Hi Everyone,
It's a pretty busy week here at preschool. We have a post office in formation, some star/solar system study going on, and today, Mwenda was asking about snakes so I guess we'll be looking at snakes, too. The children are so curious about so much, it's hard to keep them sated. What we try to do is steer them to whatever books or other resources (internet) that will help them find out more about what they are interested in. Our big project is the <span class="yshortcuts">Post Office</span> , and for this, we will need your help.
HELP!
**If you know anyone who works in a post office who would be willing to help us with our study, please let me know right away. What we mostly need now is real &quot;artifacts&quot; from a post office;  boxes, canvas bags, stickers, envelopes, boxes, or anything else you can think of. If you can loan us (or know anyone who can) some kind of machine that would be used in mail delivery, that would be great. We also need real mail - junk, letters, etc. so we can look at addresses, stamps, etc. We also need some stamps for the children to examine. Once we know where we're going on this project, we'll let you know.

PHONE LIST
I am attaching a phone list of the class. If there are any corrections, omissions or additions that need to be done, please let me know by email. If there are major errors I'll send out the corrected list.

WELCOME
In case you haven't noticed, we have 2 new students in our class: Alanis and Sarina. I hope you will all welcome them and their families into our community.

FIELD TRIP
Please don't forget our field trip for Jan. 21 (Wed.) to the <span class="yshortcuts">Museum of Science and Industry</span> . We'll need as many adults to come with us as we can get since it is such a large museum. We should be back around 1:00 pm. Please fill out the trip form, send in your $4.00 (parent chapperones are free), and volunteer to come if you can. Those of you attending the inauguration in Washington, D.C., you will be missing a great trip to MSI and I feel sorry for you...  (tee hee hee)

DINNER PROPOSAL
My family had such a nice time at Zad (Jed's dad's restaurant) over the holiday, we thought we would plan a preschool family time there. How does Jan. 31 at 4:00 pm sound to you? Hamza said that children would eat free. Zad is a <span class="yshortcuts">Middle Eastern restaurant</span> with Morrocan specialties (try the soup! It's wonderful!!!). The children have already enjoyed hummus and baklava brought in by Hamza. Please RSVP with me so we'll know how many families will be coming. If there are very many people who would like to come but this is a bad day for it, we'll change the date.

MISSING
We can't seem to find Ahmad's snow pants. They are blue with a zipper on the side and his name on the tag. Please check to see if you accidently took them home.

HEALTH
This is the time of year we sometimes have viruses run through the room. We will call you if we believe your child is sick. We're also redoubling our sanitizing to try and reduce the spread of illnesses, though we know that it's almost inevitable that some children will get sick. Make sure we have a way to reach you or an emergency person at all times. Also please make sure your child washes their hands as soon as they come in in the morning. If you think your child is coming down with something, please keep them home. Call us and let us know if your child has a particularly contageous or dangerous illness, such as strep, chicken pox, <span class="yshortcuts">scarlet fever</span> , etc. We will then notify all the parents to be on the lookout for symptoms.

SUPPLIES
If your child's last name begins with M-Z, you were not asked to bring in supplies at the beginning of the year since we don't have room to store everything. We'll be posting a &quot;Wish List&quot; on the back door of the classroom and we hope you'll volunteer to get some of these things.

THANKYOU!
*Thanks to Bevis (Auden's dad) for cutting up wood for us and delivering it to the classroom. We'll be starting our wood projects next week, or sooner if we can manage it. *Thanks to Mikki, Alanis's sitter, for getting us some extra flashlights. (We still need more if you haven't sent in one with your child). The kids are enjoying the daily light show at nap time.
*Thanks to Karen (Sophia's mom) for hanging out in the mornings with us and helping the children with journals.
*Thanks to Daisy, Sarina's mom, for volunteering to help with the photo books (finally!). We also appreciate your help in the mornings.
*Thanks to all of you who donated books to the classroom from our wishlist at 57th St. Books. I'm always happy when we get books for the class, but it's a real blessing to be able to get particular books that we need.

I hope you're all taking care of yourselves in this cold weather. We'll be inside this week, playing in the trike room and doing as many physical activities as we can inside the building. Perhaps we'll start reading some stories about the sun, beaches, warm weather, and see if that encourages spring to be early this year.

See you all soon!
Jane