Dear Parents, We enjoyed a wonderful week with Ms. McDonald, our new student teacher. She spent the week observing and getting to know your children and becoming familiar with our routines. Ms. McDonald will be spending Wednesday mornings with us until her six week practicum begins. This enables us to add one more morning offsite either at the seashore or the forest. Our conversations with personal safety have continued and on Thursday I introduced the Buddy System from the program our school is using Kids In The Know . This concept shares that children 4-6 years old need direct supervision, needs to be visible to parent/caregiver at all times and that if another child is supervising they need to be 12 or older. We talked about different situations; playing in the park and using a public bathroom. We have also continued with our talks about body safety by knowing the names of our body parts as well as talking about what are safe/unsafe secrets. I have begun to do a math assessment look...

A little love discovered in the forest Good morning and happy snow day!!                                               As we will remain onsite this coming week I have planned some fun indoor/outdoor activities including coffee filter snowflakes, ice art with nature loose parts, snow painting and of course sledding and snowman building. On Wednesday the children brainstormed a big list of activities that they can do at school on snow days including those activities listed above. Make sure that your child comes to school ready to spend a couple of hours outdoors playing in the snow while it lasts. Our transition to 3D sculpture has begun through our Story Workshop activities using air dry clay, wire and wooden beads. This week we will continue with the clay and add a few new materials such as plastercine.  Once they are familiar with plastercine I will add it to their choice art activities. I have small cardboard squares for them to build on. I have a new math game to introduce that can...