Hi Families,

We hope you are doing well. We miss seeing our kiddos every day!  Thanks to those of you who have shared messages, photos, and videos of our kids.  Keep them coming!

Here we go…

Council Rock students will begin Distance Learning this week, beginning on

Monday, March 30th.

This first week will be a review of previously taught content. Some of our earlier lessons will be focused on how to learn from home.  We’ll slowing begin introducing new content as time goes on.  

 We’re hoping to make this as stress-free as possible for your family.  No worries if you miss a lesson or can’t access something.  If you get through some or most of it, you’re fine!  At school, we try to blend rigor and fun, and we hope you can do the same.

We’ve work very hard to prepare the online content, and to roll it out in a format that your kiddo can do independently.  We recommend that you gather a few materials by the computer before starting each day, a tablet of paper, a pencil, a small box of crayons, and a small collection of storybooks.  Maybe your kiddo could make a DISTANCE LEARNING BASKET.

We won’t be asking you to print anything or send anything to us for now.  Once we get a groove going, we may have the kids type in, and send us some of their work samples.  No need for a printer!

During the week of April 6th, Council Rock will be on Spring Break, and we will not be posting new content during that time.

There are so many things we like to tell you that will help this go smoothly, but here are a few tips for now:

• Mrs. Slowinski and I will be working together on everything. When you email us, please include both of us so we can work together to support our kiddos.

smcdonald@crsd.org             jslowinski@crsd.org

• Google Classroom will be our home base. That’s where your kiddo will start each day.  Our actual content will be on Google Sites and will be available to only our Kindergarten family.  Our first lesson tomorrow morning will be coming to you in an email.  It will include a how-to video will details on how to get in and access our content.  You will need your kiddo's CRSD Student ID which you can find in HAC.
• Each kiddo will be accessing a newly created Google Classroom called RHE-K-Distance Learning.  We won't be using the other Classroom that we used previously.
• All of the lessons will remain up on the site, so you can go back to them or work on them at your convenience.There will be a lesson page for each day of the week, but you can do them whenever you have time.
• There are so many good websites offering content for free now that the kids are all learning from home, but many of them require you to sign up. We’ve tried to balance all of the signing up nonsense and offering rich online content.  Hopefully, signing up for sites will calm down once we logged into each resource for the first time. Bear with us!
• We’ll be using Zoom to create video content. For now, the video will be one way, from us to you.  We won’t have your kids included in the video yet.  That’s coming later. 
• When we send video, we’ll be using photos of our classroom as a background. We are not in school, but it will look like we are.  We thought it would be nice for the kids to see their actual classroom.
• We combined AM & PM into one big class.
• The Music and Library teachers will be posting lessons for our Kindergarten kiddos, so you will see SPECIALS listed on Thursdays and Fridays.
• We’d love it if you want to send us (by email) any love notes, work samples, pictures, or video, but this is optional. As soon as we get some, we will be building on online bulletin board of the photos you send.  If you send us something that you don’t want us to share, please note that in your message to us.  Since our site is password protected, only our Kindergarten family will see what we post there.
• Let’s all take it slow and practice patience as we learn and grow together. We expect it will take some time for us all to find our groove. Whatever we all do will be just fine.

Our big goal is for you and your family to feel supported and loved by your RHE family!

Thank you for your partnership,

Sue & Jeannine