The Early Childhood Center @ First Covenant Church
Dear Parents,
We have a new website that we’d like to share with you as you will see your children in this wonderful site. It is www.earlychildhoodcenter.org. Please give us comments about it. We are so very pleased with it and hope that you are also. Please share this site with your coworkers and friends. We could really use your help in increasing our enrollment. Thank you for your support.
This week is supposed to bring us some warmer weather, which I know we all are very excited to be able to get outside again. Sorry about being closed for 3 days this past week. Our policy is if Westside Community schools and all the other schools close so do we. All of our staff are paid for these snow days too. However, we understand that these last snow days were an inconvenience for many. We will try very hard to make sure we don’t have any more snow days this winter. We will now be using our website’s blog to communicate the snow day announcements. We are working on getting our phone system to allow us to leave a message on the answering machine but we are not sure if that will work. So, until further notice, please use our ECC blog as your reference. Let’s hope our school closings are over with for this winter.
Our church serves meals on Wednesday evening for $2.50 each and all our families and staff are invited to attend anytime you would like at 5:30. So January 20th, we would like to invite all of you to come and eat with our Early Childhood Staff. Let us know if you can come. You do not have to have reservations, just come with us.
We have scheduled the Omaha Hearing School to test our children on Friday, January 15th. The hearing screening is a free service brought to you by the Campaign for Healthy Hearing in Kids. Please see the attached sheets for more information and if you choose to have your child be tested please fill out the consent form and return the form by Friday.
Sorry to inform you that the ACH payments are not ready for January. Our accountant has gone to Az. for the month so probably won’t be ready until Feb. We will let you know when this process is ready to begin. Thank you for your patience. Just want to remind you that tuition is due the first and third Monday of each month, which ever option you choose to pay.
I would like to give you a list of the suggested books we would like you to read so you are on board with our staff and children with the Nature Explore Classroom.
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
Sunflower Houses by Sharon Lovejoy
Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots by Sharon Lovejoy
Gardening Wizardry for Kids by L. Patricia Kite
A Childs’ Garden by Molly Dannenmaier
I Love Dirt by Jennifer Ward
Hollyhock Days by Sharon Lovejoy
These are wonderful easy read books on gardening with children and nature. Our winter lesson plans are interesting and fun for the children in our outdoor classroom. Jennifer Ward does a great job offering 10 lessons on winter in her I Love Dirt book.
We will be hosting an all day workshop on Saturday, June 26th. We will be giving you more information on these workshops, closer to June. However, we want to give you first choice in attending. The Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions do the workshops for us and all other’s attending. The information is wonderful and you will want to attend if you can. This is posted on our National Webpage with the Arbor Day Foundations, along with our certification, which is really a huge accomplishment.
We have two new teachers, possibly 3 beginning this week in the infant and preschool rooms. Jennifer will be the Preschool’s new teacher. Jennifer has taught for me before and comes with 11 years experience in early childcare. Her major is in music and she speaks Spanish. We now have a Music teacher and Spanish teacher. She is a wonderful teacher and we are so fortunate to have her on our staff.
Kara is the new Head teacher in the infant room. She has taught for me before also and comes with 10 years experience in childcare. You will love her, as she is the best and she will take our program to a new level. Please welcome these teachers to our program. We will be adding BIO’s of the teachers to the walls next to their classrooms so you know more about our staff and their backgrounds.
Thank you for allowing us to love, teach, and share Jesus’ love with your children.
Thankfully and God Bless,
Irene