Dearest Merryhill Preschool Community,
The flowers are blooming, the days are growing longer, and the birds are singing. Yes, spring is in the air! With all the rain we had in March and now hopefully more sunshine, Spring will kick off nicely here at Merryhill School! It was too rainy last month, so this month the children, teachers and I will plant herbs to taste and smell, veggies to eat and make projects with, and colorful flowers to look at and draw! This garden will give us more real-life learning experiences to incorporate with our Links to Learning curriculum! Same with the Foam Party, it was too wet and rainy for this fun event. We will plan a day in April that will be sunny and warm for all to have fun in the sun with the bubbles.
Looking back, in March we celebrated the love of reading in many ways! We celebrated Read Across America by inviting a special “Unicorn” guest to come to the school and read books to the children, as we always provide many literacy rich activities throughout our lesson plans. We had our Scholastic Book Fair, and it was a success! We sold 155 books and made $1,086.00 in free books for the school! That means each classroom will receive $155.00 in free books to be added to the classrooms! We did not make our goal of selling 200 books for the Mystery Challenge, but we will try again next school year.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns my door is always open. We are here to help you and “our” children in any way we can. Everyone at Merryhill is special and important to us. Let us continue to make this a great school year!
“All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today.”
Heather Bilbro Palmer
Merryhill Preschool Principal
________________________________________________
Spring Cleaning Event
In celebration of Spring, we will have a “Spring Cleaning Event” that the Elementary and Preschool will participate in together. We did this last year and it was a hit. This is our “Book Exchange Event”. We would like for our parents on both Elementary and Preschool sides to do some “Spring Cleaning” at home and bring in your gently used books. This book donation will start on April 10th and will end on April 28th. We will set up the books in front of the school the week of April 24th (details on exact dates and times will be announced soon). Our families can look through the donated books and take home and keep however many books they want to read to your children.
__________________________________________________
Trike-A-Thon
We have several exciting events happening this month that will help to incorporate outdoor learning. One is our annual Trike-a-Thon on April 6th at the time of your child’s outside morning recess. This event helps raise funds for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. We will pass out your St Jude’s fundraising form soon, so that you can start collecting donations for the St. Jude’s Hospital. The children will get extra exercise by racing around the track in the back yard with their friends. This is great gross motor exercise, for a great cause! Your children will be able to bring their tricycle, bicycle, or scooter to school on April 6th. If you bring a helmet please label it with your child’s name. You will bring these items into the school the morning of April 6th and park them in your child’s playground.
_________________________________________________
The Week of the Young Child April 3th – 7th
We are celebrating the children in our lives! This is a very special week in that we plan fun events and activities every day for the children! We have a fun week planned! See details here:
Monday is “Music Monday”- Musical Guest starring Principal Heather strumming the guitar! Tuesday is “Work Together Tuesday” – Working on the Garden with Ms. Heather
Wednesday “Wild Wednesday” – Petting Zoo Coming to Merryhill School @ 9:30 am
Thursday is the “Trike Thursday” – St Jude’s Trike-A-Thon Giving Event @ each classroom’s AM recess time
Friday is “Family Friday” – Family Friday – Easter Egg Hunt @ 10:00 am
See flyer below for all of the details.
________________________________________________
Important Note for future Kindergartners from Joan Sousae, Elementary Principal:
Hello future kindergarten families!
We are so excited that your child will be transitioning into elementary school this coming fall. Almost 70% of our Pre-K children enrolled in our Merryhill Kindergarten this year! I know many of you have already booked tours or have attended our Open House events already.
If you haven’t come by yet, we are offering personal onsite tours to all our families.
We have February tour dates available, so please be sure to schedule a private onsite tour by contacting Ms. Christine at christine.van@merryhillschool.com or call our front office team at 408-254-1282. We look forward to meeting each one of you!
Warm Regards,
_____________________________________________________
Important Note for Summer Camp on the Elementary Side:
Summer Camp registration is in full swing! Please head over to the Elementary Front Desk to pick up a Summer Camp registration for kindergarten through 5th grade. Anyone can join our Elementary School’s summer camp. They do not need to be enrolled here to join for the summer fun! As for our preschoolers registered for the new school year, you do not need to do anything about June onward. Since you registered for the new school year you are already locked in to start the new school year on June 12th.
