From the Principal’s Office
We had a great first month of 2020 and are looking forward to spending the rest of this winter season with you and your children. Our teachers and staff are hard at work creating meaningful learning experiences for the month of February. Thank you to those of you that participated in our annual parent survey, we appreciate your feedback and support! When the survey results are in, we will be examining them carefully for areas of improvement.
Sincerely, Lynette Stoker
Lynette Stoker, Principal
lynette.stoker@nlcinc.com
Shari Hale, Asst. Principal
shari.hale@nlcinc.com
Nikki Crowell, 2nd Asst. Principal
nikki.crowell@nlcinc.com
Web site http://hickory.chesterbrookacademy.com
Calendar of Events
February 2020
February 2, 2020 Groundhog Day
February 12, 2020 Lincoln’s Birthday
February 14, 2020 Valentine’s Day
February 17, 2020 President’s Day Chesterbrook Academy Closed Professional Development Day
February 22, 2020 Washington’s Birthday
For Parents and Teachers
Like a healthy diet and exercise, sleep boosts children’s brainpower and keeps their bodies functioning properly. Getting children who fear going to sleep, or are too excited from play, to settle down for a nap can be a challenge. Plan activities that will help children see their need for rest in a new way.
- Play a CD such as Quiet Moments with Greg and Steve. Its tranquil sounds help children wind down, and relax into sleep.
- Create a My Bed Book. Encourage families to bring in photos of their child’s bed, their child with a favorite sleep toy or snuggled with a parent reading a bedtime story. Put photos in a class album. Include children’s dictation about their beds. Add the class creation to the book center.
- Plan a naptime pajama party. Children can wear pajamas, bring favorite stuffed animals, pillows, or blankets. Read a restful book.
Winter Weather Advisory
With the threat of winter weather always possible in February, we thought we’d take this opportunity to share with you our inclement weather policy. We will do our best to be open every day, even during bad weather. However, if it is icy and road conditions are hazardous to the safety of your children and our staff, we will delay opening until after the sun has come up and the roads have had time to improve. In most cases, we will delay opening until 8:30am. If severe weather develops during the day, most parents will begin picking up their children early. When the number of children in the building drops below 20, we will begin calling and asking parents to pick up their child(ren) so that we can all get home before road conditions deteriorate. We DO NOT follow the Catawba County School closing schedule and will be here for your child. In the event of an inclement weather closing or delay, we will always put a message on our voice-mail and on our website stating our intentions for the day. We will also send an email blast through our Links2Home system. Please watch WBTV/Channel 3 or log-on to www.wbtv.com for school closing information. (We recommend going to the web-site if possible…when WBTV3 scrolls through all of the many area closings, it may take up to 30-45 minutes for Chesterbrook Academy -Hickory to scroll back around, and then WBTV will almost always go to a commercial break and you miss it!)
Reminders!
All payments are due on Friday preceding each week. A $25.00 late payment fee is assessed after 12 noon Monday, no exceptions!
To avoid a late fee, make your payment online through the Parent Portal, pay over the phone with credit/debit card, or consider signing up for Electronic Funds Transfer as a back-up. With EFT, if for some reason you forget to make a payment before 12 noon Monday (i.e. your child was out sick, you went out-of-town, etc..) your payment would be made electronically late Monday evening and you would not be charged a late fee. For your convenience, Chesterbrook Academy accepts VISA, MasterCard, and Discover A 2% processing fee will be charged per transaction.
From the Education Department
February, 2020
|
Topics: Wellness
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with your little one by making some easy, festive snacks together! Spending time in the kitchen is a great way to evoke your child’s senses and to practice counting, following instructions, measuring, and using sequence words and descriptive language. Below are three quick snacks that require no[.....]
Read More »
Supporting Early Conflict Resolution Skills
The argument is one that is heard all too often, be it between siblings or friends:
Child A: “Give it back to me!”
Child B: “No, it’s mine. I had it!”
Child A: “Give it back!”
Adult: “I’ll take the toy, thank you.”
Unfortunately, this common argument could have been a prime opportunity for both children to learn some valuable conflict resolution skills. What began as a simple incident of sharing gone awry can be a perfect, natural opportunity for the adult to guide the children into appropriate problem solution.
There are numerous ways we can alter and change behavior of children: we can tell them what to do, we can tell them what not to do, we can even offer explanations of which behavior is best. Research shows that children by 3-4 years of age have the ability to tell us what the correct behavior is (or should be) and can even give us reasoning as to why that is the case if we allow them the opportunity to do so (Woodard, 2010). Children as young as 18 months, while not able to give reasoning for correct behavior, are still able to work through conflict resolution with some adult guidance.
During situations in which there is a great deal of emotion, it is advised to follow the following six conflict resolution steps with your preschooler:
- Approach child(ren) calmly and halt any actions that may be causing harm.
- Acknowledge the feelings of the child(ren) in the conflict. “I can see that you are both very angry about who should be able to play with the guitar right now.”
- Gather important information about what is transpiring. “Can you tell me who got the guitar out of the toy box?” “Ok, Jack, did you put the guitar down after you were done playing with it?” Remember to remain objective as you ask the child(ren) these questions.
- Restate the problem. “So now you both want to play with the guitar but there is only one guitar.”
- Ask child(ren) for ideas and possible solutions on how to solve the problem. If the child(ren) are younger or are unable, then make one or two suggestions for them to select from. “What do you think we should do so that you both can have a turn?” “Maybe you can play with the guitar until this timer goes off. Then you can have a turn. Does that sound fair?”
- Be prepared to give follow-up support. Help the child(ren) select a viable solution and then help the child(ren) enact the plan.
While simple in procedure, these steps will allow your child to take control over his or her own conflicts and will empower them to be independent conflict resolvers.
Lauren Starnes,PhD-Former Director of Early Childhood Education
How Sick Is Too Sick?
Colds, flu, strep throat, tummy bugs, and more serious infections are common during the winter months, especially in child care settings. Germs grow and spread more easily in the child care environment. Children and adults are in close proximity to one another most of the day. As children play and learn together, they share toys, books, and games. They might also share the germs that make people sick. When a child sneezes, his nearby playmate can easily breathe in his germs. When an infant crawls across the floor, she leaves her germs on the path behind her. A young friend picks them up as he follows along in her wake. Siblings introduce germs to children in another classroom. Adults pass on their germs, and those of the children, if they forget to wash their hands before serving food, or forget to sanitize the changing table after diapering a baby.
Good hygiene practices reduce the spread of infectious diseases. One of the main strategies for reducing the spread of infectious diseases is washing hands after diapering and toileting. This, along with sanitizing and disinfecting, helps to keep disease causing germs at bay. Infants depend on the adults in their lives to wash their hands for them, and to keep their world clean and relatively germ free. Toddlers and preschoolers are just beginning to learn how to wash their hands, sneeze into their elbows, or cover their mouths when they cough. They need practice and frequent reminders as they learn and develop habits that reduce illness and promote health.
Even with the best sanitation and hygiene practices, children still get sick. Children are exposed to common illnesses both inside and outside of child care. It is not possible to protect them from all infectious diseases all the time. Many common illnesses are at their most contagious stage during the early course of the disease, before symptoms occur. By the time a child has obvious symptoms the other children have already been exposed. Exclusion will not keep them from getting sick. As long as children feel well enough to participate in the program and do not require extra care from the provider, they can usually remain in child care. When children do not feel well enough to participate, it is best for them to rest and recover at home.
Aronson, Susan. Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005
The Power of Music
How many times a day do you hear your child singing, humming, or making sounds? Have you ever wondered why music and musicality seem to be such universal magnets for young children?
