This Friday, Oct 8th, is the last day to get your order in for your child's portraits. You can find the unique code to view your child's photos on the bottom of the card sent home last week. If you need assistance finding your code, please contact Colette Dunlap at colette.d@stdave.org.

Monday, October 11 will be our first Fall Parent / Teacher Conference day. Sign ups will be posted this week outside of your child's classroom so you can sign up for a time slot to attend. This year we are encouraging all families to attend the conference in person. If you are not able to attend in in person, we can also accommodate a video or phone call. While school is closed Oct. 11, childcare will be provided (if needed) during your child's conference time.

Teachers will be sending home two documents this week. The first is a Family Observation Form. This form is meant to look at a continuum of skills that children learn in their preschool years. If your child has not acquired some of the skills or if you have not yet observed your child exhibiting the skill, no need to worry! The form encompasses a wide range of milestones that children generally reach by the age of 5. Completing the form and adding to the "additional notes:" section will help your child's teachers know your child better through your own observations.

Teachers will also be working to observe your children through their own developmental checklists and during the conference your child's strengths as well as areas of growth will be discussed. The conference will provide a time to collaborate on the creation 3 goals that can be worked on both at home and at school and a timeframe to check in on progress will be determined as well. We want to make sure you know that your child's healthy, developmental progress and growth is team effort between home and school.

The second document that will be sent home is titled, "Navigating Concerns About Your Child's Development" This document will be sent home to each child's family and does not indicate that we have a concern of any kind at this time. The document is meant only to provide you with information in case you, as a parent, do have a concern that you'd like to address in the conference. It also provides information about Early Childhood Intervention resources. If you have questions about either of these documents, please reach out to Leigh Moss at leigh.m@stdave.org.

SDDS has once again received a generous donation of pumpkins from Trader Joe's in order to host our 2nd Annual Pumpkin Sale. Pumpkins will arrive on Monday, Oct 11 and will be available to purchase on Tuesday, Oct 12. The proceeds from this year's pumpkin sale will benefit our gardening efforts on our playgrounds. We'll host another family planting day in early November and have the opportunity to plant a new garden on our playground!

It's the season for runny noses and little bugs going around. As a reminder, if your child isn't feeling well, it's recommended to keep them home to prevent the spread of illness. If your child has a fever, the requirement during this time is now 72 hours fever-free without medication. Everyone has been doing a great job helping our community to stay healthy and we want to make sure as life get busier during this time of year, that we're continuing to keep our home and school families in mind.