I hope everyone has remained healthy these last few months! It’s been quite the roller coaster. We are just so happy to be opening preschool for the fall! Instead of having a large group Orientation like we normally do, I held individual family orientations over the course of two days. It was actually nice to visit with each family and answer their questions individually. The common thread of conversation was how thankful and grateful they were that we are opening our program. That encouraged me so much.

We have spent a lot of time poring over documents from the CDC and Healthy Child Care Colorado, as well as meeting with our Child Care Health Consultant to create a plan to keep everyone as safe and healthy as possible. We are also enlisting the help of parents who will volunteer some time to help with our new toy cleaning/rotation process. They have all seemed very willing to help us out. Many of them said they would do whatever they could to ensure we stayed open.

Speaking of doing what they could to ensure we can open, I want to give a huge shout-out of thanks to Eric and Sue Gardner, Grant Wolf, Zach Stephens and his friend Cody for all they did to plan, organize and execute the installation of our new hand washing sinks and floor replacement in our classroom! I’m sure it’s hard for most people to understand why our staff is simply giddy with excitement over little sinks, but when you have fifteen preschoolers with paint-covered hands, having four sinks that fit them perfectly instead of one large sink with a step stool that required teacher assistance, this new sink station is something to get excited about!

This project has been in our thoughts for a few years now, but with all that’s going on today this was perfect timing for it. I shared photos of the sinks with other preschool programs across the country on a forum I am part of and they raved over this. Many of them are taking the idea to their administrators asking to do the same thing! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We are so grateful and blessed to have people in the church who do so much to support the preschool financially and through projects like these!

We are looking forward to the year, expecting challenges but determined to make this year even better than the last while building relationships and connections with our children and families.

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.