As you can see, we’ve been moving furniture and toys and creating what we hope is a more friendly play environment. It’s been a whole school effort. After class in the morning, we’ve gone about moving things around and cleaning, and the kids seemed to be really enjoying the whole process finding things they – we – didn’t know we had and kind of rediscovering old-new stuff.

With more students, the idea of making some favorite places bigger and some not so favorite places smaller really makes sense. One idea we had was to switch classrooms so that our group activities can be in a quieter atmosphere. We are moving circle time which includes music to Miss Kelly’s room. This should allow us to have more play space in the main room. We have duplicated some building and open play space for a long time, and we would like to have one of each permanently, so this might just be the ticket.

We’ve already got a new and separate puzzle and game area that used to be science. Now science is more visible and able to be taken to a classroom to really use along with the geography and history books.

We have moved the library and plan to buy some children’s easy chairs. There are two at Target which are really cute…

Today we have Officer Jim coming with his dog to tell stories to the kids. It should be fun. The news media is tagging along – We’ll put a note on the parent board so you can watch it later on TV.

Yesterday Kyto’s family came to say farewell. They are moving back to Japan. There was a gift exchange and some address exchanges and some hugs and tears. We have always loved our Japanese students. I still keep in touch with Isumi’s family.

Lots to do — so little time…