Friday
September 18
Spirit/Pizza Day
5th Grade Coffee
9am
Monday
September 21
Margie’s 1st Grade Coffee - 9am
Tuesday
September 22
Renee’s 1st Grade Coffee - 9am
Wednesday
September 23
Stuart’s 3rd Grade Coffee - 9am
Board Meeting
6:30pm
Thursday
September 24
Jill’s 2nd Grade Coffee - 9am
Friday
September 25
Nancy’s PS/PK Coffee - 9am
Movie Night
featuring
Charlotte’s Web
5:45pm - Doors Open
Tuesday
September 29
Marsha’s Kindergarten
Coffee - 9am
September 17, 2009
From Jo Ann
Movie Night Next Friday
The Sounds of School
The 12 Days of Lost Clothing
Parent Folders
Welcome from the WPO
From the Library
Volunteering at Westside
From Jo Ann
Thank you for making this year one of the smoothest beginnings yet! Thank you for your cooperation in filling out forms in a timely manner and adhering to the policies and routines. It is wonderful to hear so many positive comments and to greet happy, excited children every day.
I do have a request. One of our goals at Westside School is to make student drop-off and pick-up as efficient as possible, and we strive to keep our campus as safe, comfortable, and as allergy-free as possible for our students. It would be easier for us to accomplish these goals if your beloved, family pet was not part of the pickup process. If you bring your pet to school, please leave him in the car. While it is charming to see students with their pets, the attention they receive often causes confusion and slows down the pick-up process. Therefore, I am requesting that parents who park and pick up their child have their pet wait in the car for that brief period. Thank you for your understanding.
Family Movie Night, Friday, Sept 25th
Featuring: Charlotte’s Web (Rated G)
5:45pm Doors Open for Pizza
6pm Charlotte’s Web (1 hr 37min)
Free Admission!
By Kate Petrich, WPO President
Bring your friends, neighbors, and relatives to our first Movie Night of the year! Your kids won’t want to miss this giant Westside playdate! Everyone is invited and admission is free. Pizza, popcorn and snacks will be available for sale; come have dinner!
Children are welcome to dress in pajamas and bring pillows & sleeping bags, or stroll in after soccer practice wearing soccer gear (late seating is not a problem!). Mats will be set-up on the gym floor, and adult chairs will be set-up for parents behind the mats.
“Thoughtful, entertaining, and enchanting”... voted “Best Family Film of the Year” (2006), Charlotte’s Web is based on E.B. White’s 1952 Newbery Award-winning book. Wilber & Charlotte (Julia Roberts) help teach kids to take care of each other, play nice, celebrate differences, and love life. Kids will love the talking animals, and “whether you’re new to the story or already adore the book, Gary Winick’s movie is a special treat.”
Caveat: “While the movie does refer to the farmer’s plan to kill Wilbur for Christmas dinner, the pivotal (and most potentially upsetting) moment is the death of a central character, which is followed by appropriate mourning and recovery by her barnyard friends.” For more information, click here.
Thank you to our Movie Night Chair, EmilyAnn Hindle, for dusting off the projector, and putting it all together! Want to volunteer? Click here to sign up. Questions? Contact EmilyAnn Hindle at hockeymomea@comcast.net.
Save the Date for our next movie nights: January 22 and April 16!
I Hear the Sound of School Again!
By Jill Weaver, 2nd Grade Teacher
Because beginnings are important, the first days of school are usually spent getting acquainted and establishing routines and procedures. Icebreakers are techniques I use the first few days to reduce tension and anxiety, and also to immediately involve the class. My favorite first-days-of-school activities aren’t particularly unique or creative. They are intended only for fun and to be helpful to me as I get to know my new students. The following list of “Icebreakers” is played in the spirit of starting off right.
Classroom /Classmate Scavenger Hunt
After taking a “classroom tour”, students are then given a sheet of paper with a list of items to find in our classroom. Once they find the item they are required to write it down or perform a task. For example, find your table number and write it down; find the pencil basket in the writing center and sharpen 2 pencils. Once they are finished locating objects, their task is now to find classmates who have participated in specific activities over the summer. For example, find a classmate that went on a cruise this summer and write down their name; find a classmate that volunteered at a pet shelter this summer and write down their name. After a scheduled time, we share our answers aloud. The information we gather about one another is very interesting. Students thoroughly enjoy getting to know one another a little better.
