Bienvenidos de regreso, Mi Casita Padres,
We hope all of you had a fun holiday break! We wish all of our families a victorious 2020!
January is here; we are super excited to see all of the children back in action after our winter break. The children returned to Mi Casita, rested, re-energized, and ready to start our second semester. We would like to welcome a new family, the Yakawich Familia, to our Mi Casita community. ¡Bienvenidos! :)
This year, our classroom parents are Maria Perks and Jennee Daws. Please feel free to reach out to them, as they will be assisting with various activities throughout the second semester. Muchas gracias to both for taking on this fun role! :)
Our first week went very well; the children were very happy to see each other after a long break. It was a joy to see them re-integrate, connect, and share stories about what they did during their break while returning to our daily routine, rhythm, and work cycles.
The children had a fantastic first week! We were delighted to see them work independently, as well as with their peers, and happy that they were eager to try new lessons.
During the month of January, we will study the continent of Africa and some of its countries, cultures, animals, and exciting facts. Our artist of the month is Vincent Van Gogh. We will also talk about our peacemaker of the month, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while continuing with grace and courtesy topics, such as being loving and kind as well as emphasizing how to treat others with respect.
In addition, we are excited to announce that the children will be doing a yoga class once a month with Jennifer Campbell, one of our Mi Casita parents. We are implementing mindfulness exercises, which we believe is a big part of development and growth, especially at this early age. We believe it will help the children learn to cope as well as help them to control their emotions and reactions.
We will continue with our fun volunteer parent helpers for cultural presentations, art projects, science experiments, and reading. We really appreciate your support and involvement in Mi Casita. For our new parents, we have volunteer opportunities each month where you may sign up via the monthly agenda placed in the cubby area by the sign-in sheet.
Before our winter break, we sent a second list of Spanish words via email. Please let us know if any of you didn’t get this list, and we will be happy to resend it. We will continue to emphasize Spanish in the classroom. The children seem to be enjoying it and often ask how to say this or that in Spanish. The teachers are excited to start this new year speaking more and more Spanish with your children. We will continue to have Spanish classes twice a week, which we keep fun and entertaining while using daily greetings, transitions, commands, vocabulary, lessons, and songs in Spanish. We aim to speak mostly Spanish one to two days per week.
Ice Skating Rink: The ice skating rink should be ready sometime next week. Our day to use it will be on Tuesday from 11:10 am to 12:20 pm. We need parent volunteers to come and assist us to get children ready in the cubby area and supervise the children on the ice skating rink. If you are available, please feel free to message us or our classroom parents.
Friendly Reminder: Please have the following gear (labeled) in your child’s cubby and ready for the rest of the winter: mittens, snow pants, jackets, and snow boots. Please try to find mittens or gloves that are waterproof and have a zipper all the way down the glove; this will help your child to dress independently. In addition, please label all water bottles, lunch boxes, and snacks.
Feliz Año Nuevo!