Sunset PTA by Linda Baumstarck

February 2012

Volume 58, Issue 6

Sunset News February 2012 Parents: SUN

MON

TUE

WED

THU

Souper Bowl Jersey Day

5th Grade Sports Day

Dental

6 PTA meeting

7Screenings 8

9 Raptors

4/5 Musical

Dental Screenings

Thanks so much for your help with the effectiveness of the Kiss and Go Lane. Our top priority is to get the children out of the car quickly and safely.

Thanks to Mr. Krubeck for making the morning duty fun!

FRI

SAT

Kids Nite Out

5th Grade StarGATE YA

20 No School

Board meeting

Newsletter

Family Fun & Food Nite

No School

Health

25 TOWN

deadline

We are asking that NO CHILDREN be allowed out of cars OUTSIDE of the yellow-stripped drop off rectangle. We are asking that all children are ready to get out of the car so the traffic flow is not impeded, remember KISS and GO ☺

Young Authors

Weds. Feb. 1—5th Grade to Rec. Center

Thanks to all staff who love and care for our students; but today thanks to the Kiss and Go duty staff. Burr… the wind and chill has been “almost” unbearable!

Mon. Feb. 6—PTA meeting @3:30 pm

Tues. Feb. 14— Valentine's We are asking that drivers pull up as Day and StarGATE meeting 630 close to the front of the rectangle as pm allowable. Stopping back by the Thurs. Feb. 16 —5th Grade playgrounds while there is plenty of Puberty Education room up closer to where I stand just backs up traffic and takes more time. Feb. 17 & 20 —NO SCHOOL

Tues. Feb. 7 – 4/5 Musical Program 6:30 pm

Tues. Feb. 21 —Family Fun & Food Nite at Arby’s

Feb. 7 & 9– Dental Screenings

Tues. Feb. 21 —School Board Meeting

Fri. Feb. 3—Souper Bowl & Sports Jersey Day

Feb. 7,14,21,28 –Young Authors until 415 pm Weds. Feb. 8— Raptor talks

Thurs. Feb. 23—deadline for Newsletter submissions

Fri. Feb. 10— KIDS NITE OUT!

Fri. Feb. 24—TOWN—4th and 5th grade business simulation

T h a n k s everyone for your help. Mrs. Farmer, Principal

BBHC Raptor Assembly Parents are invited to come observe this PTA sponsored birds of prey event for our students.

Mark your calendars for Thurs. March 29th for the Title One…

“March Madness Mystery”

Wednesday, Feb. 8th 8:20-9:15 – K-1 Reading with Raptors 9:20-10:15 – 2-3 Around the Region in 24 Hours 10:30-11:15 4-5 Survival Strategies.

Family Reading Night More information will be coming home in the next newsletter about this fun family evening of mystery, games, reading, and food!

National Girls & Women In Sports Day (NGWSD) is a special day to celebrate participation in sports and athletics. When Title IX was enacted in 1971, 1 in 27 girls in high school participated in athletics. One in three girls participate in athletics in high school now! Women participated in only 13 of the 24 events of the 1984 Olympic Games; in Beijing in 2008, female athletes competed in 28 of the 32 Olympic events. There has been an explosion in the number of athletic opportunities open to women and girls of all ages and levels of ability. The 5th Grade classes will be going to the Rec Center on Feb 1st to learn more about this day with Athletes from Cody High School .

Young Authors

is off to a great start! There are 85 students that are writing either non-fiction, fiction, or writing poems for publication. ALL published books need to be done and turned in at the end of the Feb. 28th class after school. Please mark your calendars for Monday March 12 at 6:30 pm in the Cody Middle School Commons for the district-wide celebration of ALL young author participants in every school and their family members. A guest author will be there and refreshments will be served. The winning entry in all categories and grade levels will be announced at that time. Books can be picked up that evening for those not going on to the state level. For more details, go to http://www.wyoreadingcowboy.com/young.cfm and click on the young authors link on the left-hand side of the web page.

Souper Bowl Winners

SAVE THE DATE

Thank you to all who sent in Box Tops and

Parent/Teacher Conferences will be March 6 and 7; 3:15pm to 6:45pm.

Labels for Education, we collected over 14,568! It took 3 1/2 hours to count, thank you to those who came to help! The classroom that had the highest percentage of box tops and labels brought in was Mrs. Ellsbury’s 2nd Graders with 1929 collected. They have earned a Souper Bowl party on February 3rd. We invite ALL students to wear their favorite team jersey on that day. Sunset continues to recycle and collect Box Tops and Labels throughout the year, just drop them in the box in the front entry.

