Happy Wednesday, Common Ground!

We are having an amazing first week of our summer program! We all can’t believe how incredibly smoothly new classroom transitions have gone. The teachers are working hard to get to know your kids as we begin to do some fun, summertime activities. We also have some EXCITING updates to share so please make sure you read through everything and subscribe to our newsletter.

First up, we are working to extend our hours now that the weather is nicer. During “normal, pre-covid” operations, in order to open early and stay open later, we would combine children from different classes and they would all be watched in a group setting. In the mornings, if you can remember back then, it was Miss Yolanda and Miss Mimi in the Rising Stars room from 6:30 until 7:30am, and in the evenings we would combine infant/toddler rooms and preschool rooms for the last half hour to hour of the day.

Currently, we are restricted by the state (and public health “best practices”) from co-mingling groups of children, especially indoors. Due to this restriction, we need to adequately staff to cover additional hours, without over working our most valuable resource, our teachers!

We feel that combining kids outdoors in the morning and evening on the playground, does not increase the overall risk of covid transmission above having your child in care. Therefore, we are planning to offer a 30 minute morning extension beginning June 14th by sign up and a 30 minute evening extension beginning July 6th.

MORNING HOURS SIGNUP - 7:30 to 8am beginning June 14th

Beginning on June 14th we will be offering extended morning hours from 7:30-8am by sign up only!

In order to meet the needs of our families who have requested earlier hours from us, we are going to have sign ups available 48 hours before the day that an early drop off is needed. All families are welcome to sign up for early drop off and these earlier hours are included in your tuition if you use them, however, if you sign up and arrive after 8am, you will owe a $20 no-show fee.

The sign up link will remain the same for the entire summer and these extended hours will go until August 20th. We will continue to update and evaluate along the way as restrictions change and children become vaccinated!

EVENING HOURS - 6pm close begins July 6th

With the extension of our evening hours beginning on July 6th, we will also bring back the late pick up fee of $3 per minute. Again, this begins July 6th, as no one has abused the flexibility that we have offered thus far. It gives me goosebumps when I think about this incredible community that we have all cultivated here. <cue heart emojis, if squarespace had that option!>

FUNdrive - Drop off your items NOW through SATURDAY at NOON!

Miss LJ deserves a BIG round of applause for everything she has been doing to arrange this fundraiser! Please drop off your bags of soft clothing and household linens and boxes of small household items starting today at pick up through Saturday at noon! We get paid by the pound, so I may or may not have bagged up 20 year old swim t-shirts to help with the weight!

You can see that we have a NEW PIZZA fundraiser starting soon too!

WATER PLAY - Preschool Side and afternoons

Water play will begin when the weather warms up! Please make sure your child has swim stuff and a towel that can stay here so that they can enjoy a run through our sprinklers! At this point, sprinklers are the only water play that we can do on site, though we are hoping restrictions are lifted later on!

For children 3 and up, please let us know if you DO NOT want your child to play in the water in the afternoons. Last summer we had sprinklers as an option in the hot afternoons. This meant that a lot of kids were picked up slightly damp and still in their swim stuff.

KINDERGARTEN CAMPERS

Our rising kindergarteners are enjoying a LOT of outside time with an exploration of the arts this week with Miss Janette! They’re doing a great job learning to be “big kids” and staying outside most of the day! Miss Janette has some very exciting plans for the next two weeks that I am certain all of your kids will tell you all about! Be on the lookout for buttons that can help you ask a guided question about their day about how they earned the button!

We will send their camp shirts home with them at the end of this week. Beginning next week, campers will need to wear their camp shirt daily to camp.

THANK YOU!

Our teachers also wanted to share how thankful they are for their end of the school year bonuses! Your generous donations helped show how much you appreciate our teachers!

Thats it for our newsletter this week! Sorry it’s a day late, but hopefully the content makes it worth it!

-The CG Team