks. We strongly urge you to follow public health guidance and consider either forgoing travel this year or completing a COVID-19 test 3-5 days after your trip and stay home to self-quarantine for a full 7 days after travel, even if your test is negative. If you do not get tested, stay home and self-quarantine for 10 days after travel and before returning to the ELC should you travel out of state. More guidance on travel recommendations can be found on the CDC website.

Reminder: The ELC will be closed on Friday, March 26 for our annual spring Professional Development day. This day is one way we provide time for our professional staff to learn new information, modify their classroom learning environments, set annual goals, and collaborate as a team. As always, we appreciate your support and understanding as we continue to provide the very best early care and education for all our children. This year we will have an Educator from Head Start/PSESD that will focus on our on line curriculum, Teaching Strategies Gold. Lisa Miller Director, ELC

March 2021

What have the T6 children been learning?

Teachers: Brian & Tiffany

Brian - bcooper@bellevuecollege.edu * Tiffany - tiffany.xiong@bellevuecollege.edu

Specialist for T6 Room : Linda Boyd

The climber is a very busy and exciting place in the T6 classroom. The children are beginning to learn how to take turns walking up and down the stairs while practicing their balancing and all while strengthening their large motor skills. The children are also exploring self help skills as they begin to practice clearing their own plates after lunch with teacher support.

Last month we were all very excited to have snow on the playground to explore. We walked in it and ran & stomped in it and touched it with our hands. We were outside for short periods of time as we talked about the temperature and the snow being cold, Brrr. We all agreed it was cold outside we needed to go inside to our warm classroom.

March 2021

What have the T5 children been learning?

Specialist for Toddler Rooms: Vanessa Von Papp

Teachers: Delaney, Diane, Mackenzie, Yen-Chiu & Ghousia

Delaney- delaney.murphy@bellevuecollege.edu * Diane - desparza@bellevuecollege.edu Mackenzie- mackenzie.swenson@bellevuecollege.edu * Yen-Chiu - yong@bellevuecollege.edu

When the children are creating structures together they are increasing their skills in cooperative play and practicing their social emotional skills as they work together. The children are also strengthening their math and science knowledge as they build bigger towers using trial and error. As they are balancing the blocks they are using their cognitive skills while learning about balancing the weight of the block. As the children explore the world of building they are adding other manipulatives to their structures while discussing the structure and the items they are adding. The children are strengthening their self-help skills working as a team together putting the blocks away on the shelf.

The children are enjoying spending time in the dramatic play area. Being in the dramatic play area helps to build a sense of imagination as they act out stories from memory and role play being different characters. The children are practicing their pre-reading skills as they increase their vocabulary, language development and social emotional skills while they share ideas and stories with each other.

March 2021

What have the T3 children been learning?

Teachers: Lisa-Ann, Marina, Rita & Khazal

Lisa-Ann - lowens@bellevuecollege.edu * Marina - marina.tadachi@bellevuecollege.edu Rita - Rruffin@bellevuecollege.edu *

Specialist for Toddler Rooms: Vanessa Von Papp

The children were very excited to come to school and explore the winter wonderland of snow on the playground. We had many conversations about snow and winter, we read “The Mitten” by Jan Brett a favorite children's story of a child's adventure in the snow. We have read the story several times and are retelling this story in different methods using a real mitten and animals and also a flannel board story. The children are beginning to remember the animals from the story such as: Fox, Rabbit, and Hedgehog. Reading, rereading, and retelling a story helps children develop:

Fluency, reading comprehension and sense of story (setting, characters, how characters feel, problem, sequence of events, beginning/middle/end, making connections, making predictions), vocabulary, concepts of print. There is a large amount of learning that occurs when reading a story to a child.

We’ve also had many opportunities to explore snow activities in the classroom. We created some snow art with stamps using Q-tips, cotton balls, water color and salt. The children said “Look! I made snow! I made snow!” While exploring art activities the children are not only developing their hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, creative imaginative skills, but also increasing their language and communication skills. Another new exciting activity was bird watching! We put out bird seed in front of the classroom window which gave us the opportunity to observe the birds out the window. The children observed the birds arrivals and departures at the bird feeders. “Look! A bird!”

