Dear Families,

Welcome back and happy spring to you all! The children have enjoyed sharing conversation this week about their “Family Time.” They also seem happy to be back in their school routines. The family time pages are coming together nicely – please take a moment to notice them on the wall above the attendance chart. Also, this week’s thought question can be found above the easels, due to the length of the children’s responses. Lots of language growth is evident!

In the morning, we have observed conversation, play and art work about animals. Sharks, tigers, orca whales, manatees, little paper birds taped to the wall and a photograph of a goat are a few examples. To support and extend this interest we will begin an animals theme next week, bringing animal materials into the different areas of the classroom.

Tomorrow we begin our outings to the park. We will go to the park on Tuesdays and Thursdays, except in rainy weather. Our practice walks have been very successful, and the children can probably recite to you the safety rules when we walk together. We will leave directly after morning meeting on these days; a timely arrival will be important. Also, appropriate clothing is necessary. Please send the children to school wearing good play clothes – shoes for running, pants and shirts that can get dirty, and a sweater or jacket when the weather is cool. Shoes with heels or that slip off easily should not be worn.

Following up on conversations the Long Day children had before the vacation, we have begun a unit on “Workers who help.” The children brainstormed to create a list of people who do jobs that help people. There was a particular interest in construction workers and machines. They looked through our bookshelves to find books about these different professions and sorted the books they found into job categories. Next week, we will take advantage of the extra boxes we have in the classroom to construct a building and to play at being construction workers. We will also take a walk to observe a neighborhood construction site.

Thursday at 6pm is our last parent meeting for this school year. We would love to have full attendance! The topics will be: Early Intervention services, ongoing schools, ERB, Stanford-Binet, and OLSAT testing. We will also hear from the auction committee. Please send an RSVP email to Emily.

Warmly,

Caitlin, Kendra and Amy