Extra Curricular Activities

The new school year is almost here & in celebration we have a brand new extra curricular activity starting...whoo hoo! We are excited to be offering a literacy program, please read below to find out all about it.

Little Wonders Literacy Program

Little Wonders is now implementing a supplementary early literacy program. In addition to the reading program that is currently running, we will now have an expert in children’s literacy skills come to Little Wonders once a week to help expand and support our curriculum.

Heidi Anderson, who is currently the Youth Services Programming Administrator for the Houston Public Library will be running the program. She oversees all programming and services for children and teens ages 0–18 in 40 Houston Public Library Neighborhood Libraries. She has a Masters of Art in Library Studies, and her areas of expertise are children and young adult programming and services in public libraries, children and young adult literature, and early literacy.

The Pre-Literacy Skills that the program will focus on are:

· Print Motivation: thinking that books and reading are fun

· Vocabulary: knowing the names of things

· Print Awareness: recognizing print and understanding how the books work

· Letter Knowledge: understanding that each letter has its own name and sounds

· Narrative Skills: being able to tell stories and describe things

· Phonological Awareness: being able to recognize and play with the smaller sounds that make up words

We will have Biweekly Story-Time with a Children’s Librarian: This story time will be offered for toddlers in toddler 1 and 2, and for the preschool and preK classes. Preschool and PreK story time is a traditional library activity that includes sharing books, singings songs and using rhymes to introduce new vocabulary, strengthen letter knowledge, narrative skills and phonological awareness while reinforcing print motivation. Toddler Time is similar but has a focus on shorter stories that develop vocabulary and letter knowledge while reinforcing print motivation and print awareness. Toddler story-time features a lot of movement and interaction, including use of a parachute and bubbles. Story-Times will be every other Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., beginning on August 11th.

Monthly Parent Take-Homes: These take-homes will share with parents what stories their children listened to during story time, what songs and rhymes they did, and will give suggested other books and activities to share as “extenders”. They will also offer pre-literacy information and tips.

Monthly “Baby and Me” Story-Time for baby and parent: An interactive 20 minutes to spend with your baby singing and playing before you separate for the work day! This story-time introduces print motivation right from birth, as well as offering a special little jump start to your day (and a chance to interact with other parents!) Classes will be on the first Wednesday of every month at 9:00 a.m., beginning on Wednesday, September 1st.

Listed below is all the of the extracurricular activities we offer with their day, time, fee & how to find out more about each program, so please don't forget to register today!

Monday- 3:00 Art Class with Marjon Aucoin
http://www.marjonart.com/
$70- 6 weeks

Tuesday- 10:00 Soccer with Coach Mario
mrmadrigal65@latinmail.com
$50 per 5 session

Tuesday- 11:15 Dance Class with KT Dancing, Inc.
KTDancingKim@aol.com
$45 a monthWednesday- 9:30 Literacy Program with Ms. Anderson
Provided by Little Wonders Learning Center
1st Wednesday of every month baby and me classes with Ms. Anderson provided by Little Wonders Learning Center
(parents must accompany his/her child for the class)

Thursday- 9:30 Gymnastics with Alpha Omega Gym
http://www.alphaomegagym.net/littlewonders.html$55 a month

Friday- 11:00 Computer Class with i kids inc.
http://www.ikidsinc.com/
$60 a month

before/after school pick up

Parents!
It is that time of year again! We are getting ready for a new school year, so please let us know as soon as possible if your child will be needing any transportation from Little Wonders.

splash day

Weather permitting, we will start SPLASH DAY this friday morning! The infants through toddlers will have splash day starting at 8:00 a.m., and the older children will start playing at 10:00 a.m. The permission form is by the sign in computer, please make sure you sign it before this Friday.

