The Quokka

This week is a lead-up to our 50th Anniversary Auction. Many of you have worked so hard to get to this point. Thank you to each of you. A special thanks goes to our co-chairs, Jillian Beckley and Elizabeth Scero, Thanks to Heather Johnson for assisting with the live auction. It's a big job and they and their team have been at it all year.

Now the fun begins. By now you've picked or been given an auction job. Some of you will help with setting up the ballroom at Laurel Manor, some may work on packets, and others will work the many other jobs needed. If you're not sure of your job, there is a link at the end of this section.

One item that we have for a fixed price is a 50-year photo book of the school's history. Peruse a copy on the office counter. Every child's photo is in the book if your child had school pictures taken this year. Books will be available for $100 on auction night.

You'll also find mystery bags for sale that sell out fast. Visit our wine wall to pick a wine surprise!

Most of all, have fun on Saturday night and know that many, many other parents have preceded you on auction night. Saturday is our opportunity to make the school better for those who come after us.

View your shift or sign up for your 50th Anniversary Gala Before, During and After Jobs here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090545a5a629a2fe3-50th#/

Warm regards,

Elaine Kennedy, Head of School & Pauline Nagle, Associate Head of School

Evidence shows that helping others can also benefit our own mental health and wellbeing. For example, it can reduce stress as well as improve mood, self-esteem and happiness. There are so many ways to help others as part of our everyday lives. Good deeds needn't take much time or cost any money.

We know we have talked about giving before, but as we enter into the week of Auction, we just wanted to share how thankful we are for ALL that you do to support New Morning School. It's not just auction, it's all the ways you connect and support our school family. Donations, cleaning, attending community meetings, chaperoning a field trip, and even just being kind and caring each morning by your greetings and smiles. Thank you for all you give. You make New Morning a great place to be!

Wed March 15: Parent-Teacher Conferences - No School all levels - There is Kids' Club.

Tues March 21: Parent-Teacher Conference - Elementary ONLY dismisses at 11:30 am. There is Kids' Club in the afternoon.

Fri March 24 - Fri 31: Spring Break - There is Kids' Club if you sign up in the office.

Mon., April 3: Classes resume

We have a couple more Parent Focus Group sessions left! We hope to see you join Pauline for a time to share your thoughts about New Morning School.

If you would like to sign up for one of the sessions, please click on this Sign-Up Genius link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F054EADA72DA7FE3-parent.

Monday, March 6, 6pm K/1

Saturday, March 18, 9am Make-Up

At the last board meeting, our board members voted on tuition and fees for the 2023-24 school year. This is a meeting where board members carefully consider the needs of the school and parent needs, too. The decision to raise tuition is never made lightly.

We have seen escalation in many of the overhead expenses of the school. Some of these are insurance, utilities, grounds (as in ice and plowing), even credit card fees. We project that this year we will pay $24,000 in credit card fees alone. This is up substantially from last year. See attached for the board’s decision to have parents pay the credit card fees or arrange for an ACH, a bank draft each month. Also attached are the new tuition rates for 2023-24.

Finally, it’s important to the board to continue to increase staff salaries. Our program IS our teachers. We are proud of our exceptional teachers. Tuition increases allow us to raise teacher salaries.

We will share the full registration process with you next week.

Joan can help with any questions that you may have. Together, we can find a way for your family to stay at New Morning School if it is your choice to do so.

We look forward to welcoming prospective families in the coming months. They are always so eager to learn about the school. Our best publicity is word of mouth. Here are ways you can help:

• Talk about the school when you are with friends
• Share our postings on social media. That can make a big difference.

New this year, Dearborn Brand has joined us as a Platinum Sponsor. Thank you to Kathryn and Aaron Peacock for supporting the school's auction.

Full day Kids' Club will be available on Wednesday, March 15, as there will be no school for all levels for Parent-Teacher conferences.

Also, extended Kids' Club will be available Tuesday, March 21. At 11:30am, Elementary students ONLY dismiss for Parent-Teacher conferences. Kids' Club will run in the afternoon.

There will be full-day Kids' Club during Spring Break, Friday March 24-Friday March 31. Please sign your child up at the front desk, so we can staff accordingly.

We are looking for a family to take Oreo and Snickers home for the upcoming spring break. It’s not too soon to consider being vacation hosts for Spring Break, which is March 24-April 2. If you are able, please email Marisa@newmorningschool.com.

Mr. Russell is looking for a family (or families) to feed the salmon during the upcoming spring break, Friday March 24-Sunday April 2. Please email Mr. Russell at russell@newmorningschool.com, or see him at school if you are able to help.

NMS families scheduled to clean the school this weekend are the Blomberg/Moss, Kish, Akinbosede, Opara and Drake families. Cleaning checklists will be available on the counter at the front desk Friday afternoon. Thank you for keeping our school sparkling clean!

Please do not enclose bills larger than $20 in your child's pizza envelope. Thanks!

Preschool Teachers:

Marisa Downs marisa@newmorningschool.com

Danielle Provencher danielle@newmorningschool.com

Preschool News

Greetings families! This is such an exciting month at school. We dedicate March to reading! Last

week we laughed and rhymed with Dr. Seuss stories. This week we’ll fall in love with fantastic fairy

tales. While our shelves will be filled with many variations of timeless tales, the ones we’ll focus on

include The Three Little Pigs, The Elves and the Shoemaker, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Friends

can choose to build miniature homes, then test the stability of the structure by trying to blow it down. Another choice available is to design and lace up their own original shoe. We’ll also sort and count the shoes in our meeting. Lastly, friends can work collaboratively to create a preschool beanstalk that goes all the way to the ceiling! We’ll continue the magic and wonder in our sensory tables with cloud dough mixed with gems.

