Thursday
January 28
Last Day to Turn in Procurement Forms for $100 Cactus Drawing!!!
Experience Learning Night
6:30pm
Friday
January 29
In-Service Day
No Classes; Childcare Available
Monday
February 1
Last tuition payment due for the 2009-2010 school year!
Thursday-Friday
February 4-5
Parent/Teacher Conferences
No School; Childcare Available
Monday-Thursday
February 8-11
4th and 5th grade to Islandwood
Friday
February 12
Spirit/Pizza Day
January 28, 2010
From Jo Ann - Reenrollment
$100 Cactus Drawing and Auction Items of the Week
Innerspark T-shirt Design Contest
Missed Emails
Cordophone on my Knee
Salmon in 2nd Grade
Thank You Movie Night Volunteers
From Jo Ann - Reenrollment
At its January 20th meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the following tuition rates for the 2010/2011 school year:
- $10,500 for kindergarten through fifth grades
- $9,450 for full day pre-kindergarten
- $6,300 for half day pre-kindergarten and pre-school
These tuition rates reflect our commitment to deliver an affordable, high-quality program. Tuition revenue covers 90% of our operating budget and allows us to offer 17% of our community financial aid. Annual fundraising in the form of the Annual Giving Campaign and Auction covers the gap between total operating expenses and tuition revenue. Your reenrollment contract will be mailed to you Monday, February 1. It should be returned with your commitment to reenroll by February 26.
Tuition Assistance is available for the 2010-2011 school year. The completed Parents’ Financial Statement should be sent to the School and Student Service for Financial Aid (SSS) in Princeton, New Jersey as soon as possible. The 4-digit number for applying to Westside is 1796 (Item 7A). If this is your first time requesting tuition assistance, please contact the Westside office for the Westside School Tuition Assistance Application packet.
Our admission applications have been vigorous and we expect to have wait lists at most grades, so it is important that you return your contracts by February 26.
Many thanks for being at Westside and a part of such an exciting, vibrant community.
Get Excited! Items of the Week and $100 Cactus Drawing!
By Roshele Allison, Procurement Chair
Today is the deadline for your online donation submissions - but don’t worry - Westside School is open until 7:30pm tonight. Drop your forms off at Experience Learning Night. Want to go online instead? You can donate all night long!
If you still have something to donate after this date, we will happily accept it! Still wondering what to donate? How about redeeming your credit card reward points for a restaurant gift certificate?! Who doesn’t LOVE to eat?
Here are two auction items to get excited about this week:
1. U2 Concert tickets! Treat your husband (and yourself) on Father’s Day weekend to a wonderful night of U2! Enjoy the company of other fellow Westside family members as you drink, eat, and enjoy a terrific concert in a suite. How can you pass this one up?
2. 4 Club Level tickets on the 45 yard line & parking at the Seahawks home season opener game. Need we say more?
Inner Spark and T-Shirt Design Contest
By Tara Potter, Summer Camp Coordinator
It’s still winter but these warm days have us all thinking about summer vacation. As you’re planning your family’s activities for the summer keep Inner Spark, Westside’s day camp, in mind. This year we will be offering full-day camp for current Kindergarten through 5th grade students. Camps will run for six weeks from July 6th through August 13th. Led by knowledgeable and experienced staff, we will explore fun themes each week, and have lots of time to play and explore outside together.
This summer we will introduce a new camp T-shirt, but we need help with the design. We’re calling on our bright and creative students to come up with the new shirt. Design submission forms will be available at the front office, or use an 8 ½” x 11” paper to create a design from scratch; be sure to include “Inner Spark” and “Westside School” and don’t forget to include the name of the designer and the date. Designs are limited to two colors, and must be turned in to the office by March 1st. One design will be selected and printed on shirts for every camper, and of course the designer will receive a shirt as well. Click here for the template.
We look forward to receiving some great shirt designs!
Missed Emails
Have you sent an email to a Westside staff and not received a response? Our emails are now being screened for viruses and spam. As a result, some emails are blocked.Please be patient while we fix it. If you haven’t received a response, you may want to follow up with a phone call to ensure that it was received. Thanks for your understanding patience while we work out our bugs!
With My Chordophone on My Knee
By Cathy Chutich, Music Teacher
Chordophone, idiophone, membranophone, aerophone. No, they’re not the latest in apps for your iPhone, but they are a very cool way to categorize instruments of any type. “Phone” comes from the Greek word meaning sound. See if you can figure out what all the prefixes mean. I’ll fill you in at the end.