Research has repeatedly shown that there is a strong positive correlation between early music exposure and language, emotional processing, and abstract reasoning skill levels in young children (Krauss, 2010). Music truly is the great communicator in that it aids across so many areas of child development from infancy into school age. Music is children’s first patterning experience and helps them engage in mathematics even when they don’t recognize the activities as math yet. They learn that a sound represents something in the environment and that they can replicate this with a clap or a body sway (one to one correspondence). They learn that sounds have relationships to other sounds—melody, rhythm, pitch, tempo, volume, timbre—which sets the foundation for learning later how numbers and numerical concepts interconnect. Furthermore, children can gain valuable memorization skills through the use of song; the alphabet, body parts, and hand washing are all easily put to memory through the use of a sing-along. The preschool classroom is alive with music and the benefits are endless. So how can you carry music and musicality into your home?
Start early. Infants, even from birth, show preference and recognition of familiar sounds, tunes, and voices heard prenatally. It is never too early to expose your child to music.
Engage in familiar sing-alongs. Preschoolers learn routine and concepts easily through song. Nursery rhymes, common childhood songs, and short ditties can help your child remember what to do, be reminded of what comes next, or practice language skills such as rhyme, rhythm, and tone.
Make up your own songs. Just because there may not be a known song to what you want to sing about, sing anyway. Children will learn to model musical creativity through your demonstration of it.
Associate songs with desired routines. Ask your child’s preschool teacher what songs they sing for clean-up time, hand washing, and other routines that children are sometimes resistant to engage in. Sing these familiar tunes at the desired times to give your child subtle, musical reminders of the desired behaviors.
Make your own music anywhere. Encourage your child to make his own music either with musical toys or with general household items. Spoons and plastic Tupperware containers can instantly transform into a drum set, and your child will marvel at the ability he has to create his own musical masterpiece.
Music is all around us. Embrace musicality with your child and as you allow him to experience music in multiple ways, you open his mind for a world of possibilities.
Lauren Starnes, PhD- Former Director of Early Childhood Education
Setting Priorities
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” I could finance a nice family trip if given a quarter for every time I have heard contemporary parents say this. And the statement is absolutely true.
There is simply not enough time to fit in essentials like work and school and healthy home living, as well as the other things now considered essential to children’s well-being: practices and games for organized sports; play dates; enrichment classes and lessons; favorite entertainments; church and other community activities; elaborate birthday parties, let alone just time for relaxed family time together.
Something has to give; it is up to parents to determine what that will be. They are the ones who can restore sanity to the family schedule.
I remember a cartoon in which one mother listed the dizzying list of activities in which her daughter had been involved during the summer vacation. When she asked the other mother what her child had done, that parent shrugged and said, “She did a lot of playing outdoors, made a fort with her friends, and had a lemonade stand a couple of days.”
The first mother stared at her speechless, then replied, “Well, I suppose technically that’s not child neglect.”
The peer pressure to be sure that children have a competitive and well-socialized resume is looming over parents as they try to make decisions about the use of time.
Consider what is squeezed out when parents and kids are so heavily scheduled. Where is the time for unstructured play with peers, for just figuring out what to do, for following curiosity or creative impulses? And pity the poor parent who has to follow the schedule, driving endless miles in pursuit of a well-enriched child.
So, a first priority to determine is: what is of utmost importance to us as parents in the lives of our own family? And what is essential to our child’s healthy development at this point, and what is not?
Children learn most within the context of relationships. Ask any primary teacher and you will hear that the children who will ultimately succeed in school and life are not those who have had the earliest head start in enrichment classes or organized sports, but those who have learned the fine art of getting along with others.
The reality is that learning comes only with practice, the kinds of practice children get when they are free to interact with one another in unstructured, free play settings, not when trying to remember the directions or listen to what the coach says.
Closely supervised play dates also don’t provide these learning opportunities, as there is always some well-meaning adult who quickly steps in with suggestions or diversions, rather than providing changes for kids to solve their own problems.
