Joy to the world! It’s delicious in this school, with potato latkes and gingerbread
people and cookies and hot chocolate—it’s truly the holiday spirit and sweet smells
of the season.
Our Auction, The Secret Garden, on December 9th, was a lush event filled with
surprises and fun. The food was excellent and visually creative as always, thanks
to Chris and Best in Gourmet, the music was fun, thanks to Marlon of Mercury
Entertainment and our in-house Auctioneer, Reagan Wellins, was outstanding.
Marissa Senzon and Abby Menachem did a stellar job pulling everything together
as our Chairs of the event, along with Michelle-Lee Rabinowitz, Kit Herrera, Jenn Del Monaco,
Kerry Perlman, Traci Nandi, Jessica Reed and so many more. We even had live entertainment
take a village and we are
by talented Young 3 parents Michele Scully and Jason Volper! It
so grateful. It is the year of literacy and we are thrilled that this year’s auction theme was a
classic children’s book.
Our Toy Drive was a huge success as was the Wishes for St. Jude drive. These are truly
teachable moments for all the children and a chance for all of us to give something to those who
have so little. Even the children walking past the box with the toys and wondering who those
toys are for starts the conversation.
Our most recent Book Club was held at one of the Co-Chair’s home and as I greeted her 4 year
old son that morning, he did a double fist pump in the air and gleefully said to me, “Nightclub
tonight, Wendy!” Well, not exactly, Griffin, BOOK club, but I loved the enthusiasm!
May all your holidays, whatever they are, be filled with good books, delicious food, grandparents,
new adventures, a little snow, fun movies, delightful music, the laughter of your kids and
hopefully some reflection on others not as fortunate as us and what we all can do to be grateful.
I for one thank you for the gift of your children and hope that 2017 brings all good things for our
country, our families, our world and everyone at ECNS, past, present and future.
Merry, merry and fa la la la la la la,
1
Claire Fitzpatrick,
new head teacher of
Young Threes, used
to spend summers in
England with her
maternal aunt who
ran a sensory gym
there. Little Claire
wanted to grow up and work with children in that gym (mainly because she
herself wanted to use the special
sensory swing!). She didn’t know what
that job was but she wanted it.
Fast forward to Claire at the
University of Vermont trying to
register for first semester classes
without any idea what she wanted to
study. The registrar, in error, had put
Claire in an education class. To her own
surprise, she really enjoyed that class
and wanted to learn more, thus started
on the path to becoming a teacher! She
has a Master’s degree in General,
Special and Gifted Early Childhood
Education.
Claire works with children now
just as Little Claire had wanted, only
without the swing. She loves her job
and introducing
new experiences to young
children. That
registrar’s
mistake was
certainly
serendipitous!
Mark Your Calendars
Jan. 4
Children return to school
Happy New Year!
Jan. 16
ECNS closed for
Martin Luther King Jr.
Day
Feb. 7
Valentine’s Day Hop
(4s and 4/5s) 4-6pm
Feb. 13-14
Bake Sale
Feb. 20 - 24
ECNS closed for
Mid Winter Break
2
As soon as Halloween
ended, we began preparing for
Father’s (and Uncle’s) Day,
ECNS Spirit Day,
Thanksgiving and, of course, all
the winter festivities.
Father’s Day went quite
nicely. We showed dads and uncles
how we have our usual meeting and
sang some of the songs we had learned. Then we went on to projects, which
included decorating picture frames for the photos we took of the dads, and
making either truck or fire engine piggy banks. It was a great morning
getting to know all the dads and uncles.
ECNS Spirit Day came quickly after Father’s Day and the children
were happy to know that there would not only be flag making for it, but a
parade as well!
Thanksgiving followed, and with it began a new unit. When we
began reading our first Thanksgiving book, we emphasized how this book
was different from most of our others in that this was a HISTORY book and
it told a story of events that really took place! It is always interesting to
witness the children trying to grasp the idea of a very different life than
they themselves experience, one in which there was no electricity, no cars,
no factories and no stores! Children, of course, take all these things for granted
(as many adults do) so when we asked why the Pilgrims didn’t just take a plane
to America it really took some thinking to truly comprehend why they could not
have. For this study we also prepared food for our own Thanksgiving feast. The
children made a Pilgrim hat or a Native American headdress to wear during the
feast. We even made a thankful book.
After Thanksgiving, we moved on to our Fall Self-Portraits, which was our
first formal attempt to have the children draw a picture of themselves. We
explained this had to be a real picture, with real colors (no purple hair), of them
doing something in the fall! It was fun to see what event the children chose to
draw, and to see how, even in this short bit of time we have had together, the children’s
drawing skills have improved.
These last few weeks have been busy continuing on with our letter of the week activities
and creating a lot of holiday arts and crafts, and singing.
