Hello Everyone and Welcome Back to Our Blog!

We have had an incredibly busy week as we have finished up our first wave of enrollment. Most of our current families have returned their intention forms for their currently enrolled children as well as their enrollment forms for their other entering children. We are so excited about having all of the siblings join us. For some of our families we are welcoming their third children into the school. It is such a blessing to have that kind of history with a family. In case we haven't said so already, we really love our families and can't think of anything better than spending another four or five years together.

We have also invited a few former families to return to us with new children. In all we have three alumni families returning to the school. It has been so much fun visiting with our now grown-up former students as they have proudly introduced us to their new baby brother or sister.

Those of you on our Duke waiting list should have received an email from us by today. This first note was a test email. Some of you have been waiting quite some time so we wanted to be sure that we had up-to-date email addresses for all of you. If you did not receive a test email you should have received a phone call from Miss Mary letting you know that we were not able to reach you. If you are a Duke family and you did not receive an email or a phone call we need you to call the school at 644-1818 and ask to speak to Mary so that we can be sure that we get your invitation to enroll to you. We will send out our official invitations by email on Monday, March 16, 2009 for all Duke families.

You will have two weeks to respond letting us know who you are enrolling and what kind of care you need. Please be sure to get your responses turned into us by no later than Friday, March 27, 2009. Please call the school office if you have any questions at all about any of this.

For those of you who are on the waiting list but not a Duke family, we will begin your enrollment on Monday, March 30, 2009. Please look for future blog instructions as we get closer to March 30, 2009.

ANNOUNCEMENT:
We have begun a conversation with the Orange County transportation folks about a new program. We will be offering LIMITED after school opportunities for elementary school-aged children. The program will be run at the Waterstone campus and its focus will be Reggio-Emilia-inspired, cooperative, arts-focused and SO MUCH FUN! We intend to make this the MOST fun and engaging after school program ANYWHERE. Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about this offering. We will update this information as we gather more information.

GLIMPSE:

This weeks Glimpse was a toss-up for us. We have two things that we really want to tell you about. In the end we decided to break our own rules and give you two looks into the new school!

Glimpse 1: As we dreamed about the new building we had so many ideas about things that children would find whimsical and fanciful. Many of our ideas were focused on ways to manipulate our light to provide the children with multiple opportunities to experience and interact with natural light in the classroom environment and out. We want windows that invite interaction with the outdoors. In our first idea, we asked our design team to place the windows in the classrooms as child-heights.
If you think about most buildings it is clear that they are designed with adults only in mind. We wanted not only the adults to realize that they are in a child-centered building, but the children to also be clear that the building is for them.

Glimpse 2: Once we started thinking about the windows our minds went wild and we began to try to imagine the classrooms from the children's perspectives. We wanted an environment that had both large and small spaces and places where children could go to where there was minimal distraction, or interruption. We also envisioned a place where children could see outside of their environment. We raised the idea of having a window that looked from one classroom into another. Our architect, David, took that idea and pushed it a little further- literally. He actually pushed the rooms out so that there is small nook in each room that is only four feet tall. The nooks abut the nooks in the next room and the adjoining walls are made of glass so that children in one room can see children in the next through the window. Each nook also has a small window that looks out onto the courtyard. Our hope is that we will use these nooks to invite interaction between the children as well as with the outdoors while also giving them a comforting, safe space to just "be".