Thank you so much for the beautiful flowers and cards from the children!  It was a wonderful birthday.  I totally enjoyed every moment...AND, Mrs. Werner made us all homemade cupcakes!  I loved seeing the children's faces when they arrived...they all looked "suspicious"...for example, Michael could not even unpack for smiling at me with a little 'impish' grin on his face!

This group truly is one of the sweetest, most compassionate of many we've had recently.

We are 'driven' these last three days...to finish our lowercase letter handwriting for Fundations, to finish our 'Time' chapter in math, etc., etc., etc.  We finished up our 'countries' today as we discussed Sam's family's 'home' country of Austria!  We look forward to our pajama (or gown) day on Friday.  Robes, bedroom shoes are a welcome addition...just make sure to add sports shoes as we will probably get a bit of recess too.  Sleeping buddies might be too much as we will have much to carry home, but if it is a small buddy...it wouldn't hurt.

I would like to send you an email over the break...as I also want to do a newsletter about our past few weeks and what's coming up.  I will be asking you to send in some coins for the kids to keep in their cubby as we begin our money chapter.  In the middle of our chapter we let the kids use some of their money (about $0.25) for a 'school store' item.  Then, as we conclude our unit on money we like to let them spend some of their coins at Tiger's Cage and to buy some of the 'extras' on the lunch line.  This is a very little amount of money we ask for...probably about $2 or less.  Consider letting your child 'earn' the money over the break!