(858) 759-0631
Date:
Apr 24, 2020 12:00am to 11:45pm
Dear Parents,
I hope this letter finds you and your loved ones well and healthy. Hopefully, you have found your “quarantine legs” and have a rhythm or flow to your days now. We have been looking at the bright side of keeping 3 kids at home. We’ve been learning to bake bread, we’ve made ice cream, berry compote, our own granola, and banana bread. The house has been dusted, swept, mopped and all the windows are clean on the inside and out! My children have been enjoying the “How to Train Your Dragon” audiobooks (there are 11!) while munching on snacks every afternoon, a highlight of their day. I enjoy reading time in the morning, creativity time in the middle of the day and audiobooks in the late afternoon because that is when I can sneak away to do my own work. Otherwise, I’m working with my kids during learning, chore and exercise time.
I’m glad the staff has had this time to explore interactions with your children on Zoom. I have so enjoyed seeing your children in various zoom circle times, science experiments and lunches. I know our teachers miss your children so much. We often talk about children needing an intelligent purpose in the classroom: activities and materials that are real and purposeful. But we adults who love children realize that our students are our intelligent purpose. We feel purposeful when inspiring a child, encouraging them and seeing their concentration. To not be around your child is a loss for us adults, as well as the children. Not to mention we miss their warm hugs and affections! These zoom interactions help keep the students and teachers visually connected, where they can tell stories and hear from their friends. We may not be able to hug through zoom, but the children get a lot out of these moments in their day. Please be sure to join them and participate!
After much reading, and listening to, advice from medical experts, the San Diego County of Health and our State and National leaders we have come to the conclusion it would be best not to open LMS on April 6th. In order to keep our students and staff healthy, we expect to be closed for much of the month of April. I wish I could predict when we will be together again, but we have no way of knowing. Rest assured the school is ready, the staff are willing and as soon as it seems feasible to be together again, we will open the school immediately. For those who paid the tuition in April, we will credit your account towards May as outlined in our previous email.
First and foremost we want to be able to open and support our families as soon as possible. But until that happens, it is imperative we care for our staff and support our community too. We are covering full salaries for all of our staff while we are closed so that they can, in turn, support their own family. We thank you for your patience, trust, and commitment to our community. Every member of our staff is grateful.
We will continue with our zoom interactions and if you have any ideas of how we can strengthen our connections between staff, parents and kids, please pass them on.
Stay well and look for the joy in your children being home more often...like cleaned windows!
Warmly,
Kristin Edwards
Director
Lifetime Montessori School