Winter Festival!!!

Nurturing Parent Workshop Series begins Wednesday January 15

Milton Family Community Center (MFCC)

Nurturing Parent Workshop, a free parenting series for parents of children ages birth to five, is now available in the Milton area. Do you want to: Improve communication with your children? Set limits that make sense? Have family meetings that support family bonding? Find out what positive discipline really is and how to make it work? Have fun together as a family, and with other families?
If you or someone you know has asked these questions, then this is the parenting education series for you. MFCC is partnering with Prevent Child Abuse Vermont to bring the Nurturing Parent parent education program to the Milton community. Workshop sessions will be facilitated by MFCC's parent educators Erica Howard and Kelly Hughes on Wednesdays starting January 15, 2014 from 12pm - 2pm at New Life Church on Centre Drive in Milton. Child care and lunch provided. This workshop training series is free, but preregistration is required. To register for this Nurturing Parent series or to find out about other workshop trainings available through Prevent Child Abuse Vermont, please contact Patricia Hendee at 802-498-0607 or phendee@pcavt.org.

Lottery Enrollment

The Milton Early Education Program (at the Milton Elementary School) is now accepting names for the lottery for the community slots for the 2014-15 school year. The lottery drawing and notifications (if your child's name is drawn) will be in April. Please click on this link to submit your child's information. If you have any questions please call Jennifer Knowles at 893-3215 ext 1424 or 316-6181. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CZG9BVX

PlayDough...PlayDough...PlayDough...

Hello!  Hope you all had a great vacation!!!  We are in need of playdough...any color!  Below is the recipe...easy peasy and fun to do with kids!  We will need 4 batches.  Let your child's teacher know if you would be a willing playdough maker! 

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1 cup water
2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/3 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
food coloring
Instructions
Mix together all the ingredients, except the food coloring, in a 2 quart saucepan. Cook over low/medium heat, stirring. Once it begins to thicken, add the food coloring. Continue stirring until the mixture is much thicker and begins to gather around the spoon. Remove the dough onto wax paper or a plate to cool.

Happy First Day of 

OPEN HOUSE TIMES

 

Orientation will be on Wednesday, September 4t^h.

The schedule is:

• MWF am’s—9:00-9:45

• T/Th am’s—10:00-10:45
• T/Th pm’s—12:30-1:15
• MWF pm’s—1:30-2:15

SUMMER PLAYGROUND FUN

Summer Preschool Fun!!

Come join other Milton community families at the playground!

Families will be meeting at the park by the tennis courts off Middle Rd on the Saturdays listed below, this summer at 10:00am. Bring a picnic and enjoy the fun. This is a family event so children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

• July 13
• July 27
• August 10
• August 24

Room 408 Makeover!

Thanks to Peregrine Design, Burlington Marble and Granite and our very own Al, we now have new cabinets in our classroom and the entire place looks modern, updated and organized!!! Great way to start the summer program...come for a visit! 

Have a great summer!

Summer Playground Saturdays

Summer Preschool Fun!!

Come join other Milton community families at the playground!

Families will be meeting at the park by the tennis courts off Middle Rd on the Saturdays listed below, this summer at 10:00am. Bring a picnic and enjoy the fun. This is a family event so children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

• June 29
• July 13
• July 27
• August 10
• August 24

Budget Info

SCHOOL BUDGET VOTING TODAY

School Budget Vote today June 4th from 7-7 at the Town Office...don't forget to vote!!! Thank you

School Budget Vote

The School Budget Vote
will be held on: June 4, 2013
7:00am – 7:00pm Milton Town Offices

Public Presentations on the
Revised FY 14 Budget: May 29th & June 3rd
7:00pm Milton High School Library
Absentee Ballots available through the Town Offices

Fundraising for our new OUTDOOR SANDBOX!!!!

The Milton Early Education Program is raising money for a new outdoor sandbox at the Elementary School. We were recently introduced to this AWESOME site that will match 100% of all donations for the first week. So check it out...totally legit and schools all over the country are successfully using DonorsChoose to help with materials that are not covered in school budgets. For the first week all donations will be doubled by the DonorsChoose board of directors. It is VERY important to use the match code INSPIRE so your donation will be doubled! 