Our Spring Book Fair will also be over these days. The Fall book fair earned $2500 in classroom supplies from Scholastic. Thank you for your support! Sunset School Parent-Teacher Association President—Lisa McDonald, 250-4633 sunsetpta@nazdorovya.com Vice President—Becca Manchester Secretary—Bobbi Moss Treasurer—Ashley McCarten Sunset Elementary School PTA

February is dental health month. Dental screenings will take place Tuesday, February 7th and Thursday, February 9th. Thanks to Dr. Moore and Dr. Walton for volunteering at our school. Please contact our school nurse, Mrs. Smith, if you do not want your child to participate in the screenings. Puberty Education for 5th grade students is scheduled for Thursday, February 16th at 2:00 pm. Your child will bring home a letter explaining the program. If you prefer that your child not participate, please sign and return the letter in the designated area. If you have any questions please call Mrs. Smith.

@SunsetPTA

Our next Parent-Teacher Association meeting will be held on Mon. Feb. 6th at 330 pm in the Art/Science room. All parents and staff are invited and encouraged to attend.

We finished MAP testing! The Students have been working very hard!! In February we will start using IPODS in our classroom to reinforce Math and Language Art skills. We will start doing second trimester assessments and our first DRA (Reading assessment). We will continue working on number sense, number recognition, number writing, story problems and addition and subtraction problems. We will continue working on our writing skills, sentence structure, sounds out and stretching out words. In reading we will work on our beginning reading skills, stretching out harder words, and working on our comprehension skills. We also started Words Their Way groups, which we split ALL Kindergarten students into groups together and each group will be working on sorts to help with reading and writing skills.

Cole, Barnhart & Ellsbury January was filled with many exciting learning opportunities for our Sunset Second graders. We finished up our Math unit on Weight and the students did VERY well on their assessments! We are now working on Geometry. Students will be learning to recognize and describe solid shapes such as spheres, cones, pyramids etc. In Social Studies, we watched a video and students did research on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They really enjoyed this! In Science, we are using the FOSS kits, which include a unit on Pebbles, Sand, and Silt; as well as a unit on Liquids and Solids. In writing, students practiced writing effective leads and endings for their stories. We are now moving into writing descriptive sentences. Page 4

Mrs. Olson’s 1st Grade Class Is January 2012 really gone?!! Our 100th day of school celebration was today, Jan. 30, 2012. We had fun with the kindergarten classes, doing 100-day activities. We are still in our penguin unit for a few more weeks. Thank you to Holly Baker for coming from the public library and reading fun penguin books to us and helping us make penguins out of pipe cleaners! In February, we will start studying Mercer Mayer as a mentor author, to help us in our writing. Hope you are enjoying the travel books coming home. Watch for a new one in February called, “If I had a $100 I would . . .” Keep reading with your child every night, it sure makes a difference. In Science, we will be starting a new unit on air and weather . . . good stuff for living in Wyoming! We will be having a class Valentine’s party on Tuesday, February 14, 2012, from 2:30 to 3:15pm. Feel free to come have fun with us if you are available. Thank you for sending in all the box tops and soup labels. Our class had a big collection this year. We are looking forward to a good February month ahead! Mrs. Davis’ 1st Grade Class First graders are busy studying penguins this month. We're learning a lot of facts and doing a lot of math as we study Antarctica and its penguin inhabitants. This Friday we'll begin a project with Mr. French and make life sized penguin paintings. When you stop by for a visit look for our rookery in the first grade hall!

Mrs. Hill’s third grade class is working hard, as usual! ☺ We have been practicing math facts, which has been awesome for our 2-3 digit subtraction! Way to go kids! Our reading challenges have been AMAZING! The kids are reading, reading, and reading! I think it is pretty cool that I have to get out a calculator to total many of their minutes! WOW!!!! We are finishing up our study on Matter and Energy and look forward to our next one…Life Systems! Excellence in Teaching----Learning for All! Sunset News

Winter MAP Testing is completed, and students made INCREDIBLE growth! We are so proud of ALL of our kids! TOWN (Round 2) is coming February 24. Students are reading books and blogging about them in order to participate in our second TOWN of the 20112012 school year. We had so much fun last time, and this time will be even better. (TOWN =

Through daily lessons, hands-on activities, and active participation in this simulated community designed to support differentiated learning styles, students develop a strong understanding of the relationship between what they learn in school and their successful participation in a worldwide economy. ) 5th Grade Book Discussion group on the book Thin Wood Walls will begin January 26, and continue until March 1. Students, if you’ve picked up your book from the Public Library, be sure to have it read by the book discussion date! Music Program for 4th and 5th Grades will be February 7 at 6:30 p.m. Join us for a wonderful program, called “Kids for America” at the Wynonna Thompson Auditorium.

Mrs. Baumstarck We have been learning about the Second Step Curriculum and we also utilize the "Six Pillars of Character". The next Pillar of Character that we are learning about is Caring; which is the ability to know how another feels, to have an emotional affinity for another person's experiences, and to take another person's perspective. I would like to share a quote with you from our school planner that resonates with me. "It's not what you have. It's not how you look. It's not who or what you know that matters most. What decides the path of your life, and the quality of our communities, is what kind of person you are. It's your character that counts!"

