Hi Families!
I hope you all had a great two weeks of holiday fun and relaxation. As we jump back into our school routine tomorrow, I have a couple of updates for you.
For the next few weeks, we will be discussing travel, transportation, and destinations. I would like for every family to send to school a photo of your child on a trip (does not have to be a family picture but certainly can be). We will be making a display board with all the photos from the places we have been. I know several families have taken trips recently, and many of you have visited other countries with your children. Please share those photos with us! If you would also like to send in a photo album with several pictures from your travels, the children would definitely enjoy looking through those photos as well. As we have several kiddos who are especially interested in transportation vehicles, please feel free to share any special items with us on that theme as well. (I am working on a field trip for this month too... more info to come on that!)
Since we will be talking about the places we can travel to and their cultures, I am going to call on our families who have roots in other countries and cultures to share their experiences and history with us. I would love for the children to get a mini lesson on their classmates' family countries of origin... I can think of a few off the top of my head represented in our class - Japan, France, UK, Canada - and any others I may have missed! Maybe you have photos, special artifacts, currency, clothing, foods, and of course languages you could share with us. Please reply to my email if you have something to share. With your help, this will be a wonderfully enriching unit!
As you probably know, we have changed our class schedule around a bit for the new semester. We will be starting the day outside (if weather permits, otherwise with a special indoor activity) then will have our morning circle time at 9:10. This should give everyone a few minutes to get to school so that everyone can be present for circle time. We will then have our center time, followed by snack, journals, small groups, goodbye circle, and finally will end the day with our "big" outside time. This should allow the parent helpers more time at the end of the day to get a jump start on their cleaning duties.
We will start back with our normal show and tell schedule this week, so M/W/F kiddos plan to wow us with a special item on Friday (maybe a souvenier from a trip?), then T/Th kids will have their chance to share on Thursday of next week.
I know many of you probably took home your jackets, scarves, gloves, etc. over the break, so please make sure your child has all those essential warm-ups coming back to school this week. It's supposed to be a cold one! (Obviously, we will stay inside on bitterly cold days.)
One last request: we are running very low on newspaper for art projects, so if you have some that you haven't yet recycled, please bring it to the school to refill our stash.
Thanks so much to you all, and welcome back!
Ms. Christina
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