Below are some of the bird we spotted and identified from afar: Spotted towhee, sparrow, crow, chickadee, and even an eagle! We are excited to continue to observe our birdfeeders and see if additional types of birds and other animals will visit our bird feeders.

March 2021

What have the P3 children been learning?

Teachers: Annie, Page, Wendy & Josh

Preschool Rooms:

Did you notice the string full of red paper lanterns swinging above the classroom door and a window full of paper fans. These paper lanterns were introduced by Teacher Annie and were made by the children in our classroom. Many fine motor skills were used and practiced during this art activity such as: cutting with scissors, peeling and pasting stickers, gluing paper streamers, painting with paint brushes, and folding with paper. Through these activities, the children are not only developing their fine motor skills, but also expanding their essential vocabulary and learn the names of different shapes, colors, and materials. Making these paper lanterns encourages the children to play and experiment in a fun and relaxed environment and helps them feel valued as people, raising their self-esteem. Last month, we continued to welcome more friends to our classroom while following our daily routines and working on our self-help skills. One of the main focuses was establishing friendships and reminding the children what it feels like to be a new student in the classroom. We reaffirm the children when they form small play groups and interact with each other in positive ways. The children had fun making friendship dinosaurs. They looked at each other and said “You are my friend.” Or “We are friends.” Sofia and Niam worked together and drew a picture at the easel. Sofia pointed to the picture and said “Look! Niam and I made the picture.”

Our unit on Recycling, Reuse, and Reduce study unit is ending. This month we will start a new study unit:

discovering insects and bugs. We will also continue to discuss how we can use recycled materials in our

art activities during the new study unit as we explore the unit on insects and bugs.

Annie - ygu@bellevuecollege.edu * Page - pknapp@bellevuecollege.edu Wendy - wendy.cote@bellevuecollege.edu

March 2021

What have the Pre-k 1 children been learning?

Teachers: Donna, Karen, Mala & Margarita

Donna - dflanner@bellevuecollege.edu * Karen - kcarpent@bellevuecollege.edu Mala - mkrishna@bellevuecollege.edu

Pre-K Rooms:

This month we took a tour around the globe. Discussing the 7 continents of the world and we jumped in and learned how many countries are there in each continent. We discovered we have people from the continent of North America, Europe, Asia, Africa in our classroom. A very fun filled fact we discovered was from our student Jonathan (BC student worker) who is from the Republic of Congo. In this area of the world there is an animal called ‘Okapi’. It’s half giraffe and half zebra. The children were very interested and excited about this discovery.

Margarita taught us about Bulgaria, her home country. She taught us a Bulgarian movement song, which the children really

enjoyed. Mala shared about India which is a country in Asia. We looked at Taj Mahal which is one of the wonders of the world.

On the playground we created an obstacle course. The children were able to practice a variety of skills like skipping, running, balancing, hopping and jumping. These activities help to increase development of the large motor muscles. The children practiced taking turns and waiting for their friends to finish.

The children were very excited to come to school after the weekend snow storm.

Together the children built a snowman. They worked together by trading ideas and come up with a plan on how to construct a snowman. It was a team effort and the children really enjoyed creating the snowman.

It has been a busy month, we had Dennis Curran Vice President of Administrative Services visit our classroom. He read the book “Cleversticks” to the children. The children were pleased to have Dennis visit and once again displayed their amazing listening skills and ability to show respect and kindness to our visitor. Dennis arrived during the transition from outside time when things can get a little chaotic but the children followed all the steps of their safety routine when coming into the classroom even though they were very excited about their visitor. Needless to say, Dennis was really surprised and impressed to see a class of 17 children seamlessly transition to group time while still following the safety protocols.

We continue to focus on ‘kindness matters’ at all times. It is good to see the

children in the classroom are remembering to verbally express themselves to each other. It is a work in progress that should never be forgotten at any stage in life.