Another fun reading month experience is inviting guest readers into the classroom. If you are

interested in reading to our preschoolers, please email Danielle or Marisa to schedule. Guest readers can include special friends, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and of course Moms and Dads.

Our teachers for the letter F are Mable and Lea in Danielle’s room and Atticus and Patrick in Marisa’s.

We will have a pause next week because of conferences on Wednesday and Brain Day on Friday.

Our beloved Orea and Snickers are looking for a home over spring break. If you are able to take those sweeties from March 24-April 3, please email Marisa@newmorningschool.com.

Make it a magical week. ~Danielle and Marisa

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

Teacher: Pauline Nagle pauline@newmorningschool.com

Lead Aide: Shelley Blakeney

Dear Parents,

We are getting back into our regular routines last week and this week! We also had an amazing time celebration 100s day last week! Thank you for all of the amazing creativity in your shirt design. We are impressed!

Reading and Writing

Jolly Phonics - we are reviewing the sounds we have learned this year and introduced the

digraph -ur

We are also practicing "tricky" words: I, he, she, we, be, he, was, the These words are often referred to as sight words, but they are tricky because they don't follow the regular sound pattern in our language. For example, he would be spelled hee because of the long /e/ sound. Students are learning to sound out the parts they know and pay attention closely to the "tricky" part to visually learn how that particular word works. For 1st graders, we are assessing their word knowledge to build a larger bank of new tricky words this week.

Daily journal writing continues! Many students are ready to use their new phonics skills to sound out and write words on their own. We are learning new patterns and also learning how to write longer statements or a whole paragraph. We are also focusing on handwriting and letter formation. Remind students to write their magic c letters starting with a c formation, rather than starting from the bottom. Magic c letters are: a, c, d, g, o, q. Ask them to demonstrate!

Math

Our focus for all students is number sense. Your child meets in a small group to work on understanding how numbers beyond 10 or beyond 100 are built, and how we can use different combinations to get to a number. We use number talks and math manipulatives to help students work with objects and show the values.

Parent Teacher Conferences on March 15th:

Please sign-up using the link below.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0e4aa9ae2da6fdcf8-spring#/

March is Reading Month!

We have a number of fun activities planned for March is Reading Month. Please see the attached calendar for details. Each day there is something to do or bring to make this focus on reading extra special! I'll send out some Reminds to keep you in touch with special items to bring or wear!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1grCoLAinh8HoJVrUyy7O0fiNNg7SCp9J7p1UqRXsvfo/edit?usp=sharing

We had a great time reading to stuffies today and wearing crazy outfits last week!

Please sign up for a Mystery Reader slot for the month of March. Details are in the Sign-Up Genius below:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0e4aa9ae2da6fdcf8-primary#/

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs!

Best,

Ms. Pauline

Teachers:

Hannah Diaz hannah@newmorningschool.com

Christine Jansen christine@newmorningschool.com
Cynthia Weber cynthia@newmorningschool.com

EL Lead Aide: Karen Staples

Mystery Readers!

Thank you to everyone that signed up to be a Mystery Reader to our class. We had Jacob Jensen come read last week and the scholars were very pleased! There is still time to sign up if you would like!

March is Reading Month Fun!

One of the book reports requires a cereal box. P!ease send in any empty cereal boxes you may have! Thanks! Tuesday, March 7 is our annual Poetry Slam! It is always fun to hear all the crazy poems they find.

Wacky Words last Wednesday was inspiring! Let's see what words come in this week?

Procreate Presentation

We were able to reschedule our Procreate presentation from the day we were closed due to ice in February. She will be coming in on Thursday.

Have a great week,

Christine, Hannah and Cynthia

Teachers:

Linda Hyde linda@newmorningschool.com

Nicole Matoian nicolem@newmorningschool.com

Greetings Middle School Parents!

It was so nice to see a number of you at conferences last Thursday. I hope you all got through Friday's storm with minimal damage and enjoyed the sunny weather yesterday. I guess Winter is not through with us yet.

This will be a busy week.

In Language Arts, students in all groups will finish up the study of their CommonLit literature units with a final short essay assignment and begin to read their group novels by the end of the week. LA Group A will read the Newberry Award-winning novel Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, and LA Groups B and C will read the classic novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. We will alternate reading aloud with reading independently. Some reading response activities will be completed digitally and some will be completed with pencil/pen and paper. Students will be assigned vocabulary to learn and know for each chapter, as well as comprehension/reader response questions to answer. Both novels address the themes of needing to belong and accepting and celebrating one's differences. Reading these novels will be a great way to celebrate March which is Reading month.

In Social Studies, students will finish their study of the Protestant Reformation and how it impacted Renaissance society.

In Math, Group A will finish up their study of unit rates and percentages and take an assessment on Thursday, March 9th. Group B will complete their study of proportional relationships and percent increase and decrease and take an assessment on Thursday the 9th as well. Group C will continue evaluating and graphing functions and then analyze linear equations to determine their rate of change before we begin studying the volume of cylinders and cones.

Looking forward to seeing you and celebrating the school's 50th Anniversary at the Auction next weekend! Enjoy the week!

Ms. Linda and Ms. Nicole

Office Phone: 734.420.3331

Email: nms@newmorningschool.com

Elaine Kennedy, Head of School elaine@newmorningschool.com

Pauline Nagle, Associate Head of School pauline@newmorningschool.com

Joan Barrett, Admissions Director joan@newmorningschool.com

Kit Zrull, Administrative Assistant nms@newmorningschool.com