Team sports at some point in life certainly offer important lessons and skills for children. The thing is: in youngsters’ lives, if practices and games allow little time for less structured play, they may be crowding out other essential experiences.
A big question in setting priorities is, how much free time does my child have? A new book* makes the statement that kids of all ages should get at least three hours of free play outdoors a day!
Count up your children’s hours and my guess is you will see that it is indeed time to set priorities.
*Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children Angela Hanscom, New Harbinger Publications, 2016
© Growing Child 2016 Please feel free to forward this article to a friend.
Receive your free subscription of Grandma Says at www.GrowingChild.com/FreeGrandmaSays or contact Growing Child customer service at service@growingchild.com or call (800) 927-7289
To learn more about Growing Child, and obtain a sample of our products please visit: www.GrowingChild.com
Chesterbrook Academy February Monthly Newsletter
From the Principal’s Office
We had a great first month of 2020 and are looking forward to spending the rest of this winter season with you and your children. Our teachers and staff are hard at work creating meaningful learning experiences for the month of February. Thank you to those of you that participated in our annual parent survey, we appreciate your feedback and support! When the survey results are in, we will be examining them carefully for areas of improvement.
Sincerely, Lynette Stoker
Lynette Stoker, Principal
lynette.stoker@nlcinc.com
Shari Hale, Asst. Principal
shari.hale@nlcinc.com
Nikki Crowell, 2nd Asst. Principal
nikki.crowell@nlcinc.com
Web site http://hickory.chesterbrookacademy.com
Calendar of Events
February 2020
February 2, 2020 Groundhog Day
February 12, 2020 Lincoln’s Birthday
February 14, 2020 Valentine’s Day
February 17, 2020 President’s Day Chesterbrook Academy Closed Professional Development Day
February 22, 2020 Washington’s Birthday
For Parents and Teachers
Like a healthy diet and exercise, sleep boosts children’s brainpower and keeps their bodies functioning properly. Getting children who fear going to sleep, or are too excited from play, to settle down for a nap can be a challenge. Plan activities that will help children see their need for rest in a new way.
Winter Weather Advisory
With the threat of winter weather always possible in February, we thought we’d take this opportunity to share with you our inclement weather policy. We will do our best to be open every day, even during bad weather. However, if it is icy and road conditions are hazardous to the safety of your children and our staff, we will delay opening until after the sun has come up and the roads have had time to improve. In most cases, we will delay opening until 8:30am. If severe weather develops during the day, most parents will begin picking up their children early. When the number of children in the building drops below 20, we will begin calling and asking parents to pick up their child(ren) so that we can all get home before road conditions deteriorate. We DO NOT follow the Catawba County School closing schedule and will be here for your child. In the event of an inclement weather closing or delay, we will always put a message on our voice-mail and on our website stating our intentions for the day. We will also send an email blast through our Links2Home system. Please watch WBTV/Channel 3 or log-on to www.wbtv.com for school closing information. (We recommend going to the web-site if possible…when WBTV3 scrolls through all of the many area closings, it may take up to 30-45 minutes for Chesterbrook Academy -Hickory to scroll back around, and then WBTV will almost always go to a commercial break and you miss it!)
Reminders!
All payments are due on Friday preceding each week. A $25.00 late payment fee is assessed after 12 noon Monday, no exceptions!
To avoid a late fee, make your payment online through the Parent Portal, pay over the phone with credit/debit card, or consider signing up for Electronic Funds Transfer as a back-up. With EFT, if for some reason you forget to make a payment before 12 noon Monday (i.e. your child was out sick, you went out-of-town, etc..) your payment would be made electronically late Monday evening and you would not be charged a late fee. For your convenience, Chesterbrook Academy accepts VISA, MasterCard, and Discover A 2% processing fee will be charged per transaction.
From the Education Department
3 No-Bake Recipes to Make with Your Preschooler this Valentine’s Day
Read More »
Supporting Early Conflict Resolution Skills
The argument is one that is heard all too often, be it between siblings or friends:
Child A: “Give it back to me!”