2 Truths and 1 Non-Truth
On the second day of school students participated in an icebreaker game called 2 Truths and 1 Non-Truth. Students needed to think of 2 truths about themselves and 1 non-truth. I encouraged students to think of things no one would know about them. I didn’t want them to use their birthday or favorite activity. I encouraged them to write something about their parents, or neighborhood friends, or trips they had taken. Once they finished writing their 3 sentences, we combined all papers and randomly gave each child another paper. Students then read the 3 sentences aloud. As a class, we tried to guess which sentence was the lie. We then tried to guess the mystery student. We had so much fun playing this game together.
The rationale behind icebreakers is based on the following needs: to help students make the transition from summer to school easier, to encourage the students’ active involvement in learning, and to build a sense of community in the classroom. Icebreakers create a supportive feeling among the students. They share things that are important about themselves with the class, and learn immediately that the classroom is a safe and joyful place to be and to learn.
The 12 Days of Lost Clothing
By Hallidie Haid, Board Member and Lost and Found Collector Extraordinaire!
Twelve head-less hats, 11 (missing) coats causing colds, 10 shivering shirts, 9 pairs of gloves, 8 pants a painting, 7 (pairs of) socks searching for soles, 6 baseball-less caps and 27 sweaters and sweat shirts! All collected from Westside School’s lost and found last June. We washed and sorted and then donated it all to Westside Baby. Anything with a name on it was returned to the owner. While Westside Baby is very grateful for this largess, you could have bought one less coat/sweater/hoodie/hat if you too had put your child’s name on their clothing. So turn away from this communication for two minutes, grab up that sharpie pen and mark your items!
Thank You for Parent Folders
By Kate Petrich, WPO President
Many thanks to Pam Snider and her husband, Jeff Kelsey, for preparing this year’s new parent folders.
These folders are in the office arranged by class for parent to parent communications (forms, cards, borrowed DVD’s, etc.). Some parents use these constantly, and some rarely check them, so if you put something into someone’s folder, please tip them off with an email. Trying to find a parent folder? There’s only one folder per family, so if a family has more than one child at Westside, their parent folder is filed with the oldest sibling’s class. There’s also separate sections for room parents and WPO officers. (Thanks again Pam & Jeff for this tedious job!)
Welcome from the WPO!
By Kate Petrich, WPO President
Welcome (back) to school! My name is Kate Petrich, and I’m delighted to be your Westside Parent Organization (WPO) President again this year.
What’s the WPO? It’s the Westside Parent Organization, and it exists to promote and support the academic, financial and social growth of Westside School. We use funds raised primarily by Pizza Days and Halloween Fest to sponsor school assemblies, Movie Nights, and the Family Dance. If we have funds leftover from these community building activities, we help pay for teacher development and teacher wish lists beyond what Westside offers. And remember, as a Westside parent, you are automatically a member of the WPO. (No fees! No Applications!)
Your WPO officers for the 2009-2010 school year:(Contact information for all officers can be found here)
President: Kate Petrich, * Vice President: Shelli Park, Secretary: Pam Snider,* Treasurer: Melanie Leary,* Volunteer Coordinator: Lori Lieske,
Room Parent Coordinator:
Sue Winter,* Members at Large: Shelli Stump, Amy Huber*and Emily Ann Hindle, Westside Staff: Jana Riggan*
*Returning
We are at your service and would like to help you get involved in an area that works for you. Your generous room parents will be working hard this year and are a tremendous resource for you. The extraordinary enthusiasm and talent at this school can be stunning, yet we are only as strong and healthy as your participation! Getting involved in simple things from carpooling to helping on Pizza Day strengthens our community and our school. Studies show that when parents are involved in their children’s school, their children do better at school! And it’s just plain FUN.
