March is a busy month. In less than two weeks the auction takes center stage. If you haven't been to one of our auctions be ready to be surprised. It is an elegant event. We thank our Auction Team for working feverishly behind the scenes.

We have our Community Eat & Meet tomorrow evening, Tues., Feb 28. We will start with a pot luck dinner at 6:30 pm. Then the Auction Team takes center stage with important information. Following, Dr. Julie Braciszewki, director of clinical services, Monarch Behavioral Health, PLLC, will speak about helpful parenting advice. See her topic right below.

Helping Kids Grow from Conflict: Positive Parenting Strategies to Weather Your Child's Emotional & Behavioral Storms

Conflict in life is inevitable. As parents, when our children have big emotions or disruptive behaviors, we can teach them how to engage in productive conflict as a coping tool. In this seminar we will discuss how to teach our kids to engage in productive conflict patterns as they manage emotions and navigate their growing independence.

This Thursday, March 2, is a Parent-Teacher Conference day. There is no school, but there is kids' Club all day. Please sign up at the front desk.

And finally, we turn to the weather to be sunny and bright AND warm. Is that wishful thinking? We will look for spring to come.

Warm regards,

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

We had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Julie Braciszewski, Ph.D. from Monarch Behavioral Health during our professional development day. We learned about anxiety in children and ways we as educators, in partnership with parents, can support them. We are still learning the effects of the covid pandemic, which can include anxiety for both adults and children. We also recognize that children with neurodiversity often also show symptoms of anxiety.

If your child experiences symptoms of anxiety, please connect with us for a team approach to working with your child. There are many strategies we can use together to help children understand themselves, create solutions to problems and build resilience. We also recommend reaching out to a therapist for support. Here is a great introductory article about this topic. Take a look!

Mon Feb 27: Elementary Parent Focus Group 6pm

Tues Feb 28: Community Eat & Meet (in-person; required all community involve. and co-op families)

Thur March 2: Parent-Teacher Conferences - No School all levels - There is Kids' Club

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.

We have a few 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, February 27, 6pm Elementary

Monday, March 6, 6pm K/1

Saturday, March 18, 9am Make-Up

The auction is just 2 weeks away! There is a lot to do in order to have a successful and fun auction fundraiser. Many of you continue to bring in auction merchandise Thank you! It's not too late to turn in donations.

Soon, you will be contacted by an Auction Team member explaining how you can help at the auction. Everyone may work a before-auction job and a during-auction job. It takes many hands to orchestrate the auction.

The other area where you can help is to enter your auction reservations online and then go beyond the minimum and invite another couple. We need a crowd on auction night and we're not there yet - but will be!

Just to repeat, the auction is a fancy event, Sunday best to formal. The auction is planned for adults only except our 8th graders who are invited to attend.

For those of you who have not been to our auction, you will be amazed. It is a wonderful night to celebrate our 50th anniversary!

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.

Hats off to Monarch Behavioral Health for supporting New Morning School as a Bronze Sponsor. At Monarch Health, Dr. Julie Braciszewski is the clinical director. Dr. Julie spoke to the staff last week and will speak to the parents tomorrow night, Tuesday. Thank you, Dr. Julie.

Full day Kids' Club will be available Thursday, March 2, and Wednesday, March 15, as there will be no school for all levels for Parent-Teacher conferences. Extended Kids' Club will be available Tuesday, March 21, at 11:30am for Elementary students ONLY for Parent-Teacher conferences. 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 3. If you are able, please email Marisa@newmorningschool.com.

NMS families scheduled to clean the school this weekend are the Haas, Martzig, Corliss, Baker/Edwards and Huber families. Cleaning checklists will be available on the counter at the front desk Friday afternoon. Thank you for keeping our school sparkling clean!

Since we don't have school thisThursday, March 2, please submit your pizza envelope by Wednesday morning. 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

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

☀️Greeting, Preschool, family and friends☀️

We are closing out the last two days of February and moving right into March… Is Reading Month. We will spend this month spreading our super reader wings. Each week we will have a new author study. Kickstarting our author study with the fun time, tongue twisting, rhyming adventures of Theodore Geisel, b.k.a. Dr. Seuss, whose birthday is this Thursday, March 2. Our preschool creators will craft their very own truffula trees from The Lorax and Cat in the Hat name hats. Our discovery centers will host Cat in the Hat cup stack and truffula tree unifix cube stack challenges.

Hands and minds will be kept busy with wonder and fun playing with the unique texture of oobleck, a liquid that can take on the properties (or at least the feel) of a solid !?! 🤯

Teacher of the week is back!! Our room leaders representing for the letter ‘Rr’ this week, are Chimamanda and Paige in Marisa’s room and Ryan and Remy in Danielle’s room .

