New Year’s Break

(SCHOOL CLOSED)

1/1/2019

In-Service Day

(SCHOOL CLOSED)

1/2/2019

School Resumes

1/3/2019

Spirit Night

1/18/2019

TBA

Open House & Science Fair

2/1/2019

Isabelle B. 1/3

Ms. Kimberly 1/18

Emma B. 1/22

Michael F. 1/27

January is….

* National Bath Safety Month

* National Blood Donor Month

* National Braille Literacy Month

* National Oatmeal Month

* National Soup Month

1/4 National Spaghetti Day

1/8 Bubble Bath Day

1/14 Dress Up Your Pet Day

1/16 Appreciate a Dragon Day

1/18 Winnie the Pooh Day

1/21 Dr. Martin Luther King Day

UPCOMING BIRTHDAY’S

UPCOMING EVENTS

DID YOU KNOW…

Welcome back to school for the New Year 2019!!! We hope our families and kiddos had a relaxed and stress free holiday, lots of good times and

good food shared with family and friends, family traditions, music, fun outings, and just time to chill out! Our staff will return to school on

Wednesday, January 2nd for a professional development day, and the children will return to class on Thursday, January 3rd.

Now that we had a relaxing winter holiday break, we are ready to dive into the second half of our school year. For the month of January, the

children will make friendship posters and decorate cupcakes in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. We will also explore how

other countries celebrate New Year’s.

Thank you parents, extended family members, and Grace Episcopal Chruch members who came to our Supper with Santa and Christmas Program! Despite a few tears here and there, the children were beautiful as they showcased their Christmas singing talents and the dinner cooked by Ms. Isabel was delicious as always! Our Santa, Mr. Bob Olsen was charming and happy to be a part of our event! Thank you to all our Grace families who so selflessly donated to the Angel Tree this year. Your extraordinarily generous response helped ensure that needy children had some Christmas presents. Without your help it, might have been a very bleak holiday for them! You embody what Grace Episcopal stands for…kindness, caring, and helping those who are less fortunate. It is so much appreciated. We welcome any suggestions you have for changes or additions to the program next year! As always, thank you for your support of our school and church community outreach programs.

Grace Episcopal School Spirit Night on

Friday, January 18th has been changed to

another location. Name of new

location and times will be announced at

a later date.

Make sure to mark your calendars for our Open House and STEM Science Fair on Friday, February 1 st from 6:00 p.m.

to 8:00 p.m. STEM is an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math….seems like something

preschoolers would be too young to embrace, but the contrary is true!!! Our teachers engage our children in STEM

learning every day, even our littlest babies. Our infants enjoys hands on activities such as touch and feel sensory bags, our

Toddlers are filled with excitement as their teachers make Glow in the Dark Water Bottles… the kiddos marvel at it as

they observe, shake and explore, and our Pre-K 3’s & 4’s who create “snow” with white hair conditioner and baking soda

and watch and feel the chemical changes that occur as the “snow” develops when they knead the ingredients. Activities

like these occur in our classrooms every day. You engage in STEM activities with your children every day at home as

well… When you take nature walks with the family and marvel at the wonders outside. When your children help you

with cooking, you measure and mix with them. When you go to the grocery store - try new fruits and vegetables, talk

about different foods and packaging, and the texture and aromas of the foods. The most enjoyable STEM activity of all

is when you engage in water play with your kids…filling and emptying containers. You will be amazed and delighted at

the science experiments your children will demonstrate at our Science Fair. More details to come after the first of the

year!

Mailing Address 4040 West Bellfort Houston, TX 77025

School/Office Entrance 9939 Woodwind Dr.

Phone 832-831-9086

edolia@graceinhouston.org candice@graceinhouston.org

Spirit Night Fundraiser Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

January 2019

Open House / Science Fair

SCHOOL SPIRIT

The month of December was awesome! We enjoyed being in the Christmas program and taking pictures with Santa

during Supper with Santa. We had a wonderful Christmas Pajama Party and loved exchanging gifts with our friends.

