Thursday November 2
WPO Meeting
6pm
Friday
November 3
Tour 9:15am
Spirit/Pizza Day
Tuesday
November 7
School Pictures
Wednesday
November 8
Annual Giving Kick-off Breakfast
8am
Friday
November 10
Veteran’s Day
No School
No Childcare
Wednesday
November 15
Tour 9:15
Board Meeting 6:30pm
Friday
November 17
Spirit/Pizza Day
Chinese Acrobat Assembly 9:30
Family Dance 6:30pm
November 2, 2006
Annual Giving Kick-Off and Breakfast
WPO Meeting Tonight
Family Friends' Day
Music at Home
Holiday Orders from Scholastic Books
My Experience at Westside
HalloweenFest Thanks!
School Picture Day
Annual Giving Kick-Off
Wednesday, November 8
Kick-Off Breakfast, 8am
You should receive your annual giving ask this week in the mail. (Click here for the remittance form.) Please carefully consider your gift to the school, keeping in mind that each class that reaches 100% participation means an extra $1000 to Westside. Also, every gift received on or before November 8 – our official kick-off date, increases by $50.
Celebrate the start of annual giving and come to the kick-off breakfast, starting at 8am on Wednesday. We’ll have a variety of breakfast foods for you to enjoy, like muffins, quiches, etc. and some tasty coffee from Starbucks. Every one is welcome!
Thank you for your commitment to Westside. Remember, your gift helps support our teachers, our classrooms and your students!
WPO Meeting Tonight, 6pm
Don’t miss tonight’s WPO meeting at 6pm in the 4th/5th classroom. It’s the last one until March! All parents are welcome. Childcare is available free of charge for all current Westside students in the pre-kindergarten classroom located in the portable on the south side of the parking lot. Please let Kathy know if you are planning on using the childcare (KathyW@westsideschool.org).
Art teacher Margery Lamden and music teacher Cathy Chutich will be our guest speakers. Come and enjoy refreshments and snacks while learning more about what’s going on within our Westside community. See you tonight!
Family Friends’ Day
Wednesday, November 22,
10:30am - Noon
Our 3rd annual Family Friends’ Day is scheduled for Wednesday, November 22. It’s a great opportunity for grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors and other adult friends to visit Westside and spend time with your child in their classroom. Friends meet in the gym at 10:30 for coffee, simple refreshments, and a short program, then spend the remainder of the morning in the classroom.
Every year, and in every class, friends do something different. Some of them will make stone soup in preschool, some will learn Spanish or Chinese, some will see a portfolio of student work, and still others will work on math, language arts or another lesson. In the past, family friends, teachers and students have all loved this day!
Invites will go out soon, but first, we need the address from you! Attached (or linked) to the Update is a Family Friends’ Day form. Please fill it out and return it to your teacher. Family Friends Day is a short day; school dismisses at noon and there is no aftercare. Last year, many students went home with their friend. If you would like to send your student home with their guest, please indicate it on the form.
If you have any questions, please contact the office, or email janar@westsideschool.org.
Music at Home
By Cathy Chutich, Music Teacher
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (not that anyone knows what a broken record is anymore) – I will repeat that all children are musical and that music is an innate ability that people of all cultures share, and a life skill akin to talking, and moving about. You may have had wonderful experiences with music as a child or not so wonderful ones. A lot of adults who say “I can’t sing” have just not had the experience and opportunity to reach music competence at a young age. “Music competence” is the ability to keep a steady beat and sing a melody correctly no matter where you begin on the scale.
Children achieve this competence at different ages depending upon many factors. One of the most obvious is experience. If there is a lot of singing in the house it may happen earlier. Researchers say that our children, in general, achieve competence a few years later than they used to, since there is more recorded music around and less live music. Many of today’s adults feel that only the “professionals” can do it well. We forget that those perfect voices have had mistakes engineered out, reverb and volume added. More important, our children don’t care about perfection. They love to be sung to as babies and children and will have that sound of a mother’s, father’s or grandma’s lullabies in their heads for a lifetime.