__________________________________________________
Calendar of Events:
April 3rd – 7th – Week of the Young Child (parents are invited) see flyer above for reference
April 3rd – Monday is “Music Monday”- Musical Guest starring Principal Heather strumming the guitar!
April 4th – Tuesday is “Work Together Tuesday” – Working on the Garden with Ms. Heather
April 5th – Wednesday “Wild Wednesday” – Petting Zoo Coming to Merryhill School @ 9:30 am
April 6th – Thursday is the “Trike Thursday” – St Jude’s Trike-A-Thon Giving Event @ each classroom’s AM recess time
April 7th – Friday is “Family Friday” – Easter Egg Hunt @ 10:00 am
Week of April 17th – Foam Party – We will try again this week (exact time & date TBA)
April 21st – @ 3:30 pm Earth Day Celebration (We will release our butterflies) (parents are invited)
Week of April 24th – Spring Cleaning Event – Books on Display (exact time & date TBA)
May 1st – 5th – Teacher Appreciation Week! Teachers get spoiled ALL week!
May 24th – @ 3:30 pm Spring Show
May 29th – Memorial Day-School Closed
June 7th – Pre-K Graduation @ 3:30 pm
June 8th & June 9th – School Closed Teacher In-service Day!
June 12th – First Day of the new School Year 2023/2024
_______________________________________________
Safety Drills: Overview Info
Throughout the school year we conduct safety drills for different situations to help better prepare us in case of a real event. Please see the Safety Drill chart for all that we do to help keep our Merryhill community safe!
______________________________________________
Amazing Athletes and Super Soccer Shots
Extra-Curricular Activities ARE HERE!!!
Amazing Athletes and Soccer Shot: To get more information go to www.amazingathletes.com/Southbay or you can reach the owner at nicolette@amazingathletes.com and by phone at 408-799-7014, ask for Nicolette.
These educational Sports Programs are amazing!
Super Soccer Shots registration link: https://registration.amazingathletes.com/events/super-soccer-stars-merryhill-preschool-san-jose
Amazing Athletes registration link: https://registration.amazingathletes.com/events/amazing-athletes-merryill-preschool-san-jose
________________________________________________________________________
From the Education Department
The World is Evolving and So Has Our Curriculum
Our goal has always been to provide a learning environment that fosters curiosity and creativity and prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. We evaluate our proprietary curriculum, Links to Learning, regularly to ensure that we continue delivering the program students need.
We know that the world is constantly evolving, and the skills children need today are different from what they were even a few years ago. Because of this, we’ve made the following important enhancements to our curriculum.
1. Children have more opportunities to practice social-emotional skills.
Social-emotional learning has always been a hallmark of our curriculum, as these skills are just as important as foundational academic skills. We want our students to be happy, thriving, and making friends. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve added even more hands-on activities for children to practice setting goals, problem solving, developing self-confidence, and sharing. As always, our teachers help children by modeling appropriate behaviors, giving effective praise, and providing verbal and visual cues.
2. Children participate in more hands-on activities to provoke questions and attitudes about themselves and others.
When children feel emotionally and physically safe, they are more likely to take on challenges and be more comfortable in their learning. We’ve always been steadfast in our commitment to designing classrooms and teaching strategies that support diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We’ve added even more items to help facilitate that learning, such as dolls with various skin tones, puzzles and games depicting various cultures, musical instruments from other countries, and culturally diverse dramatic play props.
3. We’ve enhanced skills throughout all subject areas to further prepare children for elementary school and beyond.
We’ve integrated even more opportunities during the day for your child to strengthen the muscles needed for writing across various subject areas. This includes activities to exercise fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination using safety scissors, tweezers, tongs, and paint brushes. We’ve also adapted a spiralized approach to our Spanish curriculum, meaning that teachers will introduce new vocabulary while reviewing the vocabulary learned in younger classrooms.
4. We’ve updated our family communication pieces.
We place a premium on making sure our families know what skills their child is working on, how they’re progressing, and what they’re loving most. In June 2023, we’ve included a QR code in our End of the Month folders so families can see digitally all the skills and goals their child achieved that month. Continuing the learning at home is now even easier with our refreshed Baby Sign Language poster, Spanish posters, and activity letters coming in June. Our Links 2 Home app and Family Reports will also be updated to give teachers space to showcase how each child is practicing social-emotional skills and the progress they are making.