For the month of January we will be talking about Polar Bears and where they live. Our art projects for this month

will be handprint snowflakes, footprint penguins and snowmen. Other activities we look forward to is a pretend

snowball toss, observing and feeling snow, and pretend to go sleighing using scooters. Among the books we will be

reading is “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?” and “Snow, Snow, Snow” We would like to give a warm

welcome to Luca and Rosalie, who have moved up from the Infant B class, while we say a sad goodbye to Ainsley who

has moved to the Pre-Toddlers class. We are going to truly miss you In the First Steps Class, but you are close by.

Happy New Year to all our children and their families!

Ms. Candice Ms. April

Gingerbread People! Pretty white snowflakes! Shades of red and green! Feliz Navidad?! What’s going on? It looks like it’s

Christmas in Infant 1-A! Along with the Christmas celebration there was a lot of good news regarding our little ones in the

month of December. We welcomed a new addition to our Infant Butterfly family, Peyton! She will grow, learn and make

friends alongside her new friends. Eden P. and Katherine Grace now have teeth and are taking their first steps towards

eating baby food! Larkin is sitting up! Eden R. is now sleeping less and playing more. Elizabeth and Abigail clearly

love to eat, sleep and smile! Jude, currently our only boy, is becoming more and more active and loves bouncing up

and down in the bouncer. All our babies are developing their own unique personalities! During December we dressed

up, did Christmas themed artwork such as our very cute footprint Christmas trees, took pictures with our Santa hats

on, and enjoyed exchanging Christmas gifts with each other. Now that the New Year is finally here, we will be doing

a lot of exploring, sensory activities such as observing the color and texture of snow with the babies. We wish all our

babies and their families a very Happy New Year! Thank you all for your continued support of our class!

Ms. Julia Ms. Kimberly Ms. Dina

Welcome to the New Year! We had so much fun in 2018 and can’t wait to see what 2019 will bring us! We hope everyone

had a happy and healthy Christmas and a great New Year’s Day! During the month of January we will learn about snow

and polar bears, work on some fun snow art projects, adventure on our snowmobile, crawl through our igloo made of

water bottles, shoveling snow, and read new story books, including “Snowy Day” and “Polar Bear, Polar Bear”. The babies

are growing so fast and it’s so exciting to see all the changes. Henry, Ryder and Willem are walking all over the place. Adam

is now scooting backwards. Guy is busy using his gross motor skills to roll over from his back to his tummy, and Grayson

is exploring the entire classroom now that he is crawling. We are all looking forward to new activities in January. We

would like to remind our parents to please sign their baby’s schedule. Thank you all so much.

With love from…

Ms. Roxana Ms. Shawntee Ms. Jennifer

INFANT ‘A’ BUTTERFLIES

INFANT ‘B’ HONEYBEES

FIRST STEPS KITTENS

PRE-TODDLER PUPS

Our Pre-Toddlers have learned so much during 2018! All of our students know our Circle Wall so well…their colors,

shapes, numbers and ABC’s. They love our good morning song, “Shake Hands and Hello, How Are you?” We have

done so many art projects throughout the year…we played with slime and they loved the texture of it, and then we

experienced glow in the dark water! For the New Year, our little Pups will continue to learn so much more, such as

activities with the letter K…the winter K, a keychain of K’s, and ketchup texture and many more. We will be mixing

colors, learn about sensory bottles, and learn more sign language, and more Spanish words, learn how to pronounce

their words clearly, and they will continue to learn how to pick up after themselves. We will be reading books such

as “Winter Snowy Day,” “The Berenstein Bears and the Joy of Living,” “I See Winter” “I Eat Vegetables,” and “Ugly

Vegetables.” We will have a very busy and productive 2019!

