Welcome Balloon and Toucan Parents!!

Ms. Richmond and Mr. Butler are ready to embark on an exciting new school year with your student! We hope that you will notice that we are dedicated to creating a fun learning environment that will foster growth and development in each student. We would also like to encourage any suggestions or input that may be offered by the parents of the students throughout the school year. We would like the parents to be very involved in the learning process, and because of this, we would love to hear from you at any time!

This year the Balloons and Toucans will be focusing on developing fine motor skills, so that the students will later be able to form numerals and letters confidently. Also, math skills such as numeral recognition, learning math vocabulary, and patterning will also be strongly emphasized. These patterning skills will reinforce math, as well as reading, poetry and music. The Balloons and Toucans will be striving towards recognizing their consonants and vowel sounds so that they can sound out words to read in the future! These recognition skills will be coupled with "hearing" rhyming words, being able to recall nursery rhymes, and know the difference between opposites and rhymes. In addition, the Toucans will be sounding out letters that will help them to "decode" words and help them become successful readers! Please keep in mind that the homework that they take home is not intended to challenge the child, but instead is used to reinforce the skills that they have learned in school.

Your child will also be practicing their gross-motor skill development at Class Academy. The gross-motor skill program is very important to your child's learning because, what the brain/body can do in large movement and complex directions, it will later transfer these skills into smaller muscle movement and higher learning in math, science and reading. We are very thorough in our teaching so that there are no gaps in the student's learning. This means that we will make sure to cover all aspects that are incorporated into your child's learning. With this in mind, we would like to say once more that we are eager and ready to take your child to his/her next learning level, and we are looking forward to your positive partnership with us!!