The children will need:

to be in their swim suits when they come to school

a towel

they must be wearing water shoes

sunscreen must be applied by the parent/guardian before the children come to school. (we are not allowed to apply the sunscreen).

regular clothes, shoes, and socks need to be brought to school for after water play, and please make sure that each item is labeled with your child's name.
the children are welcome to bring toys to play with, however, we will not allow water guns. please feel free to talk to Maryam if you have any questions. we are looking forward to some fun in the sun!!!!!

making a difference

in the main hallway we have put up all of our pre-k children's projects that they have worked so hard on, to show everyone how much passion they have about getting clean water to the world. they know all about how to build wells & they want to raise enough money for mr.lopez to go with living water international to build one in guatemala. so far we have collected about $374.00, the children are so proud of themselves & all the awareness they're raising. they know they can can do this, they're comittited to giving clean water to a village in gutemala!!! if you would like to donate we have a bucket on the front desk by the check-in computer or we also have a sponser sheet that the children have made if you'd like to pick one up to take to work or ask your neighbors... we appreciate eveyone's continued support to these awesome children who are going to save this world :)

how a well is built

our version of all the layers a well has to go through to get clean water & what we think they look like

clean water coming from wells

people walking 3 miles to get clean water

our african village

letter explaining about mr.lopez, living water international & guatemala

the donation sheet the children have made

father's day

Whoo hoo, it's that time of year again...time to celebrate our amazing DADS!!!

We will be serving a Father's Day Breakfast Friday, June 18th,

from 6-9:30 am.
Fathers, please plan on spending some extra time in the morning with your child(ren).
Any family member is welcome to join us if dad is not available!
Thank you and we hope to see you there!!!

Free Time???

Any time we get some free time from our home work and our tutuoring, we like to express ourselves artistically! Take a peek ;0)

coloring earth green

to celebrate the 40th anniversary of earth day, aaron brothers art & framing sponsored a kids' art contest themed coloring earth green & ella lopez, one of our pre-k students entered & she won at the sugar land location for her age group (5-8yrs)...whoo hoo. so now she has been entered into the national contest against all the other 159 store winners, can you believe it!? so now online voting will determine the grand prize, second prize and third prize. and guess what... voting is from may 5th & goes until may 21st, then the winner will be announced around may 28th, we know it's so exciting!

grand prize winners from each age category will win a trip to the crayola factory in easton, pennsylvania, for four people, including air travel and hotel accommodations for 3 days and 2 nights, and a $500 aaron brothers gift card. their designated schools will each receive a $1,000 gift card.
second place prize winners will each receive a $200 aaron brothers gift card. their designated schools will each receive a $500 aaron brothers gift card.
third place prize winners will each receive a $100 aaron brothers gift card. their designated schools will each receive a $300 aaron brothers gift card.


so please visit http://aaronbrothers.com/vote & check out her amazing water bottle lid creation "shalena the butterfly" & vote for her, ella (age 5)!

p.s. you can vote more than once if you have more than one e-mail address...hint hint

p.s.s. don't forget to tell your friends about "shelena the butterfly"

Mother's Day

Mothers,

Please joing us for a sweet treat Friday, May 7th, beginning at 3:00 pm in celebration of Mother's Day!

Spring Garden

Springtime is here and we are ready to get our garden in tip-top shape!

All of the kids at Little Wonders got together to work in the garden! They used their compost to prepare the soil and then planted the vegetables, fruit, and flowers that they brought from home!

We all can't wait to see how our garden will grow!

Art Art Art!

There have been a bunch of new thing happening in the after school room lately! The students recently received a new teacher named Ms. Nosheen, and to learn a little bit about who then are and what they like she had them create a collage. First, she explained what a collage was and then gave them magazines, glue, tape, and paper and let them go crazy. The results were beautiful and they were able to talk about their pieces and themselves to each other.

They also started a little competition in the class following the collage project. They decided to start an art contest. They are able to work in whatever medium that they choose and the art work has to be creative! The work will be judged by a few of the teachers here and there will be a grand prize. All of the students are very excited and have been working very hard in class. We will keep you posted on their progress in the following days!