Dear Parents,

My name is Rajaa Chahine and I am doing my Internship this semester at the ECEC in your child’s classroom with Ms. Lorenz and Mrs. Petee. I am very happy to have your child in my classroom. I will be teaching on Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.   I believe that by all of us working together we can make this a very successful and rewarding year.

  I am currently a senior working on my bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with a major in Early Childhood and a minor in ESL. I am an employee of Dearborn Public Schools working with preschoolers as a paraprofessional.  I taught Arabic for 7 years in various K-12 settings as well. I am married and have three daughters. I have been married for 12 years and my husband is working in the medical field.  My oldest daughter is 11 years old, her name is Ayah, and she is in sixth grade at Bryant Middle School. Nour is the middle daughter, she is 10 years old and she is in 5^th grade at Howard Elementary School. My youngest is three years old, her name is Reem, and she is in pre-preschool at the AACC.

I have completed several practicums with different ages. The experiences I had made me realize how truly passionate I am to teaching and watching children develop. My goal is to develop new strategies to use in my future classroom. I look forward to getting to know you and your family and learning with your children throughout this semester.

Sincerely,

Rajaa Chahine

               

Our New School Year

We were all very excited to start this new school year. We are in the process of developing a sense of the classroom routine, learning about the classroom (where our favorite materials are), how to keep everyone safe (doors are for teachers or parents/caregivers), and learning who is in the room and their names. We would like to encourage the parents to talk with their children about how doors are for adults in order to keep the same idea about how we can leave the classroom safely. 

Immediately we are starting to create works of art through watercolor and pastels; learning how to manipulate these different mediums. We are slowly creating our identity board (using watercolor) and taking pictures of each other. We will introduce many mediums to the children so they feel comfortable manipulating these items to strengthen their fine motor and pre-writing skills. The children seem to be gravitated towards these art explorations thus far. 

The children have shown interest in the ramps and cars as well. At first, we had two separate smaller ramps and after a while the children agreed on pushing them together to create one big ramp. Anthony tried to use the big truck on the smaller ramps and he noticed how it just didn't fit. He used his problem solving skills to push the ramps together and he had a great sense of pride in doing this, his friends agreed one BIG ramp was better than two small ones.

The children are also enjoying their time they spend outdoors. They are meeting new friends and teachers out there along with new play equipment and the elements! The children enjoy eating, throwing, and jumping on the snow. We are working on our gross motor skills by trying to walk, run, and balance on the snow. They also learned that with snow pants on, they can go down the slide pretty fast! 

                                             

The teachers in room 1 are enjoying being apart of this blossoming classroom community.  We are seeing many different interests emerge (light, shadows, reflection, movement of objects, natural materials) and are looking forward to exploring with them. We are excited to see where the children's interests are going to lead us over the course of the school year.