Week of January 9th-13th

Hi Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! On Thursday and Friday I sent home a letter explaining that next week I will be leaving the classroom and taking on a new position here at the Early Childhood Center. I have loved being in the classroom and working and learning with all of you child, for it was a tough decision for me to make. Luckily we have Kristen Hart who will be in the classroom as your child's teacher for the remainder of the school year. Miss Lauren and Mrs. Deb will still be in the classroom. Ms. Hart will be sending home a welcome letter introducing herself as well as explaining her primary modes of communication for families.

This week Ms. Hart and I are team teaching, which is very exciting for the both of us. We will be switching off teaching large and small group this week! The children have been getting to know Ms Hart and I know that she will do a fantastic job.

At large group this week I will be having the children do the alphabet freeze dance around the classroom as well as tell familiar felt board stories. At small group the children created their Art to Remember works and forms to order those will be sent home soon!

Spring Fling donation letters were sent home last week and the theme for our classroom is CATS! Please send in any non-perishable cat items to donate to the class basket. Those are due by January 24th.

School Reminders and Schedule:

• January 16th NO SCHOOL- MLK Day
• January 13th- Mr. Daniel in school field trip
• 9:30am
• 1:30pm

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Miss Rodriguez 

Message From Speech Therapists

Speech and Language Therapy

Happy New Year from the SLP Team at Brownsburg Early Childhood Center.  Our team has added another SLP.  Please welcome Cindy Cartwright who will be working part-time on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. For future reference, the SLPs are Jenni Shellhorn (full time SLP), Cindy Cartwright (part-time SLP), and Lorraine Jeter (full time SLPA).

An SLP stands for speech language pathologist.  In the educational field, we focus on all forms of communication, such as:

Speech: improving a student’s speech intelligibility.  Articulation is the way a sound is produced.  Phonology is the pattern of sound errors that typically developing children use to simplify speech as they are learning to talk.

Language: includes receptive language (what is understood) and expressive language (what is said).  Language therapy includes skills such as following directions, grammar, and vocabulary.

Fluency:  improving students’ speech who have difficulty maintaining fluent speech (stutter).

Social:  increasing verbal and nonverbal social language in order to improve communication between individuals.

As SLPs, our main goal is to provide speech and language services throughout the school day as outlined by your student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  Our second goal is to increase parent communication by providing weekly updates reviewing speech and language activities reviewed during Large and Small Group sessions.  Look for these updates posted on teacher blogs and biweekly homework sheets.  Additionally, the SLP team welcomes emails and phone calls with specific questions regarding your child’s needs.  Reach out to us with your concerns and we will return a response within 48 hours.

We look forward to the second half of the 2016-2017 school year!  It is our pleasure to continue working with your child.

Jenni Shellhorn, MHS, CCC-SLP – 317-852-1046, ext 2012, jshellhorn@brownsburg.k12.in.us

Cindy Cartwright, M.Ed, CCC-SLP – 317-852-1046, ext 2016, ccartwright@brownsburg.k12.in.us

Lorraine Jeter, BS, SLPA – 317-852-1046, ext 2012, ljeter@brownsburg.k12.in.us

Week of January 3rd-6th

Hi Families,

Welcome back and Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the holidays! We are excited to be back at school and going into the school groove once again.

This week at large group the children will be playing Red Light, Green Light as a way to practice their whole body listen and help them review different ways to show that you can listen. They will also be reading and moving to the book "Good Morning Yoga". On Thursday we will be going on a number hunt and lastly letter limbo.

At small group the children will be building patterns using building blocks as well as go on a color hunt by finding objects around the classroom that match different colors. The children will also be learning about rhyming words and word families.

We also have a new teacher in our classroom, Ms. Deb she is the second assistant in our classroom, we are very excited to have her with us!

Important Dates:

• January 6th, report cards and progress reports will be sent home, please let me know if you need multiple copies
• January 16th NO SCHOOL- MLK Day
• January 13th- Mr. Daniel in school field trip
• 9:30am
• 1:30pm

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Miss Rodriguez