Report cards will come home shortly after our return from vacation and conferences are scheduled for the afternoon and evening of Thursday, March 15th, and the morning of Friday, March 16th. The online scheduler for conferences opens up tomorrow. PLEASE NOTE the times on my conference schedule that say available but have a big red x are available. Feel free to schedule a conference during those times. If there is a conflict with the given times, please let me know. I happy to arrange a meeting on a different morning or at 12:00 some other day. I hope everyone has a wonderful vacation, whatever you may be doing. It's hard to believe we will be well on our way into spring when we return.

We began our day with a kick off assembly for our Bread and Puppet residency, with a focus on community. Immediately after that we had our first workshop with the artists from Bread and Puppet. Students took part in acting out a story about a haunted house. See if your child remembers who it was haunted by! Children then had a chance to become various animal puppets. We will have two more sessions over the next six days. Because of scheduling, our class will not be part of the final performance, (the benefit of this is that we can be completely immersed in the process without worrying about a final product), but you are welcome to bring your child back for this next Thursday afternoon. The official time has not yet been determined.

After assembly, puppet workshop, and health class everyone was ready for some unstructured time. We spent an hour outside making the most of the springlike temperatures, playing chase (ask your child who the chaser was!), discovering really cool rocks that have been buried in ice, and contemplating what might be living in one of the triangle trees. With so much going on it was hard to come back inside!

We have quite a collection of 100's in our classroom: 100 pasta pieces turned into a butterfly, 100 beads, 100 pieces of rice (which looks like about a tablespoon), 100 words organized in 10 lists, 100 legos built into a car, 100 tiles, 100 paper squares, 100 pistachio shells, 100 mini marshmallows, 50 toothpicks + 50 mini marshmallows built into a sculpture, 100 pieces of colorful yarn, 100 pussy willow buds, and a structure created today with 100 geo-blocks! Thank you for your help compiling these collections.

Today Emily Von Trapp completed her work teaching children in the class to give each other lavender hand massages. Everyone seemed to greatly enjoy this opportunity.

Valentine's Day is in one week! We will be making large personal envelopes to collect valentines next Tuesday. Today I am sending home a class list. If your child brings valentines, please make sure there is one for each child in the class. Also, please refrain from sending in sugary treats/ candy as part of your child's valentines. My experience has been that consuming vast amounts of sugar is disruptive to the rhythm of our day and interferes with lunch!

Thursday is our 100th day. Several children have already brought in creative collections of 100 things. These can come in any time between now and Thursday.