Child B: “No, it’s mine. I had it!”
Child A: “Give it back!”
Adult: “I’ll take the toy, thank you.”
Unfortunately, this common argument could have been a prime opportunity for both children to learn some valuable conflict resolution skills. What began as a simple incident of sharing gone awry can be a perfect, natural opportunity for the adult to guide the children into appropriate problem solution.
There are numerous ways we can alter and change behavior of children: we can tell them what to do, we can tell them what not to do, we can even offer explanations of which behavior is best. Research shows that children by 3-4 years of age have the ability to tell us what the correct behavior is (or should be) and can even give us reasoning as to why that is the case if we allow them the opportunity to do so (Woodard, 2010). Children as young as 18 months, while not able to give reasoning for correct behavior, are still able to work through conflict resolution with some adult guidance.
During situations in which there is a great deal of emotion, it is advised to follow the following six conflict resolution steps with your preschooler:
While simple in procedure, these steps will allow your child to take control over his or her own conflicts and will empower them to be independent conflict resolvers.
Lauren Starnes,PhD-Former Director of Early Childhood Education
How Sick Is Too Sick?
Colds, flu, strep throat, tummy bugs, and more serious infections are common during the winter months, especially in child care settings. Germs grow and spread more easily in the child care environment. Children and adults are in close proximity to one another most of the day. As children play and learn together, they share toys, books, and games. They might also share the germs that make people sick. When a child sneezes, his nearby playmate can easily breathe in his germs. When an infant crawls across the floor, she leaves her germs on the path behind her. A young friend picks them up as he follows along in her wake. Siblings introduce germs to children in another classroom. Adults pass on their germs, and those of the children, if they forget to wash their hands before serving food, or forget to sanitize the changing table after diapering a baby.
Good hygiene practices reduce the spread of infectious diseases. One of the main strategies for reducing the spread of infectious diseases is washing hands after diapering and toileting. This, along with sanitizing and disinfecting, helps to keep disease causing germs at bay. Infants depend on the adults in their lives to wash their hands for them, and to keep their world clean and relatively germ free. Toddlers and preschoolers are just beginning to learn how to wash their hands, sneeze into their elbows, or cover their mouths when they cough. They need practice and frequent reminders as they learn and develop habits that reduce illness and promote health.
Even with the best sanitation and hygiene practices, children still get sick. Children are exposed to common illnesses both inside and outside of child care. It is not possible to protect them from all infectious diseases all the time. Many common illnesses are at their most contagious stage during the early course of the disease, before symptoms occur. By the time a child has obvious symptoms the other children have already been exposed. Exclusion will not keep them from getting sick. As long as children feel well enough to participate in the program and do not require extra care from the provider, they can usually remain in child care. When children do not feel well enough to participate, it is best for them to rest and recover at home.
Aronson, Susan. Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005
The Power of Music
How many times a day do you hear your child singing, humming, or making sounds? Have you ever wondered why music and musicality seem to be such universal magnets for young children?
Research has repeatedly shown that there is a strong positive correlation between early music exposure and language, emotional processing, and abstract reasoning skill levels in young children (Krauss, 2010). Music truly is the great communicator in that it aids across so many areas of child development from infancy into school age. Music is children’s first patterning experience and helps them engage in mathematics even when they don’t recognize the activities as math yet. They learn that a sound represents something in the environment and that they can replicate this with a clap or a body sway (one to one correspondence). They learn that sounds have relationships to other sounds—melody, rhythm, pitch, tempo, volume, timbre—which sets the foundation for learning later how numbers and numerical concepts interconnect. Furthermore, children can gain valuable memorization skills through the use of song; the alphabet, body parts, and hand washing are all easily put to memory through the use of a sing-along. The preschool classroom is alive with music and the benefits are endless. So how can you carry music and musicality into your home?
