Family Letter

Change of Clothes, Sneakers, and Cold-Weather Gear

Dear Families,

We are excited to welcome new and returning students to Morse Street School! To help prepare for a smooth transition into the year and minimize disruptions to your child’s day, please take a moment to read the following regarding how we respond to clothing-related situations that may arise during the school year. For returning families, please note that we have made some changes. We hope that, by communicating this information upfront, we can help ensure that each child comes to school prepared with what they need to comfortably learn and play!

1) Change of clothing. There are occasions where a young student may have a bathroom accident during the school day and/or may get their clothing very wet while playing on the playground. For this reason, we ask that all families send their child to school with two full sets of clean clothes (top, bottoms, underwear, and socks), in a bag labeled with their name, which will stay on their hook throughout the year. If a child ends up using their change of clothes, please send a clean replacement set the next day. If your child does not have a clean change of clothes available, you will be contacted by the office to bring a change of clothes to school for your child to change into.

2) Sneakers. Sneakers are required for safe participation in Physical Education (PE). Please make sure your child has sneakers with them on their PE days. We will have a small basket of sneakers available for emergency situations if a child does not have sneakers with them; however, they will need to be returned immediately after participation in PE.

3) Outdoor/cold weather gear. Please make sure that your child packs a warm jacket, hat, mittens, snow pants, and boots during the colder weather!* Each classroom will have just a few hat and mitten sets available for emergency situations only. Students who do not wear boots or snow pants to school during snowy weather will need to play on the pavement on those days. Children will wait outside regardless of the weather at dismissal - please make sure they have rain gear in their backpack.

*including your child in this process can be a great way to help build important executive functioning skills. This could look like: creating a checklist to go through together when packing their backpack or taking a picture of your child ‘ready’ for school and having them label all the parts (including what’s in the backpack) and have them see if it ‘matches’ each morning before leaving for school.

*****If you are unable to provide your child with any of these items, please reach out to our school counselor, Kelley Herzog (herzogk@rsu5.org) and we will assist you with acquiring a set to remain at school for your child to use. *****

Thank you for your partnership!