Newsletter: June 7
Good Morning Everyone!
We have some important news for summer activities and supplies as well as transitions! Please read below.
Transitions and CAMP
This week we had a lot of changes, and we apologize for clumsily sharing the plan! In an effort to improve for next week, we have the following changes:
Bubble Buddies: 6 weeks to 14 months - NO CHANGES
Teachers: Miss Nana, Miss Marita, and Miss Susie
Little Penguins: 8 months to 19 months - NO CHANGES
Teachers: Miss Patty, Miss Huihui, and Miss Gitti
Playful Pandas: 15 to 28 months - NO CHANGES
Teachers: Miss Pinky, Miss Simi (on vacation until 7/7/22), and Miss Samra
Dancing Monkeys: 2 to 3.5 years - Staff Transitions
Teachers: Miss Petty, Miss Delia, and Miss Kisha
Miss Petty and Miss Kisha will be joining Miss Delia for the summer! Miss Kristel will be moving up to work with older kids in the final months of her pregnancy as she prepares for maternity leave
Rising Stars: Preschool 3-4.5 year olds - student transitions
the older half of the group who will be 4 by 11/30/2022 have moved into Miss Adella’s Busy Bees Classroom this week!
the younger half will be moving into Miss Yolanda’s Love Bugs! This will be a 3-4 year old preschool classroom, where children will stay in this classroom for the entirety of the next school year!
Love Bugs: Preschool 3-4.5 year olds - student and staff transitions
Teachers: Miss Yolanda, Miss Celestine, and Miss Kristel
The 3 year olds who will turn 4 on or after 12/1/2022 will be joining the Love Bugs classroom for the summer and will continue in this class in the fall
Miss Kristel is joining this class for the summer before she goes out on maternity leave
Busy Bees: Preschool 4-5.5 year olds - student transitions
Teachers: Miss Adella and Mr. Zach
the children from Rising Stars who will turn 4 by 11/30/2022 will join the 4 year olds who do not turn 5 before 9/30/2022 be in the Busy Bees for the summer.
CAMP: School Aged Program, must be 5 by 9/30/2022 - summer begins!
Hello Summer BBQ is Friday, June 10th!
ON FRIDAY, JUNE 10TH, WE WILL BE HAVING A BBQ TO CELEBRATE THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER!
It will be from 4:30PM-6:30PM in the grassy area by the swings.
We are providing Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Chips, Water, Gatorade, and Lemonade!
PLEASE RSVP - It is not required to attend, but it really helps us!
We want to know how many people are coming so that we can purchase the right amount of food!
Let’s get together, eat a bunch of food under a blue sky, and enjoy each other’s company.
Summer is Here! Supplies, Suggestions, and Safety Tips!
Now that it’s summer time we will be doing even more outdoor activities than before! We have water play for all the classrooms and swimming for kids 3 and up! Kids need to be outside. The pandemic has made daily outside time essential to health and safety, but daily outside time has been shown to increase attention spans, self-regulation, physical fitness, and mood while helping to decrease sensory issues, anxiety, and inner-ear weakness. It’s also just fun! Recess is essential for growth.
We are aware that it gets hot and steamy outside! We have heat index and heat codes hanging up in each classroom, and regulate outside time based on that.
We also have recommendations for summer attire and gear to keep your kids safe, comfortable, and happy:
Our Skin Care Product Form: We have sent out our new updated Skin Care Forms to all of our families via adobesign. If you have not received it, please let us know! We provide sunscreen, bugspray, aveeno, and aquafor and apply as needed. If you choose to opt out and to provide your own items, let us know so that we can send a different non-rx skin care form.
Water comfortable shoes: Crocs, Keens, jellies, and other shoes like this, are amazing for summer! Kids can play in the sprinkler and then quickly dry off without having wet socks all day. No flip flops please! The kids need to be able to safely play on playground equipment as well
Pool Time: For our older kids, we will have scheduled pool time! We will let you know in advance, of course! Please send with your children: Towel, Swimsuit, Wet bag, and goggles and toys are optional but allowed.
