Hello Everyone,
We are fully entrenched in Fall now and the weather is definitely getting colder. Just a reminder that we will be going outside to recess everyday unless the state tells us it is too cold, the air quality is too bad, or it is a torrential downpour. Please make sure your child is dressed in seasonally appropriate clothing and that they bring a coat or jacket and other accessories as needed.
Along with celebrating Red Ribbon week this week, we will be having spirit week where children can dress up with certain themes of the day. Here is the schedule for this:
Monday-“Show your true colors and say no to drugs”
Kinder wear red, Level 1 wear orange, Level 2 wear yellow, Level 3 wear green, Level 4 wear pink, Level 5 wear purple, Level 6 wear red, Level 7 wear orange, Level 8 wear yellow, Level 9 wear green, Or wear rainbow colors.
Tuesday-“Don’t get mixed up with drugs” wear mismatched socks.
Wednesday-“I’m wild about being drug free” crazy hair day. (please remember we have P.E. this day and students will be participating in P.E. with or without crazy hair so don’t make it too distracting.)
Thursday-“Team up against drugs” wear your favorite team shirt or jersey.
Friday-“Saying no to drugs is no sweat” wear a sweater or hoodie in class.
**Besides the specific dress up themes, students are expected to wear school dress code, no jeans and collared shirts.
We will be having our class Halloween party this Thursday from 1 p.m. to about 2:30 p.m. We will have a Track It Forward sign up ready shortly.
This Friday we will be having a small Dia De Los Muertos celebration. We will mainly be learning about what it is and why it is celebrated, but we also want to celebrate our ancestors. We would like all students to bring a picture of an ancestor and come to school prepared to share something about that ancestor. It does not have to be someone they ever met, and if they are unable to bring a picture, no worries, a name and fact about them are enough. Here are two examples from me:
This is my Grandpa Hutchinson. He had Parkinson’s disease and I don’t remember him ever being able to speak but he always whispered that he loved us and always had orange cream cycles for us.
This is my Grandpa Stacey. I grew up on his cattle ranch. He expected his grandsons to work hard and had a soft spot for all of his granddaughters.
One more update for this coming Friday. Ms. Tiffany and I have a very exciting event to attend with a close friend to both of us, and we will be leaving at noon that day. Due to this, our students will be spending the rest of the day with the other lower el teachers. We have put students in groups of 2 and 3 and they will participate in whatever activities those other classes will be doing for the remainder of that day. Ms. Tiffany and I will be back Monday morning.
We finished our read aloud book Charlotte’s Web last week and were able to watch a short clip from the movie as a class. After doing that we learned about Venn Diagrams and compared the movie and the book. This week we will start our new read aloud book, Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I have not personally read this book, but I have been told by many teachers that is is a great read aloud.
Sorry to make this a long post, but there is one more thing that is very important that I need to address. These past couple of weeks we have seen an increase in students not bringing a lunch or having a very insubstantial lunch that is either not very much or full of sugary food that will not sustain them but just give them a short energy burst. Things like a fruit cup or a bag of graham crackers are not enough. We understand that sometimes in the rush of getting to school in the morning, lunches get forgotten or go unmade. However, just this past week we had about 6 instances where students did not have a lunch. When we can, we supply them with food from snack, but most of the time these snacks are just things like Goldfish or pretzels. Some ways to help with the chaos of the morning is to prep lunches the night before. That way things are already in their containers and you can just put them in lunch boxes and be done. If nothing needs refrigerated, pack the lunch boxes the night before and that way they are ready to just grab and go. Ms. Tiffany and I highly support encouraging children to learn to pack their own lunch, but in doing this, children needs some guidelines. Something she does is have the main part of the lunch ready for them and then allow them to pick a certain amount of things from different tubs in the pantry. For example, if the main thing is a sandwich, they can then pick from things like fruit cups, apple sauce, chips, granola bars, yogurt, etc. This way they are part of the process, but they are bringing things that are healthy and not overloaded with sweets. Again, we know life is crazy, especially when getting ourselves and children ready in the mornings, we both have children of our own. We want to encourage you to put more focus on making sure lunches get to school for the kids so they do not have to go hungry or just have something small for lunch. Thank you for your support in this.
As always, thank you for all that you do!!!
Best,
Jalee