I hope everyone remains healthy as we enter summer! It’s hard to believe it’s already June since these last months have been such a blur, but here we are.

I am happy to say that in spite of everything, we brought as much normalcy to our graduation activities as possible. We started the day before graduation by having a Zoom meeting where I presented the slide show I made. We normally do this at the graduation program held in the Large Fellowship Hall. Most families were able to watch with us at that meeting, but since some couldn’t be there, thank you to Tom for helping me get DVDs burned to include in the graduation bags!

Instead of an indoor graduation, we did a drive-through version of it outside. As it turns out, we liked some of what we did well enough to incorporate in the future! All of the graduating kiddos and their families parked in the parking lot and were able to wave and see each other as we waited for everyone to arrive. During this time we handed out graduation hats. Thanks to Tom, we had music playing in the parking lot, and I had a microphone to call one student up at a time so they could “drive through” to receive their graduation items from each staff member’s station.

Station one was the “Oh the Places You’ll Go” book by Dr Seuss. The staff writes a short letter to every little graduate inside the book, and I include instructions for the parents to have every future teacher sign it as well. By high school graduation time, they have a sweet and meaningful gift. Again, thank you to Joyce Hart for providing the Thrivent card to make this possible! I cannot tell you how excited the kids are for the book, but the parents especially love it. Station two was a bag full of summer goodies provided by the families and the staff. This year it also included the items they left behind when the shutdown happened. Station three was their graduation certificate. After receiving their items, they drove around to the front of the church where we had a photo spot set up for them to take graduation photos before looping back into the parking lot.

Once everyone had been through the line, all of us on staff said a few parting words of goodbye, and it was a tearful time for all of us. We always get emotional on graduation day, but this year was especially hard for everyone. They all left the church by making one last big “parade” of cars honking and shouting goodbyes as we cheered them through.

One other fun thing I want to mention is the new playhouse on our playground! I can’t thank Mrs. Prim’s husband, Tyler, enough for taking his day off to come build that thing for us! I would still be out there weeks later if it would’ve been left up to me to get it done by myself. To make it even better, the Colorado Shines program came to me saying they had leftover funding and asked if I wanted to use it for anything! We got a lot of additional supplies for the preschool and they paid for the playhouse! The silver lining at an otherwise difficult time! We are blessed!

Now we will work through the summer to prepare for the fall. As it stands now, we can operate at licensed capacity, which makes me so happy. We had been expecting to hear that classes would be limited to ten students, which would’ve forced us to tell five families to move to our afternoon class or find another program. I cannot tell you how much sleep I lost over thinking about that possibility!

We are awaiting more information about our rescheduled Colorado Shines rating. I have a meeting about it next week, but right now, there are a lot of unknowns about how they will proceed.

Blessings to you all and enjoy your summer!

Kandy Wise is the Director of Open Arms Preschool, a ministry of Saint John’s Lutheran Church. You may reach her at 482-1357 or OpenArms@StJohnsFC.org with any questions about the Preschool.