___________________________________________________
April Newsletter
Dearest Merryhill Preschool Community,
The flowers are blooming, the days are growing longer, and the birds are singing. Yes, spring is in the air! With all the rain we had in March and now hopefully more sunshine, Spring will kick off nicely here at Merryhill School! It was too rainy last month, so this month the children, teachers and I will plant herbs to taste and smell, veggies to eat and make projects with, and colorful flowers to look at and draw! This garden will give us more real-life learning experiences to incorporate with our Links to Learning curriculum! Same with the Foam Party, it was too wet and rainy for this fun event. We will plan a day in April that will be sunny and warm for all to have fun in the sun with the bubbles.
Looking back, in March we celebrated the love of reading in many ways! We celebrated Read Across America by inviting a special “Unicorn” guest to come to the school and read books to the children, as we always provide many literacy rich activities throughout our lesson plans. We had our Scholastic Book Fair, and it was a success! We sold 155 books and made $1,086.00 in free books for the school! That means each classroom will receive $155.00 in free books to be added to the classrooms! We did not make our goal of selling 200 books for the Mystery Challenge, but we will try again next school year.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns my door is always open. We are here to help you and “our” children in any way we can. Everyone at Merryhill is special and important to us. Let us continue to make this a great school year!
“All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today.”
Heather Bilbro Palmer
Merryhill Preschool Principal
________________________________________________
Spring Cleaning Event
In celebration of Spring, we will have a “Spring Cleaning Event” that the Elementary and Preschool will participate in together. We did this last year and it was a hit. This is our “Book Exchange Event”. We would like for our parents on both Elementary and Preschool sides to do some “Spring Cleaning” at home and bring in your gently used books. This book donation will start on April 10th and will end on April 28th. We will set up the books in front of the school the week of April 24th (details on exact dates and times will be announced soon). Our families can look through the donated books and take home and keep however many books they want to read to your children.
__________________________________________________
Trike-A-Thon
We have several exciting events happening this month that will help to incorporate outdoor learning. One is our annual Trike-a-Thon on April 6th at the time of your child’s outside morning recess. This event helps raise funds for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. We will pass out your St Jude’s fundraising form soon, so that you can start collecting donations for the St. Jude’s Hospital. The children will get extra exercise by racing around the track in the back yard with their friends. This is great gross motor exercise, for a great cause! Your children will be able to bring their tricycle, bicycle, or scooter to school on April 6th. If you bring a helmet please label it with your child’s name. You will bring these items into the school the morning of April 6th and park them in your child’s playground.
_________________________________________________
The Week of the Young Child April 3th – 7th
We are celebrating the children in our lives! This is a very special week in that we plan fun events and activities every day for the children! We have a fun week planned! See details here:
Monday is “Music Monday”- Musical Guest starring Principal Heather strumming the guitar! Tuesday is “Work Together Tuesday” – Working on the Garden with Ms. Heather
Wednesday “Wild Wednesday” – Petting Zoo Coming to Merryhill School @ 9:30 am
Thursday is the “Trike Thursday” – St Jude’s Trike-A-Thon Giving Event @ each classroom’s AM recess time
Friday is “Family Friday” – Family Friday – Easter Egg Hunt @ 10:00 am
See flyer below for all of the details.
________________________________________________
Important Note for future Kindergartners from Joan Sousae, Elementary Principal:
Hello future kindergarten families!
We are so excited that your child will be transitioning into elementary school this coming fall. Almost 70% of our Pre-K children enrolled in our Merryhill Kindergarten this year! I know many of you have already booked tours or have attended our Open House events already.
If you haven’t come by yet, we are offering personal onsite tours to all our families.
We have February tour dates available, so please be sure to schedule a private onsite tour by contacting Ms. Christine at christine.van@merryhillschool.com or call our front office team at 408-254-1282. We look forward to meeting each one of you!
Warm Regards,
_____________________________________________________
Important Note for Summer Camp on the Elementary Side:
Summer Camp registration is in full swing! Please head over to the Elementary Front Desk to pick up a Summer Camp registration for kindergarten through 5th grade. Anyone can join our Elementary School’s summer camp. They do not need to be enrolled here to join for the summer fun! As for our preschoolers registered for the new school year, you do not need to do anything about June onward. Since you registered for the new school year you are already locked in to start the new school year on June 12th.