We would like thank our two class moms, Jennifer and Lisa, for organizing the great
holiday party. They’ve also worked tirelessly to help our year go smoothly and have
helped our class and ECNS in so many ways.
We wish everyone a wonderful holiday filled with peace and love and joy!
Sincerely,
Liza and Tina
3
So much has taken place in our Twos class since our last newsletter! The children
continued to learn about fall and its beautiful colors, creating leaves with fall-colored tissue
papers and paints. To celebrate Thanksgiving and the importance of family, we made trees with
the faces of our family members as the apples. The children were eager and happy to point out
their family apple trees to their friends and their grownups. Turkeys wobbled and gobbled in
our classroom too. The children made different turkeys, using plates and brown paper bags. The
children also demonstrated their knowledge of colors as they selected and identified different
colored feathers of our class turkey.
The children practiced their culinary skills as they made pumpkin bars and apple
muffins for both themselves and their parents for Curriculum Breakfasts. They also
made mashed potatoes and corn bread to share with other Twos classes for Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a fabulous feast with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce along
with our potatoes and corn bread.
Hanukkah and Christmas were celebrated as well, as our little angels
decorated their classroom with menorahs, dreidels, Christmas trees and wreaths,
AND they even created a special gift for their parents. Lots of hand/eye
coordination was practiced while making these!
We had a very pleasant holiday party with crafts, food and fun had by all. The
children even had their Broadway debut as they performed their holiday songs! A
sincere thank you to all the class moms who organized our festivities: Loryn Halper,
Samantha Heffner, Traci Nandi and Surita Lim, as well as all the parents who
contributed to the success of our celebration!
The seeds of learning have been planted in the Twos. We love watching
them grow and develop into strong, independent and life-long learners.
Wishing you the very
happiest of holidays and a serene 2017.
With love,
-Daniela :) and Karen
4
#ecnsdadsarethebest
(...and uncles and grandpas too!)
Feasting with lots of food and friends!
5
It is hard to believe that it is already the
middle of December! Our 5-day Twos have come
so far since the first few weeks of school. We’ve
been quite busy in the Twos Room having a
wonderful time learning so many great new things. We’ve worked on patterning,
sorting (by color and shape), learning positional words, and so much more. In
November we learned all about fall and Thanksgiving and in December we
learned all about the holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas.
In the beginning of November we learned all about leaves (and the change
of colors), apples and all the fun things we can during the fall season. We created
fall trees and used Q-tips instead of brushes to paint our leaves, which really
targeted our fine motor skills. Our mini apple pies were
a huge hit!
We learned about Thanksgiving in
November as well. We discussed what we are thankful for, and what foods we eat. We made some fun
turkeys with multicolored feathers. We had a
fabulous Thanksgiving feast with friends from
Daniela’s class. We made and brought cranberry
sauce and stuffing to go along with the mashed
potatoes, corn bread and turkey from the other Twos.
I In December we learned all about the holidays. For Hanukkah,
we made dreidels and menorahs and fried up some delicious latkes. We used patterning skills
to make candy canes and our fine motor skills to make wreaths for Christmas. We made gingerbread men to eat and share; all the teachers in school were really happy to get cookies from us.
Some of our friends have ideas of what Santa might bring them - a remote controlled boat, a
choo choo train, Shopkins, a yo-yo and maybe a dinosaur (hopefully not life-sized!)? We worked
tirelessly on learning the songs that we sang at our Holiday Party. Thank you Classmoms for
putting together such an amazing party for us!
We wish Michelle the best and welcome Christine warmly to our class!
Have a Happy and Healthy New Year! We look forward to
seeing you in January!
-Christine , Erica,
and Michelle
6
The Four/Fives are
super excited for the
holiday season! We
have been moving right along
from holiday to holiday and learning lots along the way! We had a fabulous Father’s Day,
Thanksgiving with our friends in the Fours, and of course our Holiday Party!
The highlight though was when we gave of ourselves to others during our St. Jude toy
collection! Kids helping kids, nothing better! The children helped pack up the boxes to send off to
the children at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and even made some cards and signs for
them to brighten their holiday spirit! The children loved having our classroom look like Santa’s
workshop and pretending they were all little elves. The kids learned a life lesson that giving to
others feels really good and that they should help those in need, even if it is in small ways. I am
very proud of the Four/Fives and would like to thank all the parents for their help with all of
these projects!