A Sun Hat and a Sun Shirt are recommended for kiddos who burn really easily! We apply sunscreen frequently, but extra protection is always advised
A Water Bottle: We require a water bottle all year, but it is especially important during the summer! We supply gatorade and water all day, but the kids need to be able to have water with them at all times to keep them hydrated.
Graduation Recap
Our graduating kids and teachers worked so hard to get to graduation last Friday, and it really showed. We want to personally thank Ms. Yolanda, Ms. Adella, Ms. Janette, Mr. Zach, Ms. Celestine, Mr. Josh, and everyone who has worked with our students this year to get them through the last year! Your kids are resilient, kind, brave, smart, hard-working, and HILARIOUS. Sometimes we go into those classes just for a hug or a pick-me-up. When we need the reminder that, despite all trials and tribulations, we WILL get back up again, we can turn to any bee, bug, or jellyfish in the place and know that they will help us shine brighter.
Learning begins at birth at Common Ground. It begins with cuddles and smiles, it begins with assurances and loving voices.
We got choked up seeing all of our baby teachers watching the ceremony, all the teachers that came before leaning over the fences to see the kids they helped grow up move on to better things. So thank you, to ALL of those teachers, who helped the kiddos from the start. Every single person at Common Ground has loved our children. That is a humbling feeling that we will carry too.
Lastly, THANK YOU to parents for helping us set up and clean up! For signing endless forms and celebrating Trunk or Treat. For laughing and crying with us, for learning about the planets with us, for watching our Common Ground Story Time Show and singing “The Goldfish” one more time. You are just as integral a part of our team, and we couldn’t be more grateful that we had you with us every step of the way.
WE LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! LET’S GET READY FOR SUMMER!!!
Your CG Family
Newsletter: March 15
Dear Parents,
Virginia (early) Spring Weather is doing what it always does: catching us by surprise! One minute it’s sunny and warm, the next it’s rainy and chilly! We have been going on a lot of nature exploration walks with all our classes and enjoying ample time outside, so thank you so much for making sure your kiddo has appropriate weather attire and shoe attire.
Reminder that Saturday hours are THIS WEEK from 9:00AM-2:30PM! If you haven’t signed up but would like to partake, check it out HERE.
Thank you all so much! You were good company with the noodles :)
Between the Mod Pizza Fundraiser and the Noodles and Company Fundraiser, our families earned $218.29 for the center! We are so glad that we got to “eat dinner” with you, even apart. Did anyone in your family try something new? Is there a restaurant you would love to see featured this way? Let us know in the comments!
We have Family Fundraiser Nights each month! Check out our calendar and find your new local favorite dinner place! How can you help make these succeed? Share our Facebook Events and Flyers with all your local friends and family! Who doesn’t like a ready-made, delicious family dinner?
We have a few posts from the last couple of days to share with you.
One is about the Persian New Year’s Celebration Nowruz! Ms. Gitti taught our four-year-old classes all about it last week. The holiday occurs on the first day of Spring each year!
Read more about it Here.
We also have written a post about how to talk to help out the Ukraine. One of the main ways we suggest is encouraging them to think about how to be helpful and comforting to those in need.
Read more about it Here.
If you like these posts, you should subscribe to our blog! We write posts about holidays, recommended books, issues children face, and family friendly activities! We love sharing our world and thoughts with you, so if there is ever anything you’d like to see OR share, let us know.
That’s all our news for today! Stay tuned to find out how we are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day later this week!
Love,
Your CG Family
Newsletter: February 22
Dear CG Family!
We hope you enjoyed the federal holiday yesterday! It is the LAST time Common Ground will be closed for a holiday until the Friday before and the Monday of Memorial Day weekend! We have a lot of great information packed into this weeks newsletter, so make sure to read on!
Today is our Mod Pizza Fundraiser! Support your school by ordering from the Plaza America Mod Pizza. We get 20% of sales! Show our flyer in store or use the code MODF2789 when ordering from the website or app.
Can’t do this fundraiser? That’s okay! We have Family Fundraiser Nights each month! Check out our calendar and find your new local favorite dinner place! How can you help make these succeed? Share our Facebook Events and Flyers with all your local friends and family! Who doesn’t like a ready-made, delicious family dinner?
Mod Pizza: February 22nd I Noodles and Company: March 9th I Chipotle: April 11th I On the Border: June 2nd
Is your kid into Disney’s Magic Bake-Off?