__________________________________________________
Calendar of Events:
April 3rd – 7th – Week of the Young Child (parents are invited) see flyer above for reference
April 3rd – Monday is “Music Monday”- Musical Guest starring Principal Heather strumming the guitar!
April 4th – Tuesday is “Work Together Tuesday” – Working on the Garden with Ms. Heather
April 5th – Wednesday “Wild Wednesday” – Petting Zoo Coming to Merryhill School @ 9:30 am
April 6th – Thursday is the “Trike Thursday” – St Jude’s Trike-A-Thon Giving Event @ each classroom’s AM recess time
April 7th – Friday is “Family Friday” – Easter Egg Hunt @ 10:00 am
Week of April 17th – Foam Party – We will try again this week (exact time & date TBA)
April 21st – @ 3:30 pm Earth Day Celebration (We will release our butterflies) (parents are invited)
Week of April 24th – Spring Cleaning Event – Books on Display (exact time & date TBA)
May 1st – 5th – Teacher Appreciation Week! Teachers get spoiled ALL week!
May 24th – @ 3:30 pm Spring Show
May 29th – Memorial Day-School Closed
June 7th – Pre-K Graduation @ 3:30 pm
June 8th & June 9th – School Closed Teacher In-service Day!
June 12th – First Day of the new School Year 2023/2024
_______________________________________________
Safety Drills: Overview Info
Throughout the school year we conduct safety drills for different situations to help better prepare us in case of a real event. Please see the Safety Drill chart for all that we do to help keep our Merryhill community safe!
______________________________________________
Amazing Athletes and Super Soccer Shots
Extra-Curricular Activities ARE HERE!!!
Amazing Athletes and Soccer Shot: To get more information go to www.amazingathletes.com/Southbay or you can reach the owner at nicolette@amazingathletes.com and by phone at 408-799-7014, ask for Nicolette.
These educational Sports Programs are amazing!
Super Soccer Shots registration link: https://registration.amazingathletes.com/events/super-soccer-stars-merryhill-preschool-san-jose
Amazing Athletes registration link: https://registration.amazingathletes.com/events/amazing-athletes-merryill-preschool-san-jose
________________________________________________________________________
From the Education Department
The World is Evolving and So Has Our Curriculum
Our goal has always been to provide a learning environment that fosters curiosity and creativity and prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. We evaluate our proprietary curriculum, Links to Learning, regularly to ensure that we continue delivering the program students need.
We know that the world is constantly evolving, and the skills children need today are different from what they were even a few years ago. Because of this, we’ve made the following important enhancements to our curriculum.
1. Children have more opportunities to practice social-emotional skills.
Social-emotional learning has always been a hallmark of our curriculum, as these skills are just as important as foundational academic skills. We want our students to be happy, thriving, and making friends. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve added even more hands-on activities for children to practice setting goals, problem solving, developing self-confidence, and sharing. As always, our teachers help children by modeling appropriate behaviors, giving effective praise, and providing verbal and visual cues.
2. Children participate in more hands-on activities to provoke questions and attitudes about themselves and others.
When children feel emotionally and physically safe, they are more likely to take on challenges and be more comfortable in their learning. We’ve always been steadfast in our commitment to designing classrooms and teaching strategies that support diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We’ve added even more items to help facilitate that learning, such as dolls with various skin tones, puzzles and games depicting various cultures, musical instruments from other countries, and culturally diverse dramatic play props.
3. We’ve enhanced skills throughout all subject areas to further prepare children for elementary school and beyond.
We’ve integrated even more opportunities during the day for your child to strengthen the muscles needed for writing across various subject areas. This includes activities to exercise fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination using safety scissors, tweezers, tongs, and paint brushes. We’ve also adapted a spiralized approach to our Spanish curriculum, meaning that teachers will introduce new vocabulary while reviewing the vocabulary learned in younger classrooms.
4. We’ve updated our family communication pieces.
We place a premium on making sure our families know what skills their child is working on, how they’re progressing, and what they’re loving most. In June 2023, we’ve included a QR code in our End of the Month folders so families can see digitally all the skills and goals their child achieved that month. Continuing the learning at home is now even easier with our refreshed Baby Sign Language poster, Spanish posters, and activity letters coming in June. Our Links 2 Home app and Family Reports will also be updated to give teachers space to showcase how each child is practicing social-emotional skills and the progress they are making.
___________________________________________________