The joys of winter 

It's the beginning of February and we have seen it all...snow, sleet, ice, school closings and delays and of course, some fun playtime in the snow. Even though it is quite a lot of work to get all the children dressed in their snow gear, the teachers don't shy away from taking the them outdoors. At the same time, the children are getting better and better at putting on their coats and all the accessories by themselves.  Nevertheless, many of us here at Oak Lane are anxiously awaiting sping. 

Pancake & Pajama Day rounded out the month and was just as eventful as the rest of the month. After an icy morning, everybody made it here safely and the children showed off their comfy PJ's. Even though, we encountered a loss of power in the kitchen, we were able to finish making a mountain of pancakes. A big thank you to all the parents that came to help.  

Over the past couple of weeks, some of you have been experiencing problems with finding out about closings and delays using cancellations.com and NBC. I was told by a costumer service representative from cancellations.com that they are not sure why the message never went out and that it shouldn't happen again. The NBC problem was also some kind of glitch in the system. But needless to say, we need to have a system in place that is reliable. We are currently looking into some other options and need your feedback to decide what will work best for Oak Lane parents. Information that will be helpful to us includes: By what time do you need to know about closings and delays? How do you prefer to find out about it? TV, e-mail, phone call? If you have other children, what are their schools doing that you like and works for you?

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

Pancake & Pajama Day 

       Pictures provided by Tina Lawson (Joey's mom) - Thanks! 

Clean up, Clean up - Everybody do your share

Cleaning up can be a challenging task for children, whether it's at home or at school. But nevertheless, one that needs to be learned. At Oak Lane we employ different techniques to teach this valuable skill such as:

• limit the amount of toys children have access to at any given time
• ask children to clean up what they were playing with during play time and not just at the end
• encourage children to help their friends with clean up when they themselves are done 

In order to be consistent, we need your help at the end of the day when you come to pick up your child. Naturally, children quickly drop what they were playing with, run into your arms and are ready to go home. So before you put your child's coat on, please remember to ask "Did you clean up your toys?"

If you have any special clean-up tricks that work with your child at home, please feel free to share them with the teachers. They are always open to new ideas.

Tuesday, Feb. 10 @ 9 a.m.
Jitterbugs
Monday, Feb. 16
President's Day - OLDC closed
Tuesday, Feb. 24
Parent Teacher Meetings - Old. Toddler
Wednesday, Feb. 25
Parent Teacher Meetings - Preschool

Fruit for Snack: Miller's and Bielski's
Classroom visitor: Katie Wooten and Paula Ruggieri
Stickers: Rebecca Rakes and Stephanie Walkup
Pancake & Pajama Day: Marie Potter, Meghan Sayer, Tina Lawson, Tim Castello and Courtney Phillips
Lunch for the teachers: Alison Reichstein
Baby dolls and sand toys: Rebecca Opperman

It has been a long winter for the infants. It is hard to get out with the bitter cold and icy conditions. Nevertheless, Chloe and William have been busy reading books. Some of the their favorites are "No David", "Time for Bed" and "Spot goes to the farm". We have also been singing songs such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Bubble, Bubble, Pop" and have had lots of time playing with ride-on cars, strollers and balls.

Charlotte has been rolling all over the room in preparation to crawl. Eric and Liam like to buddy up with the giggles and are starting to eat more grown-up food. Aisnley and Frederika are blossoming more and more every week.T. Savannah brought in her newly adopted cat, Isabella, much to the delight of all the children.

  T. Sheila and T. Savannah

Winter is in full swing and we are enjoying every single snowflake. Bundled up with mittens, hats and scarfs, we have been playing outside a lot. We also went for a walk with our "Bug Rope". All the children did a great job holding on to the bugs and we went to the tennis courts.   

Lucca's mom, Paula, visited us in January and told us all about her home country Brazil. She brought a map, music and pictures and told us about the rainforest and its animals. The children enjoyed listening to her and also got to color a picture of a macaw.

Nora's mom, Katie, also spend some time with us. She joined us for Morning Meeting, read us stories and helped out with snack.Thank you to the both of you.

We celebrated Martin Luther King Day and learned about him in Morning Meeting. The next day we had lunch with the "big kids" and watched the inauguration. Our birthday girl this month was Rebecca who turned 3.

This month we will learn about fairy tales and myths, and of course, Valentine's Day.

T. Margaret and T. Jean

Welcome to the year 2009! We started off the year with the letter K. We learned about Kangaroo's and their Joey's, made kites and prepared "Krispie" treats. During L week the children enjoyed making lions and ladybugs. We read "The Lion King" and "The Grouchy Ladybug". We attempted to make lemon bars but unfortunately we had a recipe issue and the final product didn't taste very much like lemon at all. For the letter M, we had fun with money and monkeys. Baking chocolate chip muffins was successful that week. The children enjoyed measuring, pouring and stirring the ingredients. Rainbow noodles were a hit with the kids during N week. They picked out their favorite colors and glued them on the letter N. We also painted a nightime sky mural.

Pancake breakfast and pajama day was fun for all. Thanks to all the parent volunteers. We read "Pancake, Pancake" by Eric Carle. We played and napped in our pajamas and hoped the day would never end.

T. Rachel and T. Christy