Monday AM Notes, April 4 2022

Happy April Y’all!
Friday was good fun with lots of pranks and some good laughs! I hope you had a fantastic weekend, Saturday’s weather was incredible. I got out for my first real ride of the season and the trails are riding very well!

Believe it or not it’s April–yikes! While energy begins to ramp up this is really one of my favorite parts of the school year, always filled with lots of outdoor time and fun activities.

Mind blowing facts for the day:
*Termites are the longest living insect–they can live up to 100 years
*The world’s biggest tire producer is…Lego! 306 million tires per year

A few notes to get you going:
1) Conversations at next week! Please be sure to get parents signing up early this week.

2) We’ll continue with a shortened afternoon Choice Time (1:15) on Fridays and Community Time at 1:20, followed by school-wide Invitations. That was a lot fun last Friday! Grade 2 hosts CT this week.

3) Volunteers! Many of our parents have now been cleared to volunteer in your classes. Patti is reaching out to parents on a daily basis as new applications are approved. I’ve asked Patti to get a list out to all of you to see who has been cleared so you can begin reaching out to parents and getting them into the classroom. Still looking for ways to engage parents? Please ask, I have ideas!

4) After School Recess begins this Friday, 2:30-3pm. This will change the end of day pick up on Fridays to more open ended. Let’s spread ourselves out around the playground to help provide supervision. I’ll chase everyone away at 3pm.

5) For now we’ve agreed that Buddies will be within the cross grade (K-2, 3-5) activities you all have planned. We’ll revisit this in May. Of course you are ALWAYS welcome to partner up with another class at any time!

6) SIW this week is teacher prep. Good time to get a jump on preparing for Conversations. I’ll be doing transfer interviews at Pine Ridge that afternoon (all admin are required to participate).

7) As we discussed at our meeting last week we’re focussing in on dates in May to host an Open House. We have permission to host the event and I’m leaning towards one evening–May 11. We’re technically not supposed to serve food, but I am exploring how FOA could sell pizza and/or get a food truck or two to participate. This way we are not serving food, families are purchasing it from an outside group. Keep May 11 from 5-7pm reserved on your calendars. This should be a lot of fun!

8) Please continue to revisit the Choice Time Guidelines with students, specifically about use of the hallway. After Conversations I’d like to open up Choice Time so that students can be in any classroom. 👏🏽

9) SafeTOUCH is back. This is a sexual abuse prevention curriculum that is taught in every elementary school in the district. In the past I taught the 3-5 curriculum and Tammy Short (former school psychologist) taught the K-2 lessons. While I am happy to continue to do the 3-5 lessons, ideally this would be passed along to classroom teachers (with my support at first). With Tammy gone I’d also like to work with K-2 teachers to get you going with this. We’ll make time after Conversations to get this going. In the meantime I will share copies of the curriculum with you so you can begin to have a look.

10) We’re having our A/V system in the gym overhauled on Tuesday–it should work a lot better once the work has been done. A/V systems in classrooms are supposed to be done this month–I’ll keep you updated.

Upcoming
April 8: Grade 2 hosts CT, Inviations afterwards.
April 13/14: Conversations
April 22: Earth Day
April 22: Grade 1 hosts CT
April 29: Grade 5 hosts CT
May 2: Grade 5 to Camp Tamarack!
May 6: Grade 3 hosts CT
May 13: Grade 4 hosts CT
June 6 or 7: Camp Amity (very tentative, unlikely at this point)
June 14: Family BBQ, 5-7pm (tentative still waiting for approval)
June 15: Graduation–details to emerge in the coming weeks

Here’s to a great week ahead, and fun-filled April!
Andy