Just a reminder that we will be closed on December 24th, 25th, and 26th so that our teachers and staff may spend the holidays with their families.
We wish all our friends a Merry Christmas!
"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall."
Larry Wilde
We will also be closed on Thursday, January 1st, 2009.
My Small Wonders is an official drop-off location for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program.
"Toys for Tots helps needy children throughout the United States experience the joy of Christmas; to play an active role in the development of one of our nation’s most valuable natural resources – our children; to unite all members of local communities in a common cause each year during the annual toy collection and distribution campaign; and to contribute to better communities in the future."
Donations of new, unwrapped toys may be accepted at MSW until December 18th. We will be transporting the donations to the Marine Corps Reserve office on Friday the 19th.
Ms. Ashley is the Master Teacher in our Crescents 3-year-old classroom.
She was born in Edmond, OK, and has lived here for most of her life. She graduated from Edmond North High School in 1998.
Early Childhood Education has been Ms. Ashley’s life’s work for more than seven years. She is a certified Child Development Associate and Master Teacher in Early Childhood Education. Ms. Ashley is currently enrolled at the University of Central Oklahoma, pursuing her degree in Early Childhood Education. She views teaching young children as her future and says, “There is no greater calling than supporting children, to maximize their potential.”
Ms. Ashley loves to play golf and has a dog named Bentley.
Congratulations Miss Ashley!
My Small Wonders is excited 
to offer a new School Age Program for children up to 5th grade! The program is scheduled to start December 22nd, 2008, just in time for Winter Break. In the meantime, we are in the process of preparing the room, hiring teachers, and awaiting delivery of our new 15 passenger school bus! Our capacity for the school age program is 15 students of which 6 are already reserved so if you or someone you know need school age care, let us know as soon as possible!
We plan to offer transportation to and from John Ross, Cross Timbers, Centennial, Washington Irving, and Deer Creek Prairie Vale assuming we have at least 3 students from each of those schools to transport.
The 2009 tuition rate for before and after school care for before and after school for 1st to 5th graders is $549/mo, Kindergarten (AM or PM) is $649/month, and our summer program is $749/mo for all school ages.
Future plans for this program include a dedicated School Age building in the lot to the east of our current building with dedicated resources such as an expanded library, homework area, tutoring, and a breakfast & snack café. We look forward to being able to offer all our current students a safe and secure learning environment throughout their elementary years.
During the month of December we will be collecting essentials for one of our student’s mother, Ashley Robinson, who is serving in Iraq. We would like to ship the package on Saturday, December 20th. Items she has requested include:
Items that are NOT allowed:
Your donation will definitely be appreciated by a mother who does not get to spend the holiays with her family.
The webcam system is now live and is being tested by one family in each classroom. We will be testing the system extensively and working out any bugs then we’ll be able to offer it to the rest of the center. We are hoping that this can all be done before the end of the year. Thank you for your patience as we continue to work on this initiative.
The playground surface was replaced at the end of November with a new product. This product is among the best commercial playground surfaces available on the market today. We hope that the staining issues experienced with the other surface materials are now a thing of the past.
Now that the we do not have to contend with that issue anymore we can focus our attention on getting the interior carpets and floors cleaned or replaced as needed.
Thank you for your patience as we addressed this problem!
As a side note, we are also making provisions for a new garden area in the playground. The new garden will be isolated from the rest of the playground and will give the students an opportunity to grow flowers, vegetables, and herbs this coming spring!
If you haven’t been to www.mysmallwonders.com in a while you may want to come by for a visit. We are still in the process of updating a few more areas including the curriculum and classroom areas (the old areas are accessible by clicking "curriculum" and "classrooms" tabs respectively) but there is already a lot of new content and interactive features to explore. The classroom calendars are accessible here until the new classroom pages are complete.
Some of the features we hope become popular with parents, families, and teachers are the new "communication" features . The blog will be an area where staff and management can post funny stories, announcments, trainings, and other interesting information. The forum will be a place for discussion and advice about anything you want to discuss regarding the center or your classroom (quick registration required). The newsletter section will be a place for our newletter archives as well as a place for new parents to signup to receive them. Finally, the parenting resources are informative acticles that we have licensed from Exchange, the magazine for Early Childhood Developement, so that we can offer them to you; these articles give helpful advise on a variety of subjects.
Another area that we are proud to be able to offer is the new photo gallery! The photos are hosted by dotPhoto and can be ordered from the website as prints or a variety of gift items. The individual classroom albums will also be linked to their respective classroom pages. A neat feature is the "watch show" option which plays the album in a slideshow format set to music.
School menus are also now available under the "nutrition" heading.
Please let us know if you have any ideas or comments either by email or by posting in the forum!
We are currently in the process of developing an Advisory Board to help us with important decisions regarding the Center. The Advisory Board will consist of selected parents, teachers, management, and local business leaders. The Board will meet once a month and offer advice on issues that would benefit from a broader understanding and outside perspective that we have not had up to now.
Teachers and staff of My Small Wonders would like to offer a HUGE thank you to the Turner family for providing a Christmas dinner for them. The party is on December 18th at the Magnolia Room. Thank you Turner family!