Dear Families,
I hope you are enjoying the remaining weeks of summer.
I cannot thank our PTO presidents, Katie Carroll and Kristen Antonio, enough for participating in our “dry run” of a school day yesterday. Their time and feedback is truly appreciated. Katie took many great pictures for us to review.
For example, here are some photos of our outdoor spaces where children will do some of their learning and take mask breaks. Two teachers are assigned to an outdoor space and they will develop a schedule and a plan for working in these spaces throughout the day.
Our Expeditionary Learning Curriculum has units of study on plants, pollination, birds and more. We are so fortunate to have such wonderful spaces to work on our first grade bird journals or our kindergarten habitat exploration and the study of pollinators in grade 2. Students will be able to explore deep learning right on our campus.
Our School Wide Fine Arts Theme is “One World”. There are so many interesting ways to explore, art, cultures, and diversity in this theme. Our individual student art kits have arrived and they are amazing. Students will love them. They will also love making music with Ms. Ducharme with their individual music kits with scarves, buckets, drum sticks, and more.
This week, our teachers and staff participated in a summer faculty meeting to look at re-entry plans and needs for Nayatt. Again, like our PTO representatives, they had many wonderful ideas and suggestions for how to improve our plans and make them fun for kids. In Kindergarten, they are building individual centers that students could keep for a week, they might be a STEAM center, legos or other learning.
How can I help my child get ready for the school year?
Mask Wearing
Have them practice wearing their mask and normalize it like we wear shoes to school. Many go barefoot all summer, but they know they need to wear shoes at school.
Prepare a paper bag with your child’s name to bring each day to store their mask during lunch and recess or outside learning. We want them to be able to dry, a plastic bag or pencil box will keep them moist.
Snacks and Lunch
Have them practice opening snack packages, juice boxes, and yogurts….there will only be one adult in the classroom with the students at lunch time.
Start thinking about how you might send snacks to school. Maybe they are better with tupperware or reusable bags.
Water bottles
Talk to your child about filling their water bottle for each new day.
Make sure their backpack has an outside pocket to carry their water bottle, their chromebooks will come back and forth to school. We do not want them to get wet.
Water bottles with a straw can be slipped under their mask to take a drink.
Please do not forget to take time to complete the learning models survey sent out by the district. I check it daily and I am using it in my planning.
Class lists will be sent electronically this year, we are still working on them. Thank you for the patience. The PTO will be updating the directory for our new families. It is a resource for parents to connect with one another. Watch for communication from the Nayatt PTO.
Have a great night!
Tracey
Tracey Learned
Principal of Nayatt School