Prior to Thanksgiving we discussed what we are thankful for and we are mainly grateful
for our family and friends and all the special things we are fortunate enough to do with them. We
made some great Thanksgiving decorations such as thankful hand turkeys and Indian corn. We
worked collaboratively to create two high flying balloons just like the ones at the Macy’s parade, a
huge turkey and a giant rainbow fish. The big celebration of November is our Thanksgiving feast
with the Fours. The Four/Fives became gourmet chefs and whipped up some stuffing, green
beans and mini pumpkin cheesecakes. We’re very proud to report that the children all did a fabulous job of trying all the new foods. We were all thankful that we were able to celebrate together
and have such a nice feast!
The month of December comes and goes quickly, but so much happens within the short
time we are in school. We first focused on Hanukkah during “H” week and made some elaborate
menorahs that really worked on process with the children. They look great and the kids are very
proud of them. We learned to play the dreidel game which was a big hit throughout the room. We
also made latkes which all the children loved since they said they tasted like French fries, which
what kid doesn’t love! For Christmas the children put triangles in size order to make trees and
then decorated them with many different materials. They also collaged a wreath and made
peppermint candies which all look great (but alas not edible).
We are all very excited about the holiday season and have been
singing our holiday
songs nonstop!
We can’t wait for
the spring semester!!
Have a great holiday!!
-Meredith
and Samantha
7
Middle Threes have had a wonderful fall. The children so enjoy
coming to school and learning all about new things and events.
We had a wonderful November with lots of
turkey art, learning about the Pilgrims and
Native Americans, and all the good things
that we could (and did) eat for Thanksgiving.
Through our songs, we learned that we never want to be a
turkey! Please have your children sing “Turkey Hop”; they do such a
good job with it. We even talked about some of the early events that
happened in our country and read several books about them. It was so much fun to hear what
the children were thankful for. There were many children thankful for toys, sisters, beds and
of course, mommy and daddy. We hope you enjoyed their comments.
We’ve done so many things for the beginning winter season. We focused on Christmas and
Hanukah, doing art projects and cooking traditional holiday foods. Everyone loved making
Christmas trees and ornaments for our little tree, dreidels and menorahs. For cooking we made
the best sugar cookies and what fun it was to make potato latkes. I want to thank all the
parents who helped us in the classroom.
In our sequencing class, the children are learning what a pattern is. They love making patterns
with acorns and leaves, and creating patterned cereal necklaces and candy canes. It is so
wonderful to see the children making a pattern out of Legos or just crayons.
Red Bear is still the favorite toy in school. Thank you all that have taken such good care of him
over his weekend stays.
Shorty Pointy Toes has made a few appearances. The children are very interested in him. He
will most certainly show up some more in the coming months.
We have enjoyed your children so much this year and look forward to 2017.
Have a wonderful holiday!
-Linda and Chini
8
ECNS Spirit
Day!!
The Secret
Garden
Co-Chairs
Abby and Marissa
9
Auction 2016
It is hard to
believe that fall
is almost over
and winter is rapidly approaching.
The Old 3s have had
a busy couple of
months filled with learning, fun, and many celebrations including Diwali, Father's Day, Spirit
Day, Thanksgiving, and the Holiday Party.
Shaan Javeri’s and Akash Iyer's mothers came to teach us all about Diwali. The children listened
to stories about the holiday, colored pictures, listened to music and enjoyed a sweet treat. Everyone had a great
time!
Fathers and uncles came to celebrate Father’s Day with us. The children were excited to lead their special
guests around the classroom to show them their favorite play area, toys and art projects. Together the students
and their special grown-ups painted picture frames and made fruit roll-ups. At the end of Father's Day, the
children put on a great concert singing many of the songs about fall that they had learned. It was a fun and wonderful day to have our special guests visit our classroom!
November would not be complete without Thanksgiving and learning about sharing and being thankful. After
reading many books about Thanksgiving including Albert's Thanksgiving by Leslie Tyron, Clifford's Thanksgiving Visit
by Norman Bridwell and The Pilgrim's Party by Sadyebeth and Anson Lowitz, the children were ready for the
Thanksgiving Feast with all of their friends in the Young and Middle 3s. It was very special to celebrate the harvest
season with turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, corn muffins, carrots, and stuffing. The Old 3s wore the Pilgrim
hats that they had and brought the stuffing and brownies that they had cooked.
The winter holidays are upon us and all the children are looking forward to celebrating with their families.
Some may light menorahs, decorate a tree or do special winter holiday activities. It’s a special time of year to spend
time with loved ones and enjoy the holiday festivities. In class, to prepare for the holiday season, we
read a lot of books including Dream Snow by Eric Carle, How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas by
Jane Yolen and Mark Teague and Hanukkah Lights, Hanukkah Nights by Leslie Kimmelman. We
also learned many new holiday songs including “Reindeer Pokie” (sung to the tune of “Hokey
Pokey”), “Where is Santa?”, “Up on the Housetop”, “S-A-N-T-A”, “The Maccabees”, “A Latke”,
“Chanukah Latkes”, and “Spin Dreidel Spin”.