We know how hard it can be to plan any evening activities that do not involve a screen, especially when the weather has been so unpredictable! We want to be creative and fun for our kids, but it can be so hard to muster the energy.
We have done a write up with some simple, easy to clean up baking activities you can do with your imaginative youngster HERE. If you try them out, let us know, and share your own baking recipes and stories in the comments!
Read Across America Day is Wednesday, March 2nd - Whacky Wednesday!
NEA's Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading with the theme: Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers.
It’s also a celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday! If your students haven’t started reading Dr. Seuss in their classroom to begin their celebration, they will soon! Here is a picture of Ms. Petty reading Dr. Seuss to the Rising Stars.
How can we celebrate together?
Reading isn’t just for quiet time! Reading is for together time. Reading is for adventure time. Reading is for silly, fancy, wonder time.
We will be celebrating all next week! We will send out exactly how tomorrow, so stay posted!
See you next week!
Your CG Family
Newsletter: October 12
Dear Parents,
We hope you had a wonderful three day weekend! We know that our staff really appreciated the day off to recharge! We have a lot of information to share in this newsletter!
COVID
We have two pieces of information to share with you.
First, we have had to quarantine both of our infant classrooms again due to a child testing positive for covid. The child has very mild symptoms of nasal congestion that developed on Friday and persisted through the weekend. They were tested on Monday and it returned a positive result. We are working with the health department on the next steps for those classrooms, but as of this point all students in both classrooms that attended the center last week are at home in quarantine. We have determined that there were no additional contacts within the center.
Miss Adella also tested positive for covid when testing for her return trip from Barbados. She is currently doing well and has no symptoms, but has to quarantine before she can return to the US. We do not currently have a return date for her.
Teachers are getting booster shots! We are very lucky again that the FDA felt that educators should be included for Booster Shots! We are working through making sure that every staff member who wishes to get a booster has the opportunity and time to be able to do so! As of right now, Liz, LJ, Victoria, Susie, Gitti, and HuiHui have all gotten boosted!
Covid Policy Reminder:
If your child becomes symptomatic, you must provide a lab report indicating a negative covid test result or a doctors note indicating that an alternative diagnosis (not covid) has been made with instructions from the physician on when they can return to care. Keep in mind that a doctor may give return to care instructions that are different from our policies that are in place through our state licensing requirements or the local health department. In that case, the center policy will be followed. At this time, then health department has recommended that we not accept the results of at home rapid antigen testing for return to care.
Asymptomatic siblings must remain home until you have provided the lab results or physician’s note for the symptomatic sibling.
Covid symptoms in children are as follows:
Fever or chills
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Fatigue and “not acting like themselves”
Muscle or body aches
Headache
New loss of taste or smell
Sore throat
Congestion or runny nose
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea
If you have any questions please check our FAQ, email Liz, or call/text Liz.
OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY MORNING: 10AM-12PM
** Please Park ON THE BLACKTOP ONLY. The gate will be open!!!**
Reminder that we will be having our fall open house this Saturday morning from 10am to 12pm. This is an opportunity to stop by to see your child’s classroom and speak briefly with their teachers! We ask that you:
wear a mask
stay home if you are sick
plan to keep your time with the teacher brief
spend no more than 10 minutes indoors
keep social distance from children not in your own household, especially when indoors
But before the open house…
Friday night is PIZZA NIGHT!
Common Ground is hosting Reston’s Largest Pizza Party Ever!! This is an event that anyone that can participate in. Just have pizza with your family on Friday night share with us that you participated! You can upload photos here and RSVP to our event on Facebook!
Enjoy Pizza Nights? Have some extra delicious pizza kits ready to go in your freezer from our Little Caesar’s Pizza Fundraiser!
Classroom Spotlight:
Our 4s teachers are absolutely incredible at what they do to get their kiddos ready for kindergarten.What’s the main thing they focus on? Self-Motivated Learning. This requires our preschoolers to feel safe, supported, and free to explore their surroundings without fear.
How do they help their preschool students feel comfortable in the classroom? Read all about it HERE
Thank you for being a part of our community! Please make sure you check out our upcoming events below!