October 18, 2025 - WEBSITE VIEW

Noah's Ark Families and Friends,

HAPPY MID-OCTOBER! We're excited to celebrate with our annual Pumpkin Carving Party event this Wednesday, followed by the Noah's Ark Costume Parade and Sing-along next Wednesday! Here is the link to our Halloween Playlist. Be sure to note the dates and times for upcoming events and click on the graphic links for more information and details.

🎃🎃NOAH'S ARK PUMPKIN CARVING PARTY: This Wednesday, October 22, at 6 PM,  Noah's Ark Junior Threes, Pre-K, & Kinder Prep dads (or special person) and students come to your classroom to carve your pumpkins alongside your friends and teachers. Bring your gutted pumpkin, carving tools, and your creativity! After carving, stop by the photo booth for a snapshot and a sweet treat to enjoy on your way home.
Junior Twos Families, we invite you and your child to carve your pumpkin together at home. Send a picture of you, your child, and your jack-o-lantern to naphotoshow2@gmail.com by Friday, October 24, for our annual Dad's Pumpkin Carving Photo Album!

This afternoon is Lake Grove Kids' Fall Festival! Feel free to come in costume—adults are welcome to dress up too! Enjoy magic tricks, carnival stations with prizes, delicious food, and plenty of fun! Join us in Fellowship Hall starting at 3:30 PM. We hope to see you there!

Enjoy the weekend! 💙❤️🏈🖤💔
Blessings,

UPCOMING EVENTS:

~ Oct 18: LGK hosts Fall Festival - 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM in Fellowship Hall

~ Oct 22: LGK hosts Family Fellowship - 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Fellowship Hall

~ Oct 22: Noah's Ark Pumpkin Carving Party for Junior Threes, Pre-K, & Kinder Prep Kids & their dads/other special person - 6:00 PM in the classrooms

~ Oct 29: Noah's Ark Halloween Costume Parade & Sing-along for all classes & families, 11:30 AM in Fellowship Hall (No Covenant Kids this day!)

~ Nov 3: Noah's Ark Family Chapel Time - 9:00 AM in the Sanctuary

~ Nov 19: Noah's Ark Thanksgiving Program & Picnic, 11:30 AM in Fellowship Hall

This week at Covenant Kids, our after-school enrichment activities focused on Apples. Next week, we will read and learn about Pumpkins and participate in a variety of activities to accompany the stories. Click on the blue bar below to view the weekly photos. We look forward to your child joining us at CK!

Click the bar above to sign up your child on our CK Google Sign-Up Sheet. From there, click on the sheet's "Day/Date" tab at the bottom, fill in your child's name, select the "Pick-up Time" checkbox, and indicate who we can expect to pick up your child. Covenant Kids fees are $10/hour, and you will be billed at the end of each month.

Our second week in the Apple theme featured spin art, which was a huge hit! We placed our apple print in the basket, added red, yellow, and green paint, put the top on, and made it spin. We loved the entire process! We are continuing to work on our collaborative cardboard mural that we are sharing with the Threes class. Each day we try a different technique, adding more color in a variety of ways. Next week, we will start gluing pieces on top! 

We've been working on good listening skills during circle time, as well as taking turns, waiting until Ms. Sheryl calls the children's names. We are also working on staying together as a group when we move to a different area (upstairs, to the gym, outside), either using the ring rope or taking a friend's hand.

During music, we learned some Halloween songs that we will sing during our Halloween event. The children especially love Five Little Pumpkins (the classroom lights turn off when we say "out went the lights").

Next week, we start our Pumpkin and Halloween themes!

What a fun and busy week we had in the Junior Threes Class! We continued our Apple theme, enjoying many fun songs, games, and activities — with art being a definite highlight! The children loved painting apple trees using real apples as stamps, and they had a blast spinning paint around in salad spinners to make colorful apple prints. On Friday, we combined science and art by using baking soda and vinegar to create "fizzy" apples — the excitement was contagious!
During small group time, we practiced color matching, tracing straight lines, and playing a pattern recognition game. Ms. Susan introduced the use of gluesticks, teaching the children to glue, flip, & stick their torn orange pieces of paper to create a pumpkin plate. We also celebrated Liam's 4th birthday — our very first birthday of the school year! Have a wonderful weekend!

From pulp to patch, pumpkins led the way in Pre-K learning this week. Our classroom transformed into a pumpkin wonderland, filled with stained glass art, jack-o'-lantern stamping, and expressive pumpkin faces. These activities supported our social-emotional learning goals. During the jack o'lantern activity, each child chose a feeling, such as happy, sad, excited, or scared, and created a pumpkin face to match. We practiced identifying and recognizing our emotions, as well as those of others.

After reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin, the children made their own square pumpkins to celebrate being unique. This story taught us that being different is okay and that everyone has something special that makes them who they are.

In science, we explored the pulp, seeds, and stems of pumpkins, using magnifying glasses to examine textures closely, and tested our ideas in a sink-or-float experiment. The children were curious and thoughtful as they made predictions and shared their ideas. The pumpkin washing activity at the sensory table was a favorite, featuring lots of scrubbing, splashing, and teamwork. We ended the week with a walk to the Pre-K Pumpkin Patch featuring pumpkins from Ms. Jen's garden.

Our letter/sound this week was H, and our number was 3 in Handwriting Without Tears.

Looking ahead: Next week, we will begin our new theme focused on Halloween, nocturnal animals, and spiders.

Kinder Prep transitioned this week from animal farms to those that harvest produce, specifically apples! It was a particularly STEM-focused week as students built apple trees. They enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to attach branches so that they could add leaves & apples. I am incredibly proud of how hard they worked on this activity! We then investigated the apples they brought from home. We graphed the colors of each apple, measured the apples, counted the seeds, and finally tasted them! Our letter/sounds this week were H and K.  We reviewed numbers 0-5.  They had a special guest teacher on Friday, Ms. Natasha, who made applesauce with them. Next week, we'll continue our fall & farm theme by shifting our focus to pumpkins! If everyone could send their student in with a small pumpkin, that would be very helpful! Have a great weekend!