Jackson Menachem's parents and James Dietrich's mom taught the children how to make
potato latkes while Jagger Senzon's mom brought in brownies shaped like Christmas trees for the
children to decorate. We had several birthday parties in our class to celebrate Kalden Lin, Scarlet
Witover, Jagger Senzon and Akash Iyer turning four years old. We also began our
mystery reader program where a different parent comes to the class to read a story. The kids
get clues beforehand and try to guess whose parent is coming.
Thanks to Zachary Vogel's father for participating. We look
forward to many other mystery reader days in 2017.
The holiday party was a lot of fun. The children enjoyed the
various stations and celebrating with their classmates. Thank you
to our class moms, Chun Lin and Jamie Witover, for organizing
such a fun event for all of us. We wish you all a happy,
healthy and safe winter break and New Year! We are
looking forward to a great 2017 in the Old 3s.
-Jaci, Phyllis and Mariel
10
The Young Threes had
a great time at our Father’s
Day celebration; thank you to all
the dads and grandpas who
attended. We made fun bookmarks, decorating cards
resembling a button up shirt and
tie. We also read a dad story and sang some songs with our special
guests.
After this celebration we dove right into talking about
Thanksgiving. We talked about scarecrows after seeing a scarecrow in the book The Little
Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything. We even made our own scarecrows using paper
cutouts and felt clothing. We read more festive Thanksgiving books like What is
Thanksgiving? and Biscuit’s Thanksgiving. We made
our own turkeys using feathers and modeling clay.
Gobble gobble! We talked about foods people eat
during Thanksgiving like in the book Theo’s
Thanksgiving. Theo had quite the feast with
pumpkin pie, mashed potatos, cornbread muffins
and turkey with gravy. We also looked at a
photograph of a cornucopia (a horn of plenty). We then made our own cornucopias and glued
on pictures of vegetables. In preparation for our Thanksigiving feast we made cranberry
sauce and corn muffins to share with all of our friends.
With the holidays rapidly approaching we talked about Hanukkah and Christmas. We
had a family come in to read us special holiday books and bring us a special treat..rice krispies
treats! We made chocolate chip holiday cookies with fun festive red and green chocolate
pieces. We also made delicious latkes which we enjoyed with applesauce. We painted
Christmas trees which we decorated with shiney sequins. We also decorated Christmas
stockings with cotton balls. We made dreidels and decorated them as well. We learned new
songs like “I am a Little Dreidel” and “Jingle Bells” which we sang at our holiday party.
We would like to thank everyone for coming to our holiday party and celebrating with
us. We had so much fun decorating cupcakes, making sticker pictures and singing along to our
holiday songs.
We hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season!
Looking forward to seeing everyone again in the New Year!
Claire & Inez
11
Happy holidays! I highly
recommend seeing The Radio City
Christmas Spectacular this year! There
are more numbers with the Rockettes
and more of the traditional holiday
songs. "The March of the Wooden
Soldiers" never ceases to delight and it
has been part of the performance since
early on! Alas, your visit to the Music
Hall is bound to be ½ hour (or more)
Figaro and Cleo from Pinocchio
longer this year- including a full body
search (no longer just the wand in your
pocketbook) and a double check on the e-tickets on your phone. So do arrive on the
line a good forty five minutes early!
I usually recommend some holiday reading or films to view over the winter
vacation. This time, I suggest you reexamine some classic Disney animated movies.
Yes, they may at times be scary (losing a parent, the presence of a wicked witch,
featuring a fire, etc.) but there also is wonderful friendship, teamwork and music.
Just a few examples right off the top of my head - Jiminy Cricket helps Pinocchio,
the seven dwarfs help Snow White, Thumper helps Bambi, Tink helps Peter Pan, and
the animals help Cinderella.
Don’t forget the award winning scores and music!
"A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes", “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!” (Cinderella)
"Hi Ho", "Whistle While You Work” (Snow White)
"When You Wish Upon A Star", "I've Got No Strings", "Hi Diddle Dee Dee!"
(Pinocchio)
"The Second Star to the Right", "Following the Leader" (Peter Pan)
Peggy Lee's (yes!) songs from Lady and the Tramp (She sued Disney for the rights in
the 80's and won). And who can forget the spaghetti eating scene and "Bella Notte"?
Do watch Mary Poppins for the songs and dancing and combination of animation
and real life. And of course Beauty and the Beast in 3D; watch Angela Lansbury and
Jerry Orbach take a break from television and return to the theater (their first
love).
Watch, sing, and enjoy as a family. Finally, think of all the things our winter
holidays have in common - family, friendship, faith, food, and lights.
Celebrate them all!
12