April 26 - April 29

This week we talked about Earth Day and also ways that we can help the Earth! We read stories called It's Earth Day, Biscuits Earth Day Celebration, and The Great Trash Bash. All of them talked about how we want to pick up litter and recycle. We also talked about what it means to be a litterbug and how being one can be harmful to the animals and plants. The kids all made a Litter Bag, which they can hang up in the car and collect trash, to make sure it all gets put in the trash can and not on the ground. They also made rain sticks, they recycled old paper towel holders and turned them into something new, instead of throwing them away! We sang a few songs about picking up litter and keeping the Earth clean and also one about going on a picnic.

We started our Nursery Rhyme notebooks this week! This week we learned Baa, Baa Black Sheep. We added it to our notebook and sang the song several times throughout the week. We also got to act the poem out, find the rhyming words, and also words that were the same.

We also started counting to 100 by 10's, and a lot of the kids can do it all by themselves! And on Friday, they wanted to count all the numbers on our Hundreds Board, so we counted all the way to 100! They loved being able to do that. We have also learned a song that teaches us the months of the year, and they are all doing a great job with that too!

This week we found a cricket in the room, and Mrs. Ray tried to catch it but it was too fast and hid under the shelf, so the boys volunteered to catch it for her! Here are some pictures from the process :)

First, they tried shoving toys under the shelf to get it to come back out. 

 Then they needed a flashlight so they could see if it was still under there.

 Finally it hopped out and Gage caught it with the net!

 Carried it to the trash....

 Then they piled some trash on top of it and looked to make sure it would stay in there :)

This next week we will be talking about Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle! We will continue work on our Nursery Rhyme notebook, and on Thursday we will celebrate Cinco de Mayo!

On Thursday for Cinco de Mayo, students do not need to wear a uniform! And they are encouraged to wear brightly colored clothes for our celebration!

And on Friday, we will have Muffins for Moms in the morning! We're hoping all of you will be able to make it to come and eat some muffins with your child on the day!

Have a great weekend! See you all on Monday!

Stephanie Ray

254-598-8101

April 18- April 21

This week we talked about Easter! The students got to hear the Easter story several times: in class from a few different books and also in Chapel when Mrs. Keevers class acted it out. We talked about how Jesus died for our sins and the students saw a glass of water and how it was clear and white, just like our hearts were when we were born...but then we talked about times when we do things that are not right; not listening to our parents, hitting friends, etc...and our heart turns a little darker (we added food color to the water). Then we talked about how Jesus forgives us when we mess up! He still loves us! And we added some bleach to the water and it turned back to white!

We also had a cross in the room and everytime Mrs. Ray caught someone doing something good, they got to go put a heart on the cross. By the end of the week our cross was filled up! In art, we made three crosses on a hill, a fingerpainted cross, some eggs in a basket, painted Easter eggs, and made little chicks.

We learned about syllables this week and sorted objects based on how many syllables they had, we also matched up eggs by upper and lowercase letters. We worked on writing our letters and writing our last names. We also reached into an Easter basket and tried to guess what was inside, we had to describe it to the rest of the class as we felt it. We also got to hunt for the eggs in the room, and then graphed what everyone had inside theirs.

This week we are talking about Earth day and how we need to take care of the Earth. We are also going to start doing nursery rhymes. We will be doing two nursery rhymes a week probably until the last week of school!

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Class Picture Order Forms :: Due May 2

April 11- April 15

This week we finished up our letters! We talked about Y and Z and had two puppets, named Yippy the Yak and Zippy the Zebra. We read our letter stories and the kids practiced writing the letters Y and Z. This week we also talked about bugs and insects. We learned that insects have three body parts; the head, thorax, and abdomen. We also learned that they have 6 legs. We sorted pictures to decide if it was an insect or if it wasn't. We played a game where we flipped fake flies and then counted how many were "dead" (on thier backs) and how many were "alive."

We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly, and glued different shapes of pasta on a paper plate to represent the different stages. We have eggs, caterpillar, cocoon, then butterfly! We made caterpillars on Monday and put them into a cocoon and on Friday we pulled them out and added wings to the caterpillars so they could be butterflies!

We painted caterpillars, ants, made ladybugs, counted ants hiding in the grass, and read several books about insects! We even got to have real worms in our classroom! They stayed in a little aquarium where we could watch them dig in the dirt! We also got new stuff in our sensory table. We added "grass" and insects. The students used nets or tweezers and dug around to find the insects hiding in there. On Friday we got to eat some dirt and worms (pudding and gummi worms)! And some of the students thought that Mrs. Ray was going to make them eat real worms!

On Friday we had a special guest come to the school! It was Grant's grandma, and she is the author of several childrens books! So she came and read to all the classes and we got to dress up and listen to the stories!

Here are pictures of the kids eating their dirt and worms, our real classroom worms, and the new sensory table stuff!

This upcoming week we'll be talking about Easter and the months of the year!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Stephanie Ray

April 4- April 8

This week we talked about the letters W and X. We read a story called "Willie and Wanda" and a story called "Foxy Roxy." We came up with other words that had a W or an X in them and worked on tracing and writing these letters. We also continued to talk about pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. We did a science experiment to see what kinds of things can clean coins. We tried soapy water, oatmeal, ketchup, and vinegar and salt. The kids were surprised to see that ketchup and vinegar cleaned the coins and made them shiny!

