The Cups Are Coming Home

If you haven't found it in your child's bag - our first little cup has come home to you. The small orange cup with your child's name has been washed and re-used in our classroom during the month of September. (We wash the cups in antibacterial dish washing detergent to help keep us healthy.) This is our little way of being green and making the Earth smile a little bit more. Our little project roughly saved 272 paper cups. Of course the children were very excited and were thinking of many ways to use this same little orange cup. Good luck with that one at home. (PS - They are already looking forward to our next little cup.)

We Love Being Well

Look at these beautiful faces. They are healthy and well. We want everyone to stay this way. In case your children are coming home talking about not getting sick, we have been spending lots of time talking about ways to avoid getting the flu. (or as one of our classmates says "the pig flu.") We always wash our hands, but are learning that germs love a free ride to our face on our hands. The children are doing a great job trying to keep their hands away from their mouth. We also talked about the importance of the flu shot and why it is good to get this at the doctor's office. Since we have been learning about community helpers this week, we talked about the kind of things doctors and nurses do to help us. It is very hard for the children to understand that nurses are not being mean when they give us shots to keep us well. It is our greatest desire to keep this class healthy and well throughout the year. Our good health is a daily prayer during our circle and we always pray for friends who are absent. We love to know that God's love always makes us feel better.

If You've Never Picked Apples

Here are some pictures from an apple orchard in Flat Rock, North Carolina. If you have never gone to the orchard to pick apples - now is the time. It is so beautiful and isn't that far of a drive. If you can see from the trees, they are full of gorgeous apples - just perfect for eating. Rows are marked with the apple names and it is a fun family outing. Below is a picture of one of the apples of my eye. He had so much fun picking apples and tasting them when we got home. These pictures are from Sky Top Orchard. They offer hayrides, fresh apple cider and even freshly "fried" apple doughnuts.

We Are Crazy About Preschool

Look at these faces... we are totally crazy about preschool!! This is the greatest class. They are working so hard and are doing great. This picture will make you smile.

We Made Apple Pies

Today we celebrated Johnny Appleseed's Birthday. He was a Christian man who walked many miles to share God's love and apples with those that he met. The silly hat that your child wore home symbolizes the pot that Johnny Appleseed wore on his head. Since he traveled on foot he kept things light and, to consolidate, - he used his cooking pot as a hat. We also made a puppet and an individual homemade apple pie. Yes, the pie that came home in your child's bag was made by him/her. (Well, we did have a little a help from some Mimi's that I know.) It was great fun and the children really loved making something themself.

Circle Time Is Hard Work, But The Playground Is Good

We are slowly settling in to a routine. It is hard to remember not to stand on your head during circle time and to use running feet only on the playground - but we are learning quickly that this preschool year is for more learning than playing. We are focusing on writing our names and just taking our time with our paper projects. The boys and girls are doing so well. Here are some playground pictures to brighten your day.

Do You Like Ice Cream?

We really love the letter Ii!! This week it was a great snack week, especially the ice cream. We learned that I makes two different sounds, but mostly - just yum!! because this snack is really good.

Apples, Apples, Everywhere

This week is all about apples. We will celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday and learn how he shared God's word along with this tasty fruit. Today we made "Mr. Apple." It might not seem like much, but the children did the cutting and pasting and, as you can see, they did great.

We are also working on a "stained glass apple." Some of us are very skilled in coloring! These will be cut out and displayed in our classroom to welcome Fall. Look for them hanging in our classroom.

Fall Is Almost Here!

Fall starts tomorrow, even though it doesn't feel that different outside. We started welcoming the new season by changing our door decoration to fall faces. We used leaves to make hair, arms, legs or whatever the children could dream up. They are really cute.

Our Latest Artistic Creations

This is some of the artwork featured at Open House. If you haven't taken a few minutes to check out your child's latest creative endeavors, please stop in. These are our "paper dolls." Can you guess which one belongs to your child?
Here is one of our "Family Tree" creations. This was an art project that took several days to complete and is totally child created. I added a Bible verse and lyrics to a children's song to remind us what it means to "grow up" in a loving family. If you looked at all 16 family tree projects, each is totally unique. Your children identified the family members to include on the tree and, yes, they included some children in our class. We learned that we are all part of God's family and love having our friends included in this family with us.

Teddy Bear Picnic

Teddy Bears invaded our classroom on Thursday. T is for Teddy and we had a "Teddy Bear Picnic." It was really fun for the boys and girls to bring their favorite Teddy to school to share with friends. Each child introduced their bear and had lots of fun seeing all of the bears brought in by friends. See our proud faces. We really love our Teddy Bears. (We also celebrated on tenth day of school with a teddy bear"Gummi" treat.)

Friendship Bracelets

We are still exploring our classroom and figuring out exactly how things work. We are learning how to share during our morning center time and are appreciating each other's differences. As part of our unit on manners, feelings and friendship we made friendship bracelets.
Thank goodness we are also learning how to clean up when center time is over. The home living center is "the place to be" this year. Talking on the phone, sharing a good meal and dressing up have never been so much fun.

Friendship Cake

We made a friendship cake and it was good. Who knew that making a crazy colored cake could be so much fun? Each student added their favorite color to their cup of cake batter and then added it to our class cake. We used good manners by washing our hands and stirring carefully. We shared snack time with Mrs. Cindy & Mrs. Lynda's Class and even sang some songs. Friendship is a wonderful thing, especially since God made us all different. One of our students said that the cake also meant "friendship forever." It was a happy and yummy day in our classroom.

Happy Grandparent's Day!

Did your children remind you that Sunday is Grandparent's Day? We read a great book called My Grandma Is Great and talked about how much we love our grandparents. Some of us call them grammy, nanny, grandma, mimi, papa, granddaddy, grandpa, popsi... the list goes on - BUT no matter what we call them we all agreed that they are the best. Take a few minutes today to let your child share their love with grandparents by calling, emailing or visiting.

We Had A Great Week

We had a wonderful second week of school. As you can see from these pictures learning can really be fun. Wearing green on Wednesday helped us to see all the different colors green can really be - but in the end it is spelled "g-r-e-e-n." We also took the time to do a big puzzle and enjoyed the playground. Things are starting to settle down and the children are beginning to explore the centers without just hurrying around to "play." The letter Ll was fun too with a cool take home treat from the estimation jar. (Did you find a lizard in your child's bag?) [Side note to parents - Mrs. Laura & Mrs. Laurie are good spellers. We have helpers from Lexington High School from the service learning program. Who would guess that our friend couldn't spell lizard correctly. If you saw the estimation sheet the word lizard was incorrectly spelled "lizzard." My apologies for not catching this, but this goes to show why we take learning and spelling so seriously at the preschool level.]

We also totally LOVED THE LEMONADE!!!!! We did make this the old fashioned way starting with cutting and squeezing the lemons. The children loved it and did a great job putting the sequence together.

Of course - preschool can be demanding and at the end of the day - we all just needed a break. Thanks for a great second week of school.

Letter L And Green

This week we will be learning about the letter L and focusing on the color green. Don't forget to wear something green on Wednesday. Since all of the fours are participating in the color study each week, the playground should look really interesting on Wednesday afternoon. We are also talking about how God made us special and how we are different but also the same. Our Bible verse for the month is "Jesus said, Let the little children come to me" Mark 10:14. We are all His children and part of His big family. Our second week is off to a great start.

The Weather Is Perfect

The weather is perfect for the playground It is almost impossible to focus on indoor work when the sun and mild temperatures are beckoning from outside. Can you blame us for wanting to run and play? Fall will be here soon and really the playground only gets better.

Making Friends & Sharing Smiles

Precious smiles were everywhere - making it hard for us to teach and not just take pictures all day. Pilgrim Community Preschool is overflowing with God's love and we are so lucky to be able to see your children bloom and grow.


As we ended our week, friendships are being made everywhere. We read a book by Bishop Tutu called God's Dream. It is a beautiful book about sharing God's love with everyone.

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What Are We Going To Do This Year?

Learn, of course.

These are our ideas about things to learn at school this year. I'm not sure about my abilities to teach skateboarding, Chihuahua tricks or jumping in a waterfall - but I'm pretty sure we have coloring, cutting, puzzles and playing covered.

Friends and Centers

Today we found fun things in our class. We have baby dolls....We have puzzles.....
and we have friends!!!

Our first day was a success. There were no jitters or sad feelings - just an overwhelming appetite to learn. Of course, it will take us a while to learn the structure and rules of our classroom, but God is so good to us. We are a beautiful class with love to share. Thank you parents for blessing us with your children this year. We are off to a wonderful start.

"The Lord is great, everybody sing....la, la, la, alleluia!...."

PS - did anyone tell you about our book today - or just enjoy their yummy candy kisses?

Our First Day

We did it! We had a great day and it really was lots of fun!!!!! You can see our personalized school bags. Everyone was very creative in decorating them this year. Great job parents for making our school bags so cool! We had so much fun showing off your handiwork - it wasn't really bragging too me - just pride.