School-Age Families, if you missed our zoom call tonight you can get most of the information on our Elephant, Giraffe, and Seahawk page on our website. We are looking forward to partnering with you to help your child succeed with the new way of doing school.

Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 5 p.m.

All parents of school-age children will participate in a 30 minute zoom call to discuss how we can all work together to support our children’s success with this new method of teaching from our public schools. Check out the school-age classroom page on our website to get a preview.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8190433124?pwd=UzBIWCtNZFpybzZnOEVqdEJEaWZ4QT09

Meeting ID: 819 043 3124
Passcode: 2BVjpG

August 31, 2020 7:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

Help us start a new tradition at Grace Children’s Center! We will be taking “traditional” first day of school pictures with a special backdrop and props that will create a great memory for your child’s first day of the 2020 – 2021 school year.

All ages will get to participate and have their picture taken. Even our Bunny classroom! Parents can choose to take their child’s photo at drop off or allow us to take the picture during the day. We will put the pictures we take into our NEW parent communication app: Procare Connect. We will also create a special photo album of your child. When they age out of our program, we will give you the photo album to keep as a memory.

Please complete the form below to tell us how you would like to participate in this first Back to School Photo Day.

https://mailchi.mp/4f614150dfc5/grace-notes-july-1-2020

Welcome Summer!

It has been a little longer that I would like since our last email, and that is because we have been busy planning a fun summer for all of our children and working to keep them safe and healthy at the same time.  Our team has come up with a great idea for the summer it will be OUT of the BOX!

A New Way to Field Trip

Field trips are a great way to augment summer curriculum, provide memorable experiences for children and change up the daily routine. Due to everyone’s desire to stay safe and healthy, field trips off campus are not possible at this time. To meet all of the goals of field trips and keep us all safe an healthy, we are bringing adventures to the center!

Preschool through School-Age Children will enjoy subscription boxes throughout the summer. They will adventure across the world, into nature, and out to space while maintaining physical distancing and healthy habits.

School-Age Weekly Themes

Children ages 5 and entering Kindergarten this fall through children age 12 will enjoy weekly themes and subscription boxes that compliment the themes. Themes like Baking New Ground, Joyful Noises, From Stem to Stern, and more.  During Baking New Ground school-age children will enjoy a Whisktaker Subscription and learn about vegan recipes, cookie recipes – all nut free and with vegan substitutions.
Summer Camp Activity Fee: $50 per month (July and August)  The activity fee covers the cost of the subscriptions and ingredients/supplies for special projects.  
Look for a school-age summer calendar in your email and on our website next week.

Preschool Summer Themes

Our preschoolers are diving into our new Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum!  This is a new curriculum purchased specifically for our 3 – 5 year old children.  It lines up with kindergarten readiness guidelines and will be lots of fun.  Over the summer, the children will be exploring SAND and INSECTS.  They will enjoy the Nature Explorer and Glowing Nature adventure boxes.
Summer Camp Activity Fee: $25 per month (July and August)  The activity fee covers the cost of the adventure boxes and ingredients/supplies for special projects.
Look for a preschool summer calendar in your email and on our website next week.

2020 T-shirt

Our 2020 T-shirt compliments out Out of the Box theme and is available to order now!  T-shirts are white with a black line drawing.  Children and teachers in the center will use fabric markers to color their t-shirts and make them their own!
You can order your t-shirts with the button below. They can be sent directly to the center, or you can order them to go to your home instead.  They are available in toddler sizes through adult 4x in both short sleeve and long sleeve options.

Important Dates

June 19: Teacher Staff Meeting.  We have not held staff meetings for the last few months to support our essential service, first responders, and medical professional parents.  Now that things are slowly re-opening and more children are returning to care, we are going to close on June 19 to conduct meetings and trainings on all of the new policies and procedures around COVID-19.  We will also be doing additional cleaning and sanitizing to ensure that we are providing the healthiest and safest space possible for our children.

June 22: Since the COVID-19 Pandemic began, we have worked to maintain the safest environments for teachers and children.  Including keeping children with the same group, in the same classroom, and the same teacher all week.   In order to accommodate returning children, we are adjusting the age groups for both buildings.  The church classrooms will now be our Infant and Toddler  – Bunny, Panda, AND LION classrooms.  A floor plan map and drop off and pick up instructions will be available on our website next week.

• July 3: Closed for Independence Day
• July 17: Close at 4 p.m. for Staff Meeting
• August 21: Close at 4 p.m. for Staff Meeting

We will be closed for Labor day.  Please stay tuned for the date of our annual fall in-service training.  To be determined based on the first day of public schools.