We also talked about Weather this week. We learned about the different seasons and how the weather can change. We sorted weather cards and read a story about clouds and then made our own clouds. We also read a story about the different seasons. We did several fingerplays about weather and the kids really liked one where we would make it rain and then storm by using our hands and our legs.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Jones came to talk to our classroom about swimming safely. The kids practiced doing the dead mans float!

The kids did a great job on the Chapel skit this week! They all remembered what they had to do and had fun getting to do it in front of the other kids and for the parents that came!


We also had fun on Cowboy Day! We got to practice "roping steers," we dug for pennies in the sand, sang and danced to some songs around the "campfire," and got to pet and brush a real calf and steer! In the classroom, the kids pretended to make food on the fire, rolled out their bedding, rode their horses, made covered wagons, painted bluebonnets on a bandana, and watched the movie "Pecos Bills." We also read several stories about cowboys and talked about the different things that cowboys wear and why they are important for them to wear!


This upcoming week we will be talking about the letters Y and Z. The last ones! And we will also be studying insects and spiders!

Here are some pictures from our Chapel Skit and from Cowboy Day!

Annual Fund Participation Drive

Achieving excellence requires commitment from everyone. Tuition alone does not cover the full cost of educating our students and maintaining our first-rate faculty. Donations provide the essential funds needed for curriculum development, faculty, scholarships and operating costs.

Starting Wednesday, April 6, we will launch our Annual Fund Participation Drive at the classroom level. Our goal is 100%!! The classroom with the highest percentage of Annual Fund contributors will win a great afternoon out: a special lunch out followed by fun afternoon activities. The lunch has been generously donated by this year’s Annual Fund Chairs Lori and David Butler. The contest is only for the number of contributors, not the amount contributed. Previous contributions to this year's Annual Fund will count towards your class; however, only donations specified for the Annual Fund will count. The contest will conclude Friday, April 29.

Every gift no matter the size helps. Your tax-deductible contribution will make a significant difference to CCS students immediately and in years to come.

We can accept donations online via PayPal using a credit card. You can find a link to our PayPal account via Facebook and our school website.

CCS Parent Survey

We have created a confidential survey through a third-party provider in
order to help us learn more about how we are doing. We invite you to please
take a few minutes to fill out these ten short questions so we can make CCS
even better.

Please click here to go to the survey.


The survey will be open through April 14, 2011. Thank you so much for your
time and support.

Win a Night Out to BJ's
The survey is confidential, however if you would like to be entered into a
drawing for a $50 gift certificate to BJ's, then please include your name on
question number 10 so we can put your name in the drawing. The drawing will
be April 15.

March 28- April 1

This week we studied the letters U and V. We read a story called "Uncle Ugbee" and another one called "Victor the Vulture." We practiced writing the letters U and V and came up with words that started with those letters, we also tried to see how many different ways we could make U and V using our fingers, hands, and arms.

We also have started studying Texas. We each made our own Texas book that has a picture of the state flag, bluebonnets, the state motto; friendship, and a picture of the state with a sticker for where we live. We have been studying some Texas words and been working on sounding them out. We also played a math addition game by matching up cowboy boots. We worked on our one-to-one correspondence and played a game called "Yee-Haw!" where we practiced naming and finding lowercase letters. We read a book about a runaway tortilla and another one about an armadillo making chili. For art we made paper plate cowboys, decorated cowboy boots, made a prickly cactus, and made an armadillo.

Next Friday (April 8) is going to be Cowboy Day! The students are allowed to dress up in western wear that day and we'll be doing fun games and crafts in the classroom!

This week we also introduced our four different coins; penny, nickel, dime, and quarter. We got to describe how they look and feel, and we learned a poem about all the different ones and how much they are each worth. We read a story called "Benny's Pennies" and another one called "Bunny Money." We flipped pennies and graphed how many times it landed on heads and how many times it landed on tails. We worked on sorting coins and also coloring and labeling them. The students also used pennies to "buy" beads to spell their name on a bracelet. We will continue to work with coins for the next couple weeks.

We also had a store open in our classroom! Everyday, the students were given a baggie with their name on it with 6 pennies in it. They could then go "shopping" and spend their 6 pennies. We have gummi bears and stickers worth 1 penny, a peanut worth 2 pennies, hershey kisses and jelly beans worth 3, and 6 pennies to buy a prize from the prize box. The students had to decide everyday how to spend their money, they had a lot of fun getting to pick out what they wanted and then putting the pennies in the piggy bank!

We had Grandparents Day on Friday and the students had so much fun singing and dancing for our program! They also made handprint flowers and vases for their grandparents and got to go to the Book Fair with them and show them around the classroom!

Next Wednesday, our class will be doing the skit for Chapel. You are welcome to come and watch! It will start around 8:25 in the Parish Hall. We will be telling the story of Ezekeiel and the Valley of the Dry Bones.

And next week we will be talking about Weather and Springtime and the letters W and X.

Have a great weekend!

Stephanie Ray