Reflections on our week…

Dear Families,

I love being a teacher this time of year. Sharing the Christmas story with my students each season is a big highlight for me. As Christians the birth of our Savior is the start of God’s great rescue plan. This week we started our Christmas unit in Bible. We are zooming in and studying each character of the Christmas story up close. As we do, your child will create a book. We’ve also spent some fun moments creating Christmas gifts for parents and singing Christmas carols. Next week Friday we will celebrate Jesus’ birthday together with a variety of math and literacy centers. A huge thank you to the parents who planned the celebration and who will help at the party. I will not be writing another blog post next week before break so I want to take this opportunity to say I pray you have a merry Christmas! Enjoy a different pace the next couple of weeks!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Melissa

Announcements/ Reminders

• Harvest Stand Ministries: First graders at ZCS collect hats and mittens for Harvest Stand Ministries, which provides free food, clothing, and resource connection assistance to people in crisis. Please bring your donations in by Tuesday, December 14. We’ll deliver them to Harvest Stand Ministries on Tuesday morning and get a tour to learn more about how they serve our community. If you are interested in walking from ZCS to Harvest Stand (located in City on a Hill) with us, please let me know! I’d appreciate having another adult to help with crowd control. 🙂 We’ll be gone from 9:00-10:00
• Jingle Jog: Our class will be participating in this fun Christmas tradition to raise funds for our sister school in the Philippines on Thursday, December 16 at 9:00. A fundraising form was sent home today in the yellow folders. Families are welcome to come cheer or participate with us! Please turn it in by Thursday’s Jingle Jog time! Thank you!
• WAAG: Please be sure to pay attention to the WAAG link on the right side of our blog. At the top of the WAAG you will find the Zoom links for Maestra Mercado’s classroom and Maestra Izenbaard’s classroom. This will help you stay “in the know” of what your child is learning. It will also be very helpful if your child needs to enter quarantine. If your child is sick, please know that for us their rest and healing takes priority over getting schoolwork done. That includes your rest and healing if your family is in quarantine and you are ill. (If your child is sick or on vacation, not in quarantine and not sick with COVID, we will not be sending work home or asking them to participate in any Zoom calls. If a child is sick for several days or weeks, similar to a quarantine situation, and you are interested, we will happily discuss options on an individual basis.)

Upcoming Dates:

Reflections on our week…

Dear Families,

Your kids are resilient. They continue to make important gains in their learning. They continue to work together and build each other up. Our classroom wouldn’t be the same without each one of your children. It was a different kind of week with unexpected circumstances keeping both Maestra Mercado and I out of the classroom for several days. Thank you for your grace, understanding, and flexibility. Being together (even though some joined us through Zoom) Thursday morning for devotions and our morning meeting made my heart so happy! Please join me in continuing to pray for Maestra Mercado.

in Christ,

Melissa

Announcements/ Reminders

• Harvest Stand Ministries: First graders at ZCS collect hats and mittens for Harvest Stand Ministries, which provides free food, clothing, and resource connection assistance to people in crisis. The week before Christmas break we will walk our donations down to the ministry which is housed in City on a Hill.
• WAAG: Please be sure to pay attention to the WAAG link on the right side of our blog. At the top of the WAAG you will find the Zoom links for Maestra Mercado’s classroom and Maestra Izenbaard’s classroom. This will help you stay “in the know” of what your child is learning. It will also be very helpful if your child needs to enter quarantine. If your child is sick, please know that for us their rest and healing takes priority over getting schoolwork done. That includes your rest and healing if your family is in quarantine and you are ill. (If your child is sick or on vacation, not in quarantine and not sick with COVID, we will not be sending work home or asking them to participate in any Zoom calls. If a child is sick for several days or weeks, similar to a quarantine situation, and you are interested, we will happily discuss options on an individual basis.)
• Jingle Jog: Our class will be participating in this fun Christmas tradition to raise funds for our sister school in the Philippines on Thursday, December 16 at 9:00.

Upcoming Dates: