Happy New Year! 🎆 We are excited to begin our third quarter hybrid learning model next week. Here are a few bullet points to remember:

• Pay attention to the calendar. Your keiki will be at school for 2 days a week and on Zoom for 3 days a week.
• On your first day back in the classroom, please make sure your keiki has the following items for their cubby (all labeled with keiki’s name): 2 complete sets of extra clothes (bagged by set), one pair of flat rubber slippers, and one jacket or sweater.
• Bring reusable water bottle and lunch daily. Peanut butter is OK! 👌
  • Please refer to THIS POST and check the slide presentation for more info as well as reminders about lunches.
  • NOTE: Water bottles should be 20oz max and have a pop top or straw lid, no screw off tops, please. Keiki lunch bag and water bottle must fit into a bin that measures 5.25″ H, 7.25″ W, 14″ D. See picture below.

• Our scheduled drop off/pick up times at the Todd Avenue gate are from 8-8:30am and 12:30-1:00pm. If you arrive before our start time, you must wait in your car until the area is cleared for our class to use. If you arrive after our end time, you must wait in your car and call the classroom at 982-0302. A kumu will have to meet you at the outside gate to check your keiki in/out. Please, please try not to be late!
  • NOTE: Papa Manō (Rm. 3) shares the Todd Ave gate with us and their drop off/pick up time is the half hour before ours. Just because people are in line when you arrive doesn’t mean that’s our class…look for Kumu Kimi or Kumu Sera inside the gate area and note that our sign in table will be towards the right (or closer to our classroom door).
  • Remember, only ONE adult may enter the premises to drop off/pick up keiki. Any keiki you bring in with you must stay under your immediate control at all times. Masks for adults are mandatory; masks for keiki are optional.
• If your keiki is sick, keep them home. If someone in your home is COVID positive or has been deemed a close contact with someone else who is COVID positive, please let us know. There is no judgement here; we’re all just doing the best we can to keep each other safe and healthy.

All that being said, it is going to take us a while to iron out the kinks of having a Zoom session at the same time we have keiki in the classroom so please bear with us. We are also slightly restructuring our Zoom sessions on Mon/Tue/Thu/Fri. Keiki still log on at 9:25am and we will play the morning meeting slides with a preview of what’s to come. Generally speaking, our schedule will look like this:

• Piko. Instead of the full protocol we normally do, we will only sing one or two songs. Hawaiʻi Pono ʻĪ, Pule Hoʻonani, and the Oli Kāhea will be done earlier in the morning by the keiki who are in the classroom.
• Calendar Math.
• Morning greeting/song
• Attendance
• Question of the Day (in-class keiki will answer this yes/no question when they arrive in the morning, at-home keiki will answer during Zoom)
• Movement
• Daily Activity. Each day will have a short answer question for discussion. “Take a Minute Monday,” “Two Things Tuesday,” “Tell Me Thursday,” and “Finish This Friday.” This activity will be done in small groups (in-class keiki with one kumu, Zoom keiki with one kumu) in the interest of time.

The Zoom session should conclude at around 10am. Wednesday sessions will remain the same as before, with the full Piko Protocol and Letter of the Week modules. Be sure keiki have their LOTW journal and a writing tool handy on Wednesdays. You can take a picture of the journal page and the corresponding Alphabet Collage page and add to your Keiki’s Seesaw journal OR add a page to the LOTW packet Seesaw activity and upload the photos to the new page.

We will continue to assign Seesaw activities this quarter but will alter the scheduling slightly to better support each cohort, or hui, of keiki. For example, Hui 1 is face to face on Mon/Tue so they will receive the two Seesaw activities that support the in-class small group lessons on Monday. Hui 2 is at home on Mon/Tue so they will receive two activities that can be done independently instead. On Wednesday, all keiki will receive the Letter of the Week packet Seesaw activity. On Thursday, Hui 2 will receive the two activities supporting the in-class small group lessons and Hui 1 will receive the two independent activities. Make sense? Please try your best to have all Seesaw activities for the week completed by Sunday.

Before Monday, pōkiʻi families will receive an invitation to connect with us over Remind, a communication platform. Technically, we are supposed to use Seesaw as our primary mode of communication but it isn’t working as seamlessly as we’d like so we’re reverting to what has worked best for us in the past and that’s Remind. You can use Remind in the app, as SMS text messaging, on its web-based platform (remind.com) or even as email (not recommended). For us, it is so much simpler this way as neither Kumu nor parent needs to store each other’s phone number on our personal devices and we Kumu can be reached even when we are away from the classroom phone. Use Remind to let us know if your keiki will be absent or tardy and why, to ask us questions about whatever, or to send pictures. Kuaʻana families are already connected and familiar with the platform.

Whew! That was a LOT of stuff to read through but mahalo again for your awesomeness and we can’t wait to see you all next week!