Page 5

Miss Pinney It’s time for our next Musical performance. The 4th and 5th grade classes have been busy preparing for their winter musical ‘Kids for Freedom.’ The performance time and date is set. We will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 7th at the High School Wynona Thompson Auditorium. Those with speaking parts will need to report for costume check and makeup by 6:00 Tuesday night. All students will need to be in their auditorium seat by 6:20 for roll. This program will have a minimal costume change for those students with speaking parts in the musical and everyone on risers gets to dress in nice school clothes. Please remember to mark you calendar. The month of February we will be a busy month looking at composers and their influence in music history along with continuing to grow in music skills and our grade level music vocabulary. Kindergarten and 1st grade classes will also begin working on their musical Spring performance on April 3rd. Remember to check my teacher website if you have any questions on future performances.

MAP Testing is done Hip Hip Hooray! Our students ROCKED!!! MAP, or the Measure of Academic Progress, is a computerized adaptive test which helps teachers, parents, and administrators improve learning for all students and make informed decisions to promote a child's academic growth. Teacher’s may go over MAP scores at Parent Teacher Conferences in March. Sunset News

Family Food & Fun Nite Join us on Tues. Feb. 21st from 5–8 pm at Arby’s for a fun evening. Arby’s is donating the proceeds from the night to the PTA fund earmarked for the new Kids Fitness Course on the Westside of the school. Come say hi to our Sunset Mascot, get your face painted and every order receives a raffle ticket to win great prizes! Plus some of the Staff and Student Council members will be serving your food tonight, you won’t want to miss that!

Why do we need leap year? The Gregorian calendar, which now serves as the standard calendar for civil use throughout the world, has both common years and leap years. A common year has 365 days and a leap year 366 days, with the extra, or intercalary, day designated as February 29. A leap year occurs every four years to help synchronize the calendar year with the solar year, or the length of time it takes the earth to complete its orbit about the sun, which is about 365¼ days. The length of the solar year, however, is slightly less than 365¼ days—by about 11 minutes. To compensate for this discrepancy, the leap year is omitted three times every four hundred years. In other words, a century year cannot be a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years. What are your chances of being born on leap day? About 1 in 1500. How many people were born on leap day? There are about 187,000 people in the US and 4 million people in the world who were born on Leap Day. The rules for determining a leap year Most years that can be divided evenly by 4 are leap years.

March Newsletter Deadline Thurs. Feb. 23rd Please send your submissions to sunsetpta@nazdorovya.com

Getting to School on Time Here are some tips to help with managing school mornings...

Do all this the night before and mornings will be much less frantic Put all the non-perishable food in the lunchboxes, then just add drinks and sandwiches in the morning Put out outfit for following day Make sure all school bags are ready the night before Check shoes are in place Check calendar for what might be needed the next day: swimming, music lessons, PE etc. Make sure you’ve signed any forms, agendas that need doing Check any homework has been done and is in the bag ready to go to school Get the kids to bed on time, 10 hours a night is recommended for elementary aged children • Invest in several alarm clocks, set them so everyone wakes up at the same time • • • • • • • •

And on the day... Ask your children to put their clothes on before coming down for breakfast – it will save a lot of time. Many parents don't let their children watch television or play video games until they are completely ready for school (including coat!). Write down all that this includes: getting dressed, eating breakfast, doing teeth, brushing hair, washing face, making bed, putting shoes on, checking bags. • As something 'different' once in a while, you could make a little checklist for your child to carry around they love ticking things off as they do them. Or use a star chart for a couple of weeks to help get them into the routine. An occasional sticker to wear on their coat could be a good reward when you've had a good morning. (Remember to give yourself a pat on the back too!) • Try to have fun too! Could you make up a game where they put all their white clothes on first, followed by colors... or put on a song and set them a challenge to dance while getting dressed at the same time - they have to have at least four items of clothing on for each song played. Why don't you make some things into a race (it might be best if they race against you - if you have more than one child and they race against each other, it'll probably end in tears!): 'I bet I can tidy up the breakfast things before you've put your shoes on' or.. 'Can you put your pants on before I count to 10?' • •

Make your home school-friendly • • • • •

Get a white board (or a piece of paper!) and write down the weekly timetable of all your children’s’ activities. Put it on the wall so that you can see at a glance what you need on each day. Create a folder for notes from school, newsletters, forms etc. Any forms that need action, make sure they’re at the front of the folder. Make a space for backpacks. Designate a filing tray or folder for homework. One for each child if necessary. Keep the school folder in one of these. Have a box for next days outfit at the end of each child’s bed. Makes finding everything much easier.

Point B 4-H Club meeting on Monday, Feb. 13th at 3:30 in the Barling Room, lower level of the Court House. Everyone is welcome. It is a General Community Club so all projects are addressed. For more information, contact Pepper Werner, 587-2732 or finallywy@yahoo.com .

No School Feb. 17 for a Teacher Inservice Day Feb. 20 President’s Day