Start early. Infants, even from birth, show preference and recognition of familiar sounds, tunes, and voices heard prenatally. It is never too early to expose your child to music.
Engage in familiar sing-alongs. Preschoolers learn routine and concepts easily through song. Nursery rhymes, common childhood songs, and short ditties can help your child remember what to do, be reminded of what comes next, or practice language skills such as rhyme, rhythm, and tone.
Make up your own songs. Just because there may not be a known song to what you want to sing about, sing anyway. Children will learn to model musical creativity through your demonstration of it.
Associate songs with desired routines. Ask your child’s preschool teacher what songs they sing for clean-up time, hand washing, and other routines that children are sometimes resistant to engage in. Sing these familiar tunes at the desired times to give your child subtle, musical reminders of the desired behaviors.
Make your own music anywhere. Encourage your child to make his own music either with musical toys or with general household items. Spoons and plastic Tupperware containers can instantly transform into a drum set, and your child will marvel at the ability he has to create his own musical masterpiece.
Music is all around us. Embrace musicality with your child and as you allow him to experience music in multiple ways, you open his mind for a world of possibilities.
Lauren Starnes, PhD- Former Director of Early Childhood Education
Setting Priorities
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” I could finance a nice family trip if given a quarter for every time I have heard contemporary parents say this. And the statement is absolutely true.
There is simply not enough time to fit in essentials like work and school and healthy home living, as well as the other things now considered essential to children’s well-being: practices and games for organized sports; play dates; enrichment classes and lessons; favorite entertainments; church and other community activities; elaborate birthday parties, let alone just time for relaxed family time together.
Something has to give; it is up to parents to determine what that will be. They are the ones who can restore sanity to the family schedule.
I remember a cartoon in which one mother listed the dizzying list of activities in which her daughter had been involved during the summer vacation. When she asked the other mother what her child had done, that parent shrugged and said, “She did a lot of playing outdoors, made a fort with her friends, and had a lemonade stand a couple of days.”
The first mother stared at her speechless, then replied, “Well, I suppose technically that’s not child neglect.”
The peer pressure to be sure that children have a competitive and well-socialized resume is looming over parents as they try to make decisions about the use of time.
Consider what is squeezed out when parents and kids are so heavily scheduled. Where is the time for unstructured play with peers, for just figuring out what to do, for following curiosity or creative impulses? And pity the poor parent who has to follow the schedule, driving endless miles in pursuit of a well-enriched child.
So, a first priority to determine is: what is of utmost importance to us as parents in the lives of our own family? And what is essential to our child’s healthy development at this point, and what is not?
Children learn most within the context of relationships. Ask any primary teacher and you will hear that the children who will ultimately succeed in school and life are not those who have had the earliest head start in enrichment classes or organized sports, but those who have learned the fine art of getting along with others.
The reality is that learning comes only with practice, the kinds of practice children get when they are free to interact with one another in unstructured, free play settings, not when trying to remember the directions or listen to what the coach says.
Closely supervised play dates also don’t provide these learning opportunities, as there is always some well-meaning adult who quickly steps in with suggestions or diversions, rather than providing changes for kids to solve their own problems.
Team sports at some point in life certainly offer important lessons and skills for children. The thing is: in youngsters’ lives, if practices and games allow little time for less structured play, they may be crowding out other essential experiences.
A big question in setting priorities is, how much free time does my child have? A new book* makes the statement that kids of all ages should get at least three hours of free play outdoors a day!
Count up your children’s hours and my guess is you will see that it is indeed time to set priorities.
*Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children Angela Hanscom, New Harbinger Publications, 2016
© Growing Child 2016 Please feel free to forward this article to a friend.
Receive your free subscription of Grandma Says at www.GrowingChild.com/FreeGrandmaSays or contact Growing Child customer service at service@growingchild.com or call (800) 927-7289
To learn more about Growing Child, and obtain a sample of our products please visit: www.GrowingChild.com