Ask event chairs how you can get involved, or keep reading the Thursday Updates for volunteer opportunities - they will be posted online as they come up. Want to find out more about more about the WPO, learn about events, or read past Updates? Visit the westside website, and check out the Our Community tab. Or just click here.
On behalf of the WPO, thank you for your support and involvement, and best wishes for a fabulous year!
From the Library
By Sarah Wildflower, Librarian
I hope you all had a good summer of reading! We’ve been enjoying the books the students made at the end of last year. Sarah Brown’s book, The Apple Tree, is currently on display with the other apple books for autumn. Right now, in the library, we also have books on display about apples (Sarah’s Kindergarten), Pioneers (3rd grade), shapes and colors (Pre-Kindergarten & Kindergarten), and spiders (1st grade).
It’s been nice meeting all the new students. Nancy’s Pre-Kindergarteners told me their names and favorite ice cream flavors, so that I would have an easier time remembering each of them. I hadn’t even known there was a cotton candy flavor! I have been very impressed with our returning students – they remembered how to use the library. The Kindergarten classes entered the library and knew where to sit by following the example of the children who were in Pre-Kindergarten.
All books are borrowed for one week. I hope you have all received slips saying what your child borrowed, but I know they sometimes get lost. If your child has a book out for three weeks, I’ll send you an email to let you know. If you would like your child to only ever have one book out, please let me know by sending an email to sarahw@westsideschool.org.
On Monday, books are due for Pre-Kindergarten, 1st grade, 4th grade, Sarah’s Kindergarten and Stuart’s 3rd grade. On Tuesday books are due for 2nd grade, 5th grade, Marsha’s Kindergarten and Joe’s 3rd grade. If you have trouble remembering, you can bring all books back on Monday.
If you would like to visit the library, you are welcome to come with your child after school on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 3:00 - 4:00pm.
Volunteering at Westside
By Lori Lieske, Volunteer Coordinator
Welcome to a new school year! My name is Lori Lieske and I am the WPO Volunteer Coordinator, which means I try to find event chairs and work with them to find committee volunteers. As Kate mentioned in her note, there are some fabulous events throughout the year and they would not happen without your tremendous parent support. I want to take the time to recognize those parents that have already stepped up this year to pull our events and activities together for your family…
Scholastic Book Order Chair: Mary Doerflein-Bohus, Halloween Fest Chair(s): Angie Graves and Krista Wassermann, Pizza Day Chair: Astrid Klopsch, Library Coordinator: Amy Eby. Friday Movie Night Chair: EmilyAnn Hindle, Family Dance Chair: Rhonda Watt, Teacher Appreciation Week Chair(s): Cindy Burke and Janel Lardizahal, Ambassadors for Tours and Open Houses: Phil Wallace, Jeff Kelsey, Lisa Medina, Amy Huber, Pam Allen, Field Day Chair: Susan Oxholm
Please be on the look out for volunteer opportunities where you too can help create an unforgettable experience for your child and others. You will find opportunities in the Westside Updates and in Room Parent emails. And speaking of room parents, here’s a big thank you to all the Room Parents that stepped up this year as well. Those Room Parents are:
Nancy/PS: Miren First, Jennie Wyatt & Luna Levine Mock; Claudia/PK: Brenda Haugaard & Kate Dee Khan;
Marsha/ Kindergarten: Amy Huber & Jeni Bartell; Sarah/ Kindergarten: Amy Eby & Megan Simmons;
Margie/ 1st Grade: April Sunderland & Jennifer Schueller; Renee/ 1st Grade: Colette Prendergast & Christina Mastrangelo;
Laura/ 2nd Grade: EmilyAnn Hindle & Laura Fine-Morrison;
Jill/2nd Grade: Teri Muench & Leslie Mann; Joe/3rd Grade: Lisa Medina & Laura Bard; Stuart/3rd Grade: Janet Beeby & Jennifer Calvo; Judith/4th Grade: Hallidie Haid & Denise Tabbutt; Linda/ 5th Grade: Janet Cowles and Shannon Marsh. Here’s to a FUN year!!