Compass 1-14-22

New Message from Michele:

Calendar:

Jan 17: No School, Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Jan 17: Kids for Kindness Helping to End Homelessness, see below
Jan 18: First day for Junior High at Park Street Campus
Jan 19: Parent Visiting Day for Junior High only, 8 - 9 a.m.
Jan 25: Junior High Open House, details here
Jan 26: Montessori Up Close: The Kindergarten Year, details here
New Date! Jan 27: Montessori Up Close: The Elementary Years, details here
Feb 1: FAST Opens, details here
Feb 2: CHiPA at 9:00 a.m. via Zoom
Feb 5: Sledding party, see below
Feb 6 - 11: Junior High Civil War History Trip to Atlanta, GA
Feb 9 - Mar 1: Re-enrollment period for 2022-23 school year opens
Feb 9 - Mar 1: Summer program registration for current families opens

Looking Ahead:

Feb 18: No School, Records Day
Feb 21: No School, Presidents Day
New! Feb 23: Parent Visiting Day for Primary only, 8:30-9:30 a.m.
Mar 1: Re-enrollment deadline for 2022-23 school year
Mar 2: CHiPA at 9:00 a.m. via Zoom
Mar 2: Summer program registration opens for alumni
Mar 10 & 11: Parent Teacher Conferences, sign up coming soon
Mar 11: No School, conferences

In The Know:

New! Junior High is moving downtown
Three months after Traverse City commissioners approved an ordinance change to allow schools and universities to operate in downtown Traverse City, The Children’s House is preparing to open the first such school Tuesday: a Montessori junior high school located in the 101 North Park building at the corner of Front and Park streets… more

Kids for Kindness: Helping to End Homelessness
This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we’d like to do another drive. We are hoping you can help. You can help by donating essential items now through January 14. Families, including children, are invited to volunteer on January 17 from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. in the gym to assemble as many baskets as we can. This directly supports the work of the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness. "When you’re starting with nothing, a basket full of essential items can make a new place feel like home and support long-term housing stability. Thanks for your help in welcoming our neighbors home." Thank you, Gwennie Goodreau and Ava Hagerty.

Click here to help end homelessness!

Sledding Party
February 5 at 10:00 and 11:00 a.m.
Join us on February 5 for a fun morning of sledding at Twin Lakes Park. Because the sledding hill is small, we are inviting our youngest children (Nido, YCC, and Primary) to arrive at 10 a.m. Families with Elementary and Junior High students are invited to arrive at 11 a.m. to provide some overlap with our entire school community while allowing our youngest children a safe time to sled first. Warm up by the fire and enjoy hot chocolate. (As part of our Green School initiative, please bring your own mug!)

Please click here to sign up! What to bring: a sled, a mug, and a mask to use the indoor bathrooms.

Extracurriculars
For the most up-to-date information on spring sports and clubs, visit our extracurriculars page here.

Spirit Wear Swap
Because everyone loves Spirit Fridays and children grow fast, a group of parents have set up a Spirit Wear Swap in the coat room adjacent to the front desk. Leave an item your child has outgrown and take something that fits! Stop by anytime. (And while you’re here, be sure to check the Lost and Found for items your child could be missing.)

COVID-19 status at The Children's House as of 1/14/2022:

3 Students COVID positive

1 Staff COVID positive

7 Students or staff quarantined due to exposure

TCH COVID-19 webpage with link to the TCH protocol was last updated on January 12, 2022. As reflected in the email you received earlier in the week, there have been many changes to quarantine and isolation policies. We are also updating our plan for notifying the community about cases. Specific classrooms will continue to receive notification of cases that affect their classroom. Community wide notification will be reflected as a tally on the COVID-19 web page. This page will be updated daily and numbers as of the end of the week will be reported Friday on the Compass.

Points of Interest:

Writing Before Reading
by Megan Fellows
Many of us who grew up attending traditional schools learned to read before we learned to write. We were taught the names of letters before learning the sound made by each more...