Transportation!

Rose Room has been having such a great time with transportation. Whether it has to do with cars, trains, or airplanes, they are just having so much fun with this topic! It's so fun to see them turn our slide into their own ramp that they race their cars down. They laugh and have so much fun seeing which car is the fastest!







The car mat has been a huge hit as well. It has street signs, and roads that the kids can drive their cars on. We also have been bringing down the traffic light that the kids use as they're playing on the mat! It's so much fun to hear the kids talking as they are driving their cars around town :)













Thank you to Blue Room for sharing their airplane with us! Blue Room was very thoughtful to let us borrow their airplane after they were done with the project they were working on. We first got markers and transportation stamps and decorated the airplane. The very next day we decided to bring it outside and take turns flying the plane! The kids loved it and were laughing and jumping up and down to see the airplane fly over our yard!































Happy Rose day!




Love, Rose Room

Family Involvement Volunteer Hours

Dear Creative Minds Families,

Welcome to a new school year! This blog post is to let you know of an important addition to our parent handbook this year—family involvement volunteer hours. (You also got a letter in your parent pocket with the same information.) Starting this year, we are asking each family to contribute eight hours per year. Many of you have already been volunteering from time to time, and we are so grateful for your help! We’ve found it to be a tremendous win-win whenever families have the opportunity to get more involved in our program. The children are proud of their parents’ contributions, the teachers appreciate the fresh perspectives and diverse talents you bring to the classroom, and our families feel more connected to each other and to the school. By adding this opportunity and expectation for everyone, our goal is to help every family find a meaningful way to engage with our school so we can all benefit from each other’s gifts and talents.

So how will this work? What do I need to do?

We are asking each family (regardless of how many children you have enrolled here) to contribute eight hours per year. That’s just a couple hours per quarter, and there will be a wide variety of ways you can contribute to our program, either here on campus or remotely. See our website at www.creativemindscdc.org/family-involvement/ for the most current project list at any given time. If there’s something else you’d like to contribute that isn’t on the list, we’re always open to ideas! Here are just a few samples from the list:

* Read a special book to the class and lead an art or sensory project related to it.

* Help with playground beautification or help build playground equipment.

* Help with housekeeping tasks: change broken blinds, replace light bulbs, etc.

* Make felt/flannel board stories to go with some of our favorite books.

* Serve on planning committees for recruitment/interviews or facility design

But I’m seriously SO busy!

We realize that many of our families are working full-time and don’t have a lot of extra time to commit. This is why we are asking only eight hours per year, and why we have a mix of short and long projects and some that you can do from home on your own time. Also, anyone from your family can contribute. Parents, step-parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, adult siblings—anyone who would like to share their talents is welcome.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at (408) 445-0101 or email Richa or Jennifer. We thank you for your understanding, and for partnering with us as we continue to grow and thrive together!

Thanks,

Richa Kapur

Director

Creative Minds CDC

Bugs/Insects! 4th of July Fun!

Continuing on with our bug theme, we decided to make a butterfly and bumblebees. The kids see these on a daily basis and ask us all sorts of questions about these bugs. Please check out our beautiful artwork that is up in our classroom or outside on our classroom window. While painting the bumblebee, we talked about the different parts of the body. We labeled the parts on the bee outside on the classroom window if you are interested in checking that out :)

Butterfly:



















Bumblebees:

























Rose Room celebrated 4th of July with some yummy watermelon this year! The kids came to school dressed in something red, white, or blue! We brought a couple watermelons outside, cut them up, and enjoyed eating them :) We hope all of our families had a very happy 4th of July weekend!

























Happy Summer!!!

Love,

Rose Room

Spiders/Bugs, Planting basil!

Bugs have been a huge topic for the kids in Rose Room! The kids are on a hunt every day when we go outside to find snails and spiders! Teachers have to keep a close eye on the kiddos because they try to hold and love the snails a little too much sometimes. One of our centers was making spiders out of black play-dough. With the help from the kids, we poured in the flour, salt, oil and water and made the black play-dough into the bodies of our spiders. Next we put black pipe cleaners as the legs, and finally the googley stickers for their eyes. The spiders were the cutest spiders we had ever seen :)






















Snails :)


















Gardening is a fun activity that the kids love because it involves digging and also it's outside time :) Thank you to Teacher Richa for buying us some basil plants. The kids did a great job digging in the dirt and making a hole big enough to fit the plant. Then we added some more soil into the pot to make sure the basil plant was standing up strong! Our next cooking activity is making pizza and adding our basil from our very own garden :)
















Rose Room!