Ms. Demetrice Ms. La’Carmen

TODDLER DOVES

The Toddler Doves would like to thank all our families for such great memories that we may not understand now but

in a few years will appreciate. We look forward to more fun times with our friends in 2019! Our class enjoyed may

exciting learning activities during the month of December. We learned about some classic stories such as “The

Gingerbread Man,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” We also did many Christmas crafts and

sang many Christmas songs. We hope all our students and families had a wonderful holiday season and enjoyed time

off together! Our month of January will be filled with snow and rainbows as we explore our theme for

January…weather! We will be weather watchers and science creators. The students will be making play snow,

rainbow bottles and fog in a jar! Fun times lie ahead! Additionally, our Doves are learning new ways to interact with

their peers during center and play time. We have stressed the importance of family and friends, and can now enjoy

the positive emotions they bring.

Ms. Quiana Ms. Krysten

BRIDGE ROOM TURTLES "

During December, the Bridge class learned why we celebrate Christmas. The children learned about the birth of Jesus

and they made art projects with Christmas as the theme. Our class sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “The B-I-B-L-E” in our

Grace Christmas program. We had a very fun class Christmas party and the children received surprise presents from

the teachers. We had a terrific time at our Polar Express PJ day and loved drinking hot chocolate. In January our

class will be learning about the weather…especially Winter weather. We will be reading winter themed books and

do special art projects like making fake snow. We will learn where rain comes from and how it turns into snow and

ice. We will also be making a penguin, igloos, pretending to go ice skating using paper plates, and having a class

snowball fight! We wish our students and parents a fabulous 2019!

Ms. Eva Ms. Stephanie

Happy New Year to everyone! The highlight of the month of December was our wonderful Christmas program…thank you to all

of the families who came to hear their children sing! The Pre-K Four class will continue to work on our sight words, handwriting,

and our counting skills, as we continue preparing for the upcoming transition to kindergarten. We will learn about snow…

exploring, predicting and observing the physical properties of snow. We will also work on Dream Clouds in honor of Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr. We will discuss what we want to be when we grow up, making friends regardless of skin color, and respecting

each other. We will also read and discuss Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This discussion is important

to the children’s social/personal development. We work hard to establish a sense of community and respect for each other’s

ideas and thoughts, as well as each other’s personal space. We also talk the rules of engagement and how we are to treat each

other and how we want to be treated (The Golden Rule).

Ms. Clementine Ms. Cynthia

PRE-K THANKFUL 3’S

Were you on the Naughty or Nice list? December was the month that all our Threes were on the Nice list. We enjoyed

learning the letters F, G, H, and I. We enjoyed learning about the math concept of “measuring by non-standard items.”

We learned to connect math cubes and they count them as well. We also sang like little angels at our annual Christmas

program. To will start 2019 off with a bang…a snowball fight!! January’s theme is snow and ice. We are looking forward

to learning how snow is made, learning about snowflakes, and observing & predicting what happens to ice in warm water

or left out in the sun. We are going to continue to work on our math concepts, and measuring in non-standard ways. We

are moving down the alphabet and the letters M, N, O and P are the next letters we will master. The colors of the month

are black and white. Snow will also be the focus of our original artwork this month! We hope each and every family had

the merriest Christmas and we hope you have a most prosperous New Year!

Love, grace, and peace,

Ms. Julie Ms. Tania

Clementine Chatman came to Grace School a year ago, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience after

teaching for almost 26 years! She has taught in classrooms ranging from the tiniest babies to fifth graders

in after school programs and tutoring individual students. She is a native Houstonian who has been married

23 years, and has four children - two boys ages 20 and 16, and two girls, ages 10 and 9. Clementine is very

involved in the Youth Ministry at her church, enjoys volunteering and has passed on the importance of

helping others to her children. She enjoys reading, cooking, jazz and meditating. Clementine feels that

children learn best when the educational environment is nurturing and compassionate and it is more than

evident that this is the philosophy she practices. She believes in educating the whole child…in every way…not just academically,

but also socially and culturally. It is important to Clementine to get to know each child individually as she prepares her Pre-K 4

class for the challenges of kindergarten. We here at Grace are extraordinarily fortunate that Clementine joined our teaching

staff!

THANK YOU Mrs. Clementine for your dedication and support of the church & school!!

PRE-K FOUR GIRAFFES