December 12, 2008

Merry Christmas to you all. I hope this time of year finds you and your family well and enjoying the holiday festivities. We have definitely been busy at school. Your first grader is working on a special gift for a family member. Plus we have been busy working hard on our academics. In reading, I am seeing the children blossom into good readers. We have been working on tying it all together; knowing the strategies to try when figuring out a tricky word, being able to use them on our own, and then self checking ourselves to make sure the word makes sense, sounds right, and matches the letters. This is a lot to think about at one time, but the children are doing a great job. Something to work on at home to help with reading would be the sight word list. The more words the students "just know" the less words they have to figure out :)

In math, we have just finished a geometry unit. Hopefully your child came home and impressed you with some new words (sphere, cube, rectangular prism, cone, and cylinder). A few things to work on at home to help with math would be: recognizing the numbers to 100 quickly (especially the teens), writing and counting by 5's to 100, and adding and subtracting quickly.

Here are a few upcoming dates:
Class Christmas Party: Friday, December 19th at 8:45
Christmas Vacation: December 20-January 4
2nd Quarter report cards go home: January 7th
Hats on for Community Service: January 9th
December Tiger Pride Assembly: January 9th at 2:30
No School: January 19th

Have a very Merry Christmas and thank you for the gift of your child!
Debbie Newman

November Already!

I can't believe it is November already. Have you started your Christmas shopping? I wanted to thank all of you for taking your time to support your child's education by coming to our parent/teacher conference last week. I always enjoy talking with each of you and telling you how wonderful your child is!! Please let me know if you have any questions after you left our conference. A couple of items of interest coming up:

Fund Raiser Items: If you purchased items from the school fund raiser, they will be here at the school to pick up next Tuesday, the 11th, from 3:00-6:00.

Veteran's Day Assembly: Willard East will have our annual Veteran's Day Assembly next Tuesday, November 11th at 10:00. Please let me know if you have a veteran in your family you would like recognized at the assembly. There will be a light breakfast for the veterans that morning and Lifetouch photography will be here to take the veterans' pictures. Also, in honor of our veterans, let's all try to wear red/white/and blue on the 11th.

Willard East Presidential Elections: Willard East will have a mock presidential election on Tuesday, November 4th. Each student has filled out a voter's registration form and will be allowed to cast their vote for our next President. Make sure you don't forget to vote that day also.

Hats Off For Community Service: Willard East will have it's first Hats Off day this Friday, November 7th. The first Friday of each month, the students may pay 25 cents to wear a hat all day. The money raised will go toward a community service project for that month. This month's money is going to pay for veteran's recognition items. Bring your favorite hat and a quarter to help out our community.

Finally, Ask Your Child About: reading strategies, adding quick strategies, the 5 vowels (and their story and song), the book Jen the Hen, and our pumpkin estimations.

Thanks again for the great conversations at conferences. Have a great week, and don't forget to vote (and Christmas shop).

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday! I hope everyone enjoyed a nice weekend. Last Friday, the children were lucky enough to be able to go enjoy the very first Willard High School Homecoming Parade. Since we are so close to the high school, we just walked across the soccer field and enjoyed about a 15 minute parade. We saw our A+ tutor, Kylie on the DECA float and gathered and shared candy that was passed out. How, exciting!

I have a few news items I wanted to pass on:
* Willard East will have our Veteran's Day Assembly again this year. If you have a family member who served in the military and would like them recognized, please let me know.
*Remember, Parent-Teacher Conferences are coming up on October 28 and 30. I will be sending out reminder slips of your time. If you didn't sign up for a conference at Open House, please let me know and we will get a time for you. I am looking forward to telling you how great your child is!
*Willard East will be hosting a community meeting to discuss the possible elementary boundary changes with the opening of the new elementary building on November 6 at 7:30 (after the 3rd grade music program).

There is a link for you to subscribe to this blog. If you subscribe to the blog, you will receive an email notice each time I add a posting. Since I am still in the process of figuring out how to work my blog, I will continue to send my own email notice to each of you when I post a new entry for a while (just in case).

And again, thanks for your patience :)

The Beginning

Wow, I think I have finally managed to get my blog up and going! This is a new adventure for me, but hopefully it will be a great tool in helping to keep great communication going between school and home. This is just the beginning of my blog. I will be adding updates to it about the activities your children are involved in here at school along with adding links to informative and hopefully helpful spots for parents. Stay tuned...