Mrs. Carothers & Mrs. Strehli's Class

We have been having a great time learning about Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales.  We have talked about rhyming words in the Nursery Rhymes.  Some of the classes favorites are:  Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty and Hickory Dickory Dock. 

The Fairy Tale costumes have been very popular.  The kings, queens and princess costumes are a hit.  We have been performing the “The Three Little Pigs” play.   Everyone in the class has had a chance to play either a pig or the wolf while acting out play.  The children have experienced being an actor in the play and sitting in the audience of the play.  The kids just loved preforming!

Donuts for Dads was a big success.  A huge thank you to Laura Tran for coming in early and setting up the food and coffee for the Dads.  She also stayed to help clean up!!!! 

Cinderella was a fun surprise for the whole class.  She was magical and we were lucky she came from her palace to visit us at St. Matthew’s.

Next Monday, February 13, is Red Day for our class.  Please have your child dress in red.  We will pass out fun “I love you”  cards and treats for Valentine’s Day.  You are welcome to send a Valentine or treat to each friend in the class.  During circle time we will pass out our Valenitnes.  If you do send something for the class, please just write who it is from and not who it is for.  This way the children can pass out their cards to each child without having to read each child’s name.

Lastly, Laura Kane has been in the class taking pictures for our class book.  I sent an email asking every family to email a bio on their child.  Please make sure this is complete by Friday, February 10.  I am available to help or answer any questions.  Thank you all for always going the extra mile!

I am very excited to see all the kids tomorrow.  After a wonderful holiday break, I am sure everyone is ready to see their friends.  We have a busy month planned for our class.  Please check out the class calendar and class lesson plans on the upper tabs to see what is going on in our classroom.

This month we have 2 birthdays to celebrate, Colt and Sutton, on the  same day, January 4.  The boys will be “counting” their coins and receiving their birthday blessing this week (January 11) during our Chapel time.  Parents are also welcome to join us on Wednesday mornings for Chapel.

We will talking about Winter during the next 2 weeks. 

We will start “show-and-tell” on Fridays.  This is very fun for the kids and we will have “show-and-tell” during circle time.  The kids many bring in one item to share.  If they forget to bring something into school they may tell a story or pick something in the classroom to share. 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

It is starting to feel like Christmas at St. Matthew’s!  Our class Christmas Pageant will be on Friday, December 16 at 9:15.  We will be joining Mrs. Stonjik’s class in the Chapel.  We ask that the parents drop the kids off at the classroom promptly at 9:00.   Mrs. Strehli and I will get the kids dressed in the classroom.  The parents and grandparents will immediately go to the Chapel and sit in our regular chapel seats in the front.  We will begin at 9:15.

This is a wonderful pageant and we invite all family members to come and watch (grandparents and siblings are welcomed!). 

I will continue to keep everyone updated.

Our class Christmas Party will begin at 10:15. 

There will be a NOON RELEASE ON DECEMBER 16.

The holiday break is December 16-January 9.

The annual Thanksgiving Feast will be held on Monday, November 21st at 12:15 in the youth room. Parents are invited to attend. We will dismiss from the classroom at 1:00.

We had a very fun and busy month of October!  The Fire Unit started off with a big bang…the fire truck came to visit us!  Please check out all the great pictures of the fireman teaching us about fire safety and all the kids were able to go inside the fire truck.  Here are the highlights of fire safety tips we learned in the classroom:

1)  call 911 for emergencies

2)  Stop/drop and roll 3)  stay low and go 4) fire is always an adult tool and 5)  What do you do during a fire alarm at school.

Our next unit was Fall Fun.  We made great bats that have been hanging from the ceiling in our classroom.  And we learned all kinds of neat facts about bats.  We also made some really cool spider art and learned about spiders.  You can ask your child how many legs does a spider have or which animal is nocturnal! 

We did some experimenting with a pumpkin.  We cut a pumpkin open during circle time.  We made some predictions about the inside of the pumpkin, what it would look like, what it would feel like and what it would smell like.   The whole class had a chance to stick their hand inside and smell the pumpkin.  I took home the pumpkin seeds and baked them for the kids to taste!  It was a fun treat for all. 

A few reminders, our Thanksgiving Feast is on Monday, November 21.  We will sing songs with Mrs. Stojanik’s class and then both classes will feast.  Parents are welcomed to come!!!!!!

We had a great few weeks studying the farm unit.   We started the Farm unit with  Farmer Fry coming to St. Matthew’s with baby farm animals.  This was a big hit with the class.  We learned about “root” vegetables and used potatoes, carrots, parsley, radish and corn to make art prints in class.  The kids each planted seeds in their own cups and have been taking care of them.   We are waiting for our plants to grow.  You can see in the pictures the children watering and using the magnifying glass to watch the seeds slowly pop through the dirt.  We created our own “farms” displayed in the hall.  During circle time, we graphed our favorite farm animals and began to patterning using farm animals.