“There was music in my mother’s house, there was music all around. There was music in my mother’s house and my heart is still full of the sound.”—Bev Bos
It is nice to have a rainy day music box of instruments, or to just get out kitchen items and see what makes interesting sounds to play along with fun music. (Dylan M once brought in an egg slicer that was turned into a little thumb piano.) The most effective and simplest thing you can do, though, is sing with your child, no matter what your voice is like, no matter whether or not you are in tune. Truly! The most important thing is the enthusiasm that you model. Just sing. That’s all.
Last Chance to Order Holiday Gifts with Scholastic Book Orders
By Shannon Marsh, Scholastic Book Order chair
I cannot believe that I am saying this, but the holiday season is rapidly approaching! With regard to Scholastic book orders, November will be the last opportunity to order books for the holiday season because December is such a short month for Westside students. So, if you are interested in ordering any holiday gifts through Scholastic, please do not forget to mark “gift” next to your order so that your room representatives don’t give away the secret.
When we return in January, 2007, you will be able to place your own book orders online if you wish!
My Experience At Westside School
By Marsha Lovely, Kindergarten Teacher
Let me start by saying that I wake up in the morning and have to pinch myself to make sure that I am truly awake. Joining the Westside community has been one of the best decisions that I have made. The administration, staff, board of directors, WPO, and Westside families have welcomed me with open arms and for that I thank you.
The reason I chose Westside is really quite simple. Westside is dedicated to teaching children using current best practices. This comes from on-going staff training, a requirement at Westside. The constant discussions related to curriculum are amazing. We talk openly about how to meet and exceed the high standards that we have adopted. If someone is struggling with a particular issue, we can all discuss it openly and come up with solutions. This staff is a team. Teamwork is a difficult concept to teach children; however, with a staff that models the behavior for children it becomes much easier.
Brain research has made some huge strides in the understanding of how people learn. Westside is dedicated to staying current in those areas. I am currently reading a book called “How People Learn”, by the National Research Council. In the book, they discuss how important it is to teach an integrated curriculum. What that means is that there really are no separate, compartmentalized subjects. This kind of curriculum encourages students to see the interconnectedness and interrelationships among disciplines; students are motivated as they see these connections. Making connections between subjects is what creates the lasting memory, called education. The reason that you rarely see this approach is because it takes a great deal of planning. A fragmented curriculum is where subjects are taught in isolation and often by different people. In elementary school, children are not developmentally ready to transition between teachers in the main subjects. If one teacher teaches science, and then another teacher teaches math, then the math teacher can’t refer to what the science teacher was doing because they weren’t there, and the connection is lost. Your child will start learning a fragmented curriculum in middle school, when they are ready.
In Kindergarten, we don’t just learn about money. We apply our knowledge by earning money in class, counting money, and opening the classroom store so we can buy items, make change, and re-supply the store by replacing the inventory. These sorts of activities access different areas of the brain and allow all children to learn. We all have different learning styles; Westside knows that and teaches to that.
Teaching these best practices, and seeing children learn, and working with other teachers, makes me excited to be here at Westside.
Halloween Fest Thank You!
A big Westside thank you to everyone involved in this year’s Halloween Fest. Not only did we have record ticket sales, we also had the talents of many parents, students, and staff (and some of their spouses, too!) working together to make this year’s event a memorable experience for our children. We hope your trick-or-treaters enjoyed an afternoon of having their fortunes told, hair wrapped and tattoos applied, while eating pizza and sampling the delicious baked goods that were for sale, as they tested their skills at the many activity booths available.
And an extra special thank you goes out to Stephanie Vos, our Halloween Fest chairperson, and Amy Huber, co-chairperson, for making the preparation and execution of the 2006 Halloween Fest seem effortless.
And the winner is…..
Congratulations to Michele Giusiana, the winner of “Guess How Many Spiders and Bats Are in the Jar” contest. Michele Giusiana, Rebecca’s mom in 1st grade, guessed 325. The actual count was 340. We will definitely keep a position open for Michele as fortuneteller next year! In the meantime Michele, please stop by the office and claim your prize.
School
Picture Day
Tuesday,
November 7
School Picture Day is Tuesday, November 7. If you are planning on ordering either individual photos, the class photo, or both, please remember to send the envelope order form and payment to school with your child. School pictures will be taken in the morning, and pictures should be returned to you in about three weeks.