We are asking for donations of any size to help the kids. For the next week, any donation you make to the project will be doubled! No donations is too big or too small! If you know anyone who is passionate about education and/or sandboxes! , please pass this along. 

Here's the classroom request:
[ http://email.donorschoose.org/wf/click?upn=CsPhWqIaiRWcUMfTJlg4VNdAyZDMv3Qigsb68UTnU2KZBAu0uMIKqR4Y8RW4as4tNIeWw43YDmno-2BxxtdpG1wFcUWotdj8pDso6Tz1Y-2BKK7WjiJcHwpwMkI-2Bf43yjE5g5f6rFSsMkXc3b3-2FakKn8JfeMCY29-2B8IIb0-2FB2SJdCSyuaLOBgiDPTxH63cwpQ2hn_7-2FnpMzqx8XHKGFUangolipgkNDna1UDQM8fzDPTNCQ3oDEBbBclP8942NViV-2B18X52VZB7UW60zAsEWFMk4suFb-2FQIP7EY7L9GtISZ-2FYYiAb3sS-2Bqx0IeEBeU2LqZvd-2BsH-2BnlSd6RBe80LJu2M2aFVQOBem2p221e0VFu-2Fwr5CqVGn9jOCMBxTtBmTdCZ8E1Nee-2BdGIuwheQ76oe4nX10PCkreVUQkRX-2F9bjpQJIxUumN7dEPPYQjKNiP8wGp8yFd-2F0qub5Q6pV1TkKiDkU-2Fu2C2tsMgHvd-2F7eMnns19vn6blEK43JjXBuQQ1wkZ1Wue ]Outdoor Sandbox for Preschool!

To have your donation matched dollar for dollar, enter the match code INSPIRE on the payment screen. This awesome match offer lasts through May 23, 2013.


Woohoo...
The Milton Early Education Teachers, Staff and Kids!


More info about the grant....

Scooping, digging, and building with sand is so much fun and is one of the "jobs" of preschool age children! However, we do not have a sandbox on our playground and digging holes in the dirt is resulting in a very bumpy playground.

We are a publicly funded preschool in Vermont. We serve close to 100 preschool age children in an integrated setting each week. We value outside playtime as an essential part of our curriculum. Our students LOVE to be outside and they love to play in the dirt and sand. An outdoor sandbox would allow the children to engage in this very important work in a safe way.

Sand play is addresses many areas of development; including fine motor, visual motor, sensory, social, and language skills. Children have to cooperate and collaborate. They learn to share and take turns. They engage in creative problem solving and idea building. Many of the children in our program are receiving special education services to address delays in their development. We use sand and other sensory play is an integral part of the therapies.

An outdoor sandbox has been on our wish list for many years. A grant allocating funds for this recently fell through and we are looking for a creative way to fund this very important item. Please know that your donation, big or small would be greatly appreciated by happy teachers and many little preschoolers busy at work in their new sandbox!

Next Week is RAINBOW week in Preschool!

Hope everyone had a nice vacation!

Article Worth Reading...

It is long, but well worth the read.  It addresses touch screen technology and young children.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/


                                                                                                                                                                         Erin Patrice O’Brien

This is how we roll...

the teachers that is! 

Counting is FUN

We have introduced these counting cards.  They are helpful in may ways.  Young children often lack the finger dexterity show "how many" on their little hands. These cards can help illustrate the finger movements.  They also work on number identification, counting skills and one to one correspondence. AND they are fun and the kids love them!  Easy to make at home.  Just take a picture or use Google images to find them and make number cards.  Enjoy and happy counting!

Yoga Recommendation from a parent

One of our families has begun to introduce YOGA to their 3 year old with great success!  She uses the Cosmic Kids Yoga videos on Youtube.

Check it out! 

http://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga

We will be doing some yoga with our classes this spring, so it would be fun to try it at home as well.

Play!