March is filled with some very special birthdays. This month we celebrate Evelyn, Zoe, Willa, and our very own Miss Marisa. 💜

Reminders

* there is no school this Thursday, 3/2/2023

* please remember gym shoes for Thursdays and Fridays

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.” – Dr. Seuss

Teacher: Pauline Nagle pauline@newmorningschool.com

Lead Aide: Shelley Blakeney

Dear Parents,

We hope you all enjoyed some family time during our Winter Break. We also hope that everyone is restored to power and did not have much damage due to the ice storm. Our family certainly was reminded to be grateful for safety and modern conveniences, as well as the means to handle such events!

We only had 1 day of school, but it was a good day to remind us of our routines and spend time connecting with each other. As the year continues, we are building up the children's ability to make independent choices. We started Morning Choices for our beginning of the day routine. Students can choose to work independently, or confer with classmates and do an activity together. They might choose art, puzzles, building, free journal writing, drawing. We have used this routine three times so far and it's fun to see them discuss with friends the options and determine how they will participate.

Parent Teacher Conferences are March 2nd and March 15th:

Please sign-up using the link below.

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

100s Day - Wednesday, March 1st:

With the ice day, we had to move 100s Day to Wednesday, March 1st. Please have your child count out 100 small items and attach them to a shirt to wear on Wednesday. We suggest that you have them bring an alternate shirt in case they feel uncomfortable in their shirt and would like to change out of it. It is also the 1st day of reading month, so we are adding Wacky Words to 100s day. If everyone thinks of 8 words to bring that day and I add in 4, we will have 100!

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

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

Happy March!

This is one of our favorite months of the year. We will be sending home a calendar of activities that we will be doing to celebrate March is Reading Month.

One of the activities is having mystery readers come in and read to our scholars. The best time is after lunch and at the end of the day. Thursday and Friday are not good days because of specials. If you or someone else would like to come in and read, please click on the SignUpGenius link below to sign up. We love having guests!

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080E48AAA72BA4FA7-mystery

Please note the days to help make sure your child is prepared to participate. We will be having a crazy dress up day to celebrate Dr. Seuss, a poetry slam, a comedy show, character day (come dressed as your favorite character from a. book), wacky word Wednesday, and read to a stuffed animal.

Calendar

Each scholar will be reading and completing book reports this month. They are also being asked to read at home 3-4 times a week and record how long they read. They have decided to read for 6,000 minutes as a class. This breaks down to 3 times a week for 20 minutes. To celebrate this accomplishment we will be having a camp out in class on March 23rd. Please encourage your child to read, listen to books, and participate in this activity. If you have any questions please let us know. Thank you for helping us make reading fun!

This week we will kick off Reading Month! Back again is Wacky Wednesday. Everyone brings in a word for their friends to guess the meaning. It's always fun hearing the unusual words that come in.

Another special event this week is Dr. Suess Day on Friday, March 3. Since Dr. Suess saw the world uniquely, we thought we would make it CRAZY DAY! Everyone can decide to have crazy hair, crazy socks, crazy....!?

Later in the month, we will have Character Day where everyone can pick their favorite characters to dress up as. What interesting characters will we have this year?

Conferences

The conferences this month are student-led! They will be sharing with you what they are working on. Please be sure to bring your child! If you haven't signed up yet, please do so soon!

Thanks! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080e48aaa72ba4fa7-student2#/

Pizza Friday

Since we don't have school on Thursday, please submit your pizza envelope by Wednesday morning! Thanks!

Have a great week,

Christine, Hannah and Cynthia

Teachers:

Linda Hyde linda@newmorningschool.com

Nicole Matoian nicolem@newmorningschool.com

Hello Middle School Parents!

We look forward to seeing many of you this week, Thursday, March 2nd, for Student-Led Conferences. Early this week, students will continue to assemble items in their portfolios to share with you and prepare to discuss their progress thus far this year.

Also this week, we will resume our regular schedule of classes and restore some of our routines that we suspended to some degree during the Museum Project. In Language Arts, students will work with new vocabulary words and continue to read, analyze, and write about selections from Common Lit. Language Arts Group A will read and analyze the short story "Inside Out'' by Mexican writer, Francisco Jimenz, and write about his use of a metaphor to communicate the theme of the story. Language Arts Groups B and C will read, discuss and analyze the Informational Text "How the Need to Belong Influences Human Behavior and Motivation" by psychology expert Kendra Cherry, and then also read, analyze, and write about the theme of the short story "The Stolen Party" by Argentine writer Liliana Heker.

In Social Studies, students will resume their study of the Renaissance Period by exploring the causes and effects of the Protestant Reformation.

In Math, Group A will use double number lines and tape diagrams to represent percentages and solve problems. Students will also use fractional equivalents for benchmark percentages as an alternative method to solve problems. Group B will solve percent increase and decrease problems by writing an equation to represent the situation and solving it. Students will also solve real world examples involving sales tax and tip as well as problems involving items which are on sale. Group C will find the output of a function when they are given the input and name the independent and dependent variables for a given function. Students will also represent the functions with equations and interpret graphs of functions.

Enjoy the week!

Ms. Linda & 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