Bye, Bye Winter   

March was a turbulent month with its snowstorms and 70 degree days. We encountered another round of colds, runny noses and fevers and have hopefully reached the end of it. We are looking forward to warmer spring days and children and teachers alike are ready to spend more time outside. While Westtown School was on spring break, all the classes enjoyed some playtime on the Lower School playground, which is always a special treat.

Our annual Spring Clean-Up Day was once again a success even though the turn-out was lower than in previous years. We scrubbed, wiped, rinsed and vacuumed for three hours on Saturday morning and the teachers were excited to see all the work that got done. Thanks a lot for your help!

Looking Ahead...

The enrollment contracts for next year have gone out but we still have some openings for this coming school year. One part-time space (Mo,We, Fr) is available in the Older Toddler classroom and 3 full-time/part-time spaces are available in the Preschool classroom. But the Infant classroom is as always fully enrolled. So, if you know anybody who is looking for child care, please let them know. You can also help us spread the word by posting the flyer. You can find copies of it next to the sign-in sheet.

Baby News 

I am expecting at the end of July and plan on being on maternity leave in August and part of September. We will have to see how timely the baby is. During my absence T. Margaret will be in charge and our former bookkeeper Carrie Goodman will be taking care of all the accounting duties. Closer to the summer, I will provide you with more information regarding some of the details. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions in the meantime.

Attention Gardeners!

The flower box in front of the day care is very empty and jealous of all the beautiful flowers that are growing all around. Please help us fill it with some flowers and plants. May be you have some extra ones or wouldn't mind picking some up at a local nursery.

Tuesday, April 7 @ 9 a.m. - Jitterbugs
Thursday, April 9 - Signed contracts due
Thursday, April 9 - Easter Egg Hunt
Friday & Monday, April 10 & 13 - 
Good Friday & Easter Monday - OLDC closed
Saturday, May 16 - Family Tie Dye Fun

Fruit for Snack: Courtney Phillips and Amy Brooks
Treat for the teachers: Melinda Bradley
St. Patrick's Day: Rebecca Rakes, Meghan Sayer, Alison Reichstein and Colleen Perrin
Spring Clean-Up Day: Melinda Bradley, Matthew Potter, Tammy Opperman and Rebecca, Cheryle Blunt and Karah

Despite a lot of rainy days, the infants and young toddlers have been doing great. Chloe and William are serious animal lovers. So any book with any animal is fun, fun, fun! Kai and Frederika are enjoying the animal stories as well. They all made March lion pictures and love to sing the songs "Five Little Ducks", "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Baa Baa Black Sheep".

Charlotte, Eric and Liam are making great progress in their getting around, pulling up and also interacting with each other as friends. Finger food is great fun for their budding independence and they love to have lunch dates as you can see in the pictures.

Ainsley is having fun walking around independently and Scarlet is doing a fabulous job with her new surroundings. Way to go infants and young toddlers! 

  T. Sheila and T. Savannah

During March, we were thinking warm thoughts. We were hard at work making rainbows and shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. The children loved painting their rainbows, which turned out to be very colorful. We also made beautiful flowers in vibrant spring colors. When they were all done, we "planted" them in our "bulletin board garden". The children also made some butterflies for our garden.

This month, we spent a lot of time doing puzzles and the children are becoming experts at them. Some of the puzzles had 24 pieces! It's quite an accomplishment for our little learners and great practice for eye-hand coordination.

 Potty-training is also on our minds these days. While some of the children are already potty trained others are working on it. Let us know when you are ready to start the training process at home and we will do the same at school.

During the preschool class' "V" week, we joined them for a vegetable tasting. Karah was our star vegetable eater and the other children ate and tasted at their own pace and desire. But the children always devour the yummy fruit that parents bring in for snack.

T. Margaret and T. Jean

We started March with stupendous "S". Everyone enjoyed making swirl snakes and glittering shamrocks. On Friday we had a great time baking shamrock sugar cookies. Next came terrific "T". We read the book "The Tortoise and the Hare" and made turtles. We also read "The Sabortooth Tiger" and colored tigers. For cooking day, we made delicious tacos for snack. At first the children were confused about this unusual snack but then quickly got excited and enjoyed it thoroughly.

During unbelievable "U" week we read the book "What Color Is Your Underwear?" As you can probably imagine, the children loved the book and wrapped it up with a cute animal underwear matching project. We also made unicorns with very sparkly horns. On St. Patrick's Day we whipped up green shamrock shakes. Thanks to all of the parents who donated ice-cream and milk.

V-week was vivacious. We read "The Surprise Garden" and made a long fruit and vegetable vine for the classroom. On Friday, we had a vegetable tasting during which all the children got a plate full of the different vegetables. Some of the children cleaned their plates while others were careful tasters and observers. Thanks again to all the parents that brought in the vegetables. The highlight of the week was exploding our hand-crafted volcanoes.

 All in all, March was a very exciting month. We enjoyed spending time together as we helped usher in springtime.  

T. Rachel and T. Christy