End of the Year Picnic and Graduation has been changed from May 20th to June 4th, 11am.  We are sorry if this will inconvenience anyone’s plans.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  It will be a potluck and we will furnish the hotdogs for the BBQ.  We will cook both veggie dogs and the standard dogs.  We will be graduating ONLY the children that will move into a Kindergarten class next year.  Those students who will be going into first grade or another pre-school class will not be a part of this ceremony.  We will do something special for those students at another time.  Our year end picnic has always included our BIG graduation every year for the Kindergarten class.  They will receive diplomas and wear Graduation hats for the big day right at 11am.  Following the ceremony we will have games, followed by our annual potluck.  Pray for sunshine!!!!!!!

Graduating Students:  If your child is attending HCM next year, we will be assessing which class they will be enrolled in according to their age, birthdates and readiness.  For your knowledge, we generally separate the children according to their age.  The classes will have children in attendance that will vary in age approximately 2 years.  The toddlers graduate into the napper pre-school class if they are potty trained, at least 2 ½ years old, and are emotionally ready.  Generally they are 2 ½ to 4 years old in the napper class.  Through the course of the year, some of the children do not nap in this class and we accommodate them with afternoon works and activities.  It is not necessary to graduate into another class if they do not nap.

 Once your child is enrolled into a class, it will be their class for the entire course of that year.  Our curriculum, the Montessori methods and class room set-up, accommodate each student in every class for the entire year.  There might be an occasional graduation if there is room or if we feel it is a better fit in the next class.

The nappers graduate into Colin’s pre-school class if they are no longer napping and are emotionally ready.  Generally they are between 3 ½ and 5 years old.  The children that attend Sharon’s class range from 4-6years old.  Children who will be attending both HCM and the public kindergarten class will automatically be in Sharon’s class.  Children from both Colin’s and Sharon’s class could graduate into a kindergarten program the following year if they will be turning 5 before September 1st of the following school year.  The children are prepared for their kindergarten year in both Colin’s and Sharon’s classes.  

We welcome you to visit the classrooms your children might be graduating into this spring.  Please talk to your child’s teacher and we can set up a time for you to observe the different classrooms.

Summer Camp:  The staff is preparing for our summer camps.  In terms of your schedules and payments, if you are keeping your same schedules, nothing changes in regards to your tuition, we only change the activities to include a “camp” rotation to 6 different activities throughout the course of the day.  If your child is in the toddler program, their routines stay the same.  If your child still takes naps, they will rotate to horse riding, swimming and cooking in the morning and take a nap in the afternoon.  If your child does not nap, they will rotate to the following activities:  Horse-Swimming-Cooking-Sports-Gardening-Art.  Every activity has a camp leader that teaches that particular event.  We walk each of our groups over to the next activity and camp leader at the end of each scheduled hour.  We are looking forward to another fun-filled summer.  The official camp starts June 29th.  The last two weeks of June we will continue with swimming and all of the other regular activities, but there will be no horseback riding during this time.

Staff Continuing Education:  Seven of the staff just finished a class on “Relationship Based” business module.  We all benefited from the class and felt that much of the information we were already using but were inspired to put out a greater effort to create a more positive environment.  The whole premise of this approach to conducting a business is to place an emphasis on building relationships with everyone; including staff, children and the parents.  The idea being, that if we are looking to have a successful business, we need to have healthy, happy and loving relationships.  We all agree that it takes hard work but is well worth the effort.  Please let us know what we can do for you and we will do our best to help out in any way we can.  We are all looking forward to utilizing more of what we learned.

Montessori Training:  Four of the staff members are taking the Montessori training.  Alison, Ashley C., Emilia and Alaina will finish their training this summer.  They are all enjoying their courses and internship.  I want to thank and congratulate all of my staff for their continued education.  

Staff Changes:  Ashley Plouff is now on her maternity leave and Alaina will take her maternity leave May 15th.  We want to thank both of these women for their dedication and hard work and wish them the very best for their future deliveries of their babies.  We are going to miss them.  Melissa Smith is new on staff and has been coming in for several months. She has done such a great job helping out in all of the classrooms.  We will be running an ad in the paper to fill in where we need to in the afternoon.  We ask the staff to introduce themselves to all of the parents but if you have not had an introduction, please go up to the staff and introduce yourselves.  Dani has replaced Ashley Plouff.  Ashley C. now comes in to open up the school at 6:30am.  All of the staff will be returning next year.  We will post the staff schedule for the summer and fall as we get closer to that time.

In closing, we want to thank everyone for making this such a rewarding job.  We love our families and consider it a privilege to provide quality care for your children and your families.  We love you all very much.

Janice, Ollie and Staff