Dear Parents and/or Guardians,

Johnson Elementary will celebrate fall with a costume parade on the morning of Tuesday, October 31st. The morning will begin as usual, with students entering the building and heading to their classrooms. We ask that costumes be worn to school, preferably over your child’s clothing. As we have done in the past, we will continue our partnership with the Milford Fire Department by having the Chief of the Fire Department join us as our special guest for morning announcements. He will briefly outline some kid-friendly Halloween safety tips for our students. From there, we will begin our parade to the fire station and back. After the parade, the children will need to remove their costumes and place them in their backpack or a bag labeled with their name.

Parade Details: Weather permitting, at approximately 9:40 a.m. students and staff will begin the parade to the fire station. Parents and caregivers are invited to watch the parade by forming a line outside on the perimeter of the sidewalk, starting at the pick-up area (in front of the main entrance) and continuing en route towards the fire station. Students will be parading down the sidewalk on the right hand side of the street, crossing the street, looping through the station and back down the sidewalk coming back towards Johnson.

In the case of inclement weather, we will hold the parade in-doors but, for safety reasons, it will be for students only.

Classroom Celebrations: Individual classrooms may have celebrations at different times of the day. Please consult your child’s classroom teacher, newsletter, or website for those details.

Costume Information: Please note the following rules regarding Halloween costumes for students and adults during this day of fun:

1. Gory and/or scary costumes will not be allowed. Instead, children are encouraged to wear child friendly costumes such as super heroes, story book characters, movie or T.V show/cartoon characters, etc.

2. While we understand that make-up is often an integral part of the costume, we regret that it cannot be worn for the school Fall Festival activities.

3. Absolutely no weapons or replicas of weapons are allowed in school.

4. Lastly, we understand and respect that not everyone feels comfortable with costumes and/or participating so feel free to choose the level of participation that meets your child’s need.

Snacks and Allergy Alert: All snacks must be individually wrapped and store bought (not homemade). Your child’s teacher will communicate if snack donations are needed. Lastly, please consider this a friendly reminder to be mindful of items purchased for student consumption. We do have students with peanut/tree nut allergies. Thank you for taking this into account when purchasing snacks for our students.

We are looking forward to a fun and exciting day. If you have any questions, please contact our office. As always, thank you for all you do for the staff and students of Johnson!

With Jaguar Pride,

Josh Gignac

Johnson Elementary, Principal