There are simpler and more vernacular ways to group instruments into families (string, brass, woodwind, percussion) and we do that, too. Each class from preschool and up has been playing percussion instruments of various types this year. We have been using shakers (egg, box, rhino, figure), rhythm sticks, triangles, bells on sticks, tone blocks, tambourines, and a stand of temple blocks to accompany ourselves. And of course all the xylophones, glockenspiels, and metallophones are percussion instruments, too.
We will be listening and learning about the families of instruments until the end of the year.
We are very fortunate that, for the second year in a row, the 5th graders will have a marvelous opportunity to hear the Seattle Symphony. On March 12th we will attend a special free concert specifically for fifth graders, sponsored by Arts In Education. We’ll be preparing for the concert by reviewing the instruments of the orchestra and the composers of the pieces we’ll hear.
Our recorder work also ties into instrument playing. With the 4th and 5th grade playing recorders, we also begin more focused music reading. Music reading is similar to regular reading in that we read from top left to bottom right, but with music we’re reading two things at once: rhythm and pitch (note placement). Although the musical alphabet is limited to 7 letters (A through G; as the notes rise in pitch, then we begin again), we need to recognize the placement of these note heads on the musical staff (5 parallel lines for treble clef).
This is the place where music reading can become difficult, so it does take practice. I didn’t learn to read music until I was forced to in the 5th grade. I could read pitches but not rhythms, even though I was playing piano. My teacher had tried to make it “easier” by describing notes as bluebirds and rests as hats, and all it did was confuse me. My next teacher realized that I had been playing mostly by ear, and the game was up. I had to learn it right – and that’s the way I try to teach it.
Chordo=string, aero=air, and membrano=skin/membrane, and the toughest to figure out, idio=one’s own, meaning the entire instrument vibrates (e.g. xylophone, maracas). How did you do?
Salmon in the 2nd Grade Classroom
By Laura Holmes, 2nd grade teacher
Since January 4th the classroom has been humming with excitement and with motors and filters. A 55 gallon fish tank was filled with water, gravel, a freezer bar and filters during the winter holiday in order to raise Coho salmon. The next step was to collect 250 eyed Coho eggs from the Soos Creek Hatchery and then release them into the tank. After several nerve-wracking weeks of observing the eggs and asking, “When will they hatch?” we received the answer last Tuesday morning. At some point during the long weekend the eggs hatched and now we have alevin, tiny fish with their attached yolk sac. We are now waiting for the fish to absorb their yolk sacs and develop into the next life cycle stage called fry.
The children have been captivated by the salmon and we have integrated the fish into our daily routine—journal observations, male and female fish dissections, drawing each of the 5 Pacific salmon types, creating a survey asking, “Which salmon is your favorite?” changing song lyrics—“Salmon Baby” sung to the “Santa Baby” tune and our favorite activity… staring into the tank and observing the fish behaviors. Here are some kid quotes:
- “The eyed Coho eggs looked like red peas.” (Aislin)
- “We got the salmon. They were great. Now they are even more great.” (Callum)
- “We love Salmon!” (Joey)
We would like to hear what you think as you view the alevins. Please stop by soon.
Full House at Movie Night; Thank You Volunteers!
By Kate Petrich, WPO President
Thank you to our Movie Night Chair, EmilyAnn Hindle, for orchestrating a smashing movie night last Friday! The gym was again filled with excited happy faces. The movie, The Cat Returns, performed the oh-so-tricky feat of capturing and holding the attention of both the wide age range of students, and the adults - nice pick EmilyAnn!
A special thank you to 3rd grade teacher, Stuart Scolnik, and Westside Technology Coordinator, Kevin Jones, for setting up our projector and sound system - you’re the best.
Concessions and clean-up could not have gone more smoothly. Our student and parent volunteers sold 20 pieces of pizza before we even “opened!”). A huge thanks to parents: Esther Bannwart-Cohen, Shawn White, Phil Wallace, Melissa Dayka, Hallidie Haid, Jessica Netherland, Astrid Klopsch & Preston Poythress, and our excellent, professional, can’t-believe-they’re-only-grade-school students: Amrine, Gina, Caleigh and Sophia.
Many thanks from the WPO! See you at our 3rd and final Movie Night on April 16th!