Welcome

Dear Preschool Families,

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of two new and exciting initiatives that will take place when classes resume in January. The first is called Opening the World of Learning. The second is a program blog that will help keep you informed of happenings in the preschool.

Opening the World to Learning (OWL) is a research based and field-tested integrated Pre-K curriculum. It is designed to develop language and early literacy skills in the context of rich content – primarily in the areas of mathematics, science and social studies. The program has 6 units and the topics include: Family, Friends, Wind and Water, World of Color, Shadows and Reflections and Things That Grow. When the children return in January we will begin with Wind and Water. One of the exciting pieces of the OWL is that it has home carryover for each unit. We will use our new blog to share with you ideas and activities that you can do with your children that will help reinforce concepts that are being taught in school. We will need support with developing our units and we will ask for weekly supplies for the activities. The supplies that we will need we refer to as “beautiful junk.” Many of the items are things that can be recycled or items that you currently put in the trash. You know that saying “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” In the preschool one person’s trash is a wonderful hands on activity that will help your child to acquire new skills and concepts. We will post our junk lists on the blog.

We are going to attempt to go green in the preschool and cut back on the enormous amount of paper we go through on a weekly basis. All of the teachers will be posting their weekly newsletters on the blog. The blog will also provide the staff the opportunity to share videos and pictures of your children participating in curriculum activities. We are excited to use the blog as yet another form of communication to keep families informed about what is happening in the integrated preschool.

We are excited about all of our new initiatives for 2010 and feel confident that they will enhance the quality of programming that is provided for your children on a daily basis. To find us on the web go to the Burlington Public Schools web site at www.burlington.mec.edu click on the link for the integrated preschool and you will see the link for the preschool blog. Our goal will be to update it several times a week

We wish you and your family a very happy and healthy holiday season. We are looking forward to 2010 being a fun and exciting year of learning in the integrated preschool.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to contact Louise at 781-273-7632 or @ D’amato@burlington.mec.edu


Thank You,

The staff of the Burlington Integrated Preschool