NURSERY RHYMES NEWSLETTER - FEB 2010

Director's Corner - Lisa Wenz

Here we are midpoint into another school year. Since our last newsletter we have welcomed several new families into our program and another teacher, Meg O’Connor who will be working in Little Hands 2 due to our growing enrollment. Meg is pretty familiar with our school and philosophies as she worked as a student teacher with us last year. The staff and I are so pleased to have her join us.

We’d also like to welcome Sophia Skye, a baby daughter to Elaine and Juan. Elaine will be returning to the afternoon three’s class on March 1. I’d like to thank Maria for providing such a seamless sense of continuity and as always wonderful activitiesand curriculum for the class while Elaine was on maternity leave.

This school year we were fortunate to be offered an opportunity to join Cool Culture. As most of you know, Cool Culture is a Non-Profit organization whose mission is to aid families of young children of all economic backgrounds to gain access to cultural institutions throughout NYC. They believe “Family visits to museums, botanical gardens, wildlife centers, and other cultural institutions provide young children with the kind of early learning experiences, such as language and literacy building, that are fundamental to school success. These visits also offer parents or guardians and their children the opportunity toexplore and learn together. Parent-child and guardian-child interactions that take place during cultural experiences foster young children's verbal literacy, vocabulary development, and critical thinking”.

Most of our families now have their Cool Culture Passes and can take advantage of many museums, nature centers and zoos in NYC and the boroughs for free. With this in mind, our teachers have spent their Teacher Education Day – and perhaps a few weekend visits at some of these institutions to support their curriculum and to help inform you about some of the wonderful exhibits available to you. Some of our teachers have included information in their newsletter articles, but a complete “synopsis” will be available in a guidebook we will keep on the shelf in the Big Room for families to use as a resource. We also hope that families will add to this guide by adding information about their visits to Cool Culture sites into the book.

My visit on Teacher Education Day was to the NYC Transit Museum in Brooklyn. What a wonderful place for young children and families to explore the history, types, construction, science and artistic dimensions of the NYC mass transit system. The New York Transit Museum is housed in a 1936 decommissioned, but still operational, subway station. It is extremely child friendly with much to touch and try out, both for our preschool children as well as elementary school age siblings.

Turnstiles dating back to the early 1900’s are available to move through, cabs of MTA busses are available to “drive”, and actual ticket booths are there to pretend in. Down one level are many subway cars some dating back to the early 1900’s actually sitting on track in the decommissioned station for children and families to wander through and explore, without the concern of movement, doors closing or the hustle and bustle of the normal subway ride.

For adults there is the history of the building of the subways, bridges and tunnels alongside child friendly displays allowing you and your child to come away with new knowledge or experiences, an interactive exhibit on how the new clean energy engines work and history on the artistic aspects of the subway stations tile designs. On the afternoon my husband and I visited, there was an mosaic tile art activity available for children, which was open ended and appropriate for all ages.program and cards will arrive in about two months.

If you do not have a card and have not filled out your application, talk to me immediately! The deadline is February 12th!

I’d like to thank all the families who came out on Parent Child Sunday to spend time with your child in school. It was great to see so many families giving the children the chance to show you their classrooms. Please also try to come in as “Parent of The Day” in our three year old and UPK classes. It can be a fun, enlightening experience for parents (or grandparents) to spend time with your child in the program. Do not feel you need to come with an activity, or that you need to stay all day. Visit, meet your child’s classmates, get a sense of the curriculum, and enjoy! For Little Hands families, having parents in the room sometimes begins separation issues for your child or another who is missing their families – so although it may be fine for some children we do not have “Parent of the Day” for this age group.

Finally, we are fundraising a bit more than usual this year. Although fundraising is always an integral part of our operating budget, this year, we are working to raise funds for new playground equipment for the Tire Park. This is a bigger expense than usual. We realize in these economic times, it is difficult to ask families for large donations on top of tuition, so we are trying to keep fundraising as pocket friendly as possible and create events that are “worth” it. So the Board, with a great deal of help from Sandra Nachtmann, has begun Coffee/Tea Fridays.

Each Friday, alternating mornings (8:00 – 9:30) and afternoons (3:00 – 4:30), coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and baked goods or more will be available for sale. All are available to go if you are on the run. So bypass your morning or afternoon coffee stop and grab your cup to go at the Nursery. The sign-up sheet for donating peanut/nut free baked goods is in the Big Room. We have been talking of including dinner type items at the afternoon events – such as containers of soup or perhaps a quiche, again – things “to go”. If this sounds like something you would like – let us know. Thanks to those who have been helping out with this or supporting this effort.

Looking forward to the rest of the school year!

Happy 2010!