We began this unit learning about the color red and number 2. This week we will continue learning the color red and the number 2. 

This week we will learn all about Fire and the important safety rules.

The Austin Fire Department will be visiting us at school tomorrow with their fire truck!  Everyone will have a turn to sit in the truck.

to a great routine! We finished the All About Me unit last week. Here are some fun highlights of the last unit:

-We explored the five senses: Touching, Seeing, Hearing, Smelling and Tasting.

- Please view our photo album named “Touching” and you can see each child in the class blindfolded and feeling fun toys in the box. We had 9 items the each child needed to identify and then match the item to card. The kids loved this and really noticed that when one sense (seeing) is eliminated then can rely on their other senses, in this case touching.

- We read “The Listening Walk” by Paul Showers. Ms. Strehli and I then took the class on our own “Listening Walk”. When we were done and had a circle time, we discussed our walk. Here is what the class had to say:

Colt: I heard kids on the playground
Gavin: I heard cars driving
Phoebe: I heard a woodpecker
Riley: I heard a bird
Andrew: I heard a bird and a cho cho train
Kirsten: I heard the air conditioner making noise and a mermaid
Hannah: I heard cars
Molly: I heard engines
Lyla: I heard Mommy
Mary Cate: I heard Mommy
Phoebe: I heard a woodpecker

I will post our class lesson plan on the website. This way you can see what we are doing in class and ask your child questions about our day. I will include last weeks lesson plan. We were really busy!!!!

Our new unit in The Farm. Farmer Fry is coming to visit us on Friday with his farm animals. Our class will visit with the animals, pet the animals and any child who is interested can give a bottle to the baby goats. This is always a big highlight of our Farm unit.

Our shape is a square, our color is red and our number is 2. The kids will also spend time with the shape book, number book and color book this unit.

Please go under the PHOTO tab in the menu bar and check out the photo albums of our class. 

Marni Case and Laura Tran are our offical Parent Council Representatives.  A big thank you to both these Ladies.   I posted our class volunteer list on the menu tab.  Please view this list to confirm.  We still have an opening for La Noche Project.  Thank you to all the wonderful parents in our class.

We had a great first week of school!  Our class is very sweet and the kids just love to be at school.  This has made our transition very easy this year. 

Last week I focused on how we are a “school family” and  “we take care of ourselves”, “each other” and “our things”.  The class enjoys being helpful to each other and the teachers.

We made yellow circles last week.  We began our class unit:  All About Me.  The children talked about their families and made fingerprint families which are displayed in the hallway.  Please take a minute to stop and checkout your child’s work.  We also made a class graph of eye color.  During circle time, the children were able to look at their eyes in the mirror and discover their eye color.  The class graph is hanging in the hallway on our class bulletin board. 

On Wednesday we had a great practice day at Chapel.  I showed the children where we will sit each week.  The class learned how to use the kneelers.   It was a big success!  Just a reminder on Chapel days (Wednesday’s) we will head out at 9:05.  We stop at the bathrooms on our way for the kids.  If you are running late, please meet us in Chapel.  We sit in the front right/middle section.  And parents, you are always welcome to sit with us for Chapel. 

We will continue this week with our All About Me unit.   I will be posting pictures on Wednesday. 

Please email or call me anytime with questions!

Juli Carothers

Welcome to Mrs. Carothers’ and Mrs. Strehli’s MWF 3′s class!

We are holding an “Orientation Day” on Friday, August 26th. The girls’ classroom visit will be from 9:30-10:15 AM and the boys’ visit will be 10:30-11:15 AM. We will meet in classroom 8.

We will visit our “Monday room” which is classroom 3 during the visit. 

We are very excited to meet all the kids and start a great school year!

Welcome to Mrs. Carothers’ class page!

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a few things about myself professionally and personally. I received my undergraduate degree in political science from Tulane University. Following my studies at Tulane, I earned a master’s degree from The American University in Washington DC in Education. I have worked as an elementary school teacher and preschool teacher. I have 3 children, my son Jake (15) and my two daughters Sophie (14) and Sadie (6). We moved to Austin 3 years ago from Sedona, Arizona following my husband’s career and to be closer to other family that lives here in Austin.

This is my third year teaching the 3′s at St. Matthew’s.  This is my first year working with Ms. Strehi as my assistant but my second year working with her in the 3′s program.   I love St. Matthew’s and I am looking forward to a great school year!