The Parkview Post

The beginning of each school year I always like to remind families about how important home reading is for the success of children as readers. Reading at home can include reading to your child or having your child read to you. It can also be helpful for parents and students to read together, taking turns reading paragraphs or pages in their books. Reading at home offers important practice of reading skills and has been found to increase student vocabulary also.

To encourage reading with students we will be having weekly drawings at both the EEC and at Parkview for students to have an opportunity to print an item they can keep on one of our 3D printers. Grade levels will be setting goals with students. When students meet their weekly reading goal, they will be entered in the drawing for that week. Look for information coming home from your child's teacher about what their reading goals are going to be.

8 Tips to Help Young Kids Develop Good Reading Habits

Preschool is starting our "Insect study", it is going to be a crawling good time.

We're working very hard in kindergarten this month! We are excited to continue our ABC Boot Camp. Students are working diligently to master their letters and letter sounds. Students are learning why it's important to read, how to use pictures to understand a text, and are even beginning to add their own stories to their writing folders! We are learning the rules of school, what it looks like to be hard workers, and how to be the very best of friends.

First grade is getting in the swing of school. This month we are learning personal narrative writing, the sounds of -ed in spelling, data, what is a scientist, and communities. Since September is the month of apples, we are also doing fun projects. An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Second grade has had a great start to the school year! We have been working hard on procedures, getting to know one another, and starting all the academic areas for the year. The beginning of September we are going to Meeker for the Meeker Sheepdog Trials, which we are all very excited for. Also, thanks to generous donors every 2nd grader will receive a book per month to keep. Our first book of the year was from the Who Will Win series.

Third grade has been off to a fast and furious start. The students have been learning how to read graphs in preparation for multiplication. Further, we have enjoyed beginning novel studies in reading and our first stories in writing. Social studies has been introducing our students to learning about communities. The students have enjoyed the new experience of being 3rd graders, playing keyboards in music, and playing volleyball in PE. We are looking forward to the fun and festivities that approach with fall.

The fourth grade is pleased to welcome Mrs. Langehaug as our new teacher along with old man Mr. Forbes. She has lots of good ideas and fits right in. This month we are learning about prime and composite numbers in math, experimenting with different types of writing and looking to go fossil hunting on top of Douglas Pass. We also are excited to plan and begin our garden in the attached sunroom.

5th grade has had an astounding beginning to the year. Students have been exploring math with hands-on activities with cubes. Students have found formulas for volume and discovered more specific vocabulary throughout the first unit. In writing, students have been learning how to use their writing notebooks to fuel ideas and show their thoughts, with many sharing their writing with the class voluntarily displaying many astounding ideas. In reading, students are wrapping up the reading launch with the skills necessary to read, comprehend, and breakdown the texts they will use all year long with great success. Science and Social studies are well underway as students begin to ask questions about where we are in space versus the stars and sun and then learning where we are on earth with a deep study of map concepts to kick off the year. We look forward to the upcoming weeks as students delve further into these questions.

PE

I’m so excited to be back at school and seeing all the students. So far this fall we have worked on recess games and will begin Volleyball skills for grades 3rd - 5th starting after Labor Day. We will have three weeks of Volleyball and then we will begin football skills and fitness knowledge. The week of Oct. 17 through 20 will be fitness testing for grades 3rd through 5th. This includes the Pacer test, push up test and sit up test and will be spread out throughout the week. Kinder through 2nd grade have been practicing their locomotor skills as well as spatial awareness. We will get into using manipulatives and tag skills throughout the month.

Music

We have enjoyed a wonderful beginning to our school year in Music! Our 5th grade students

are excited to begin playing their band instruments the first week of September! We are

starting earlier than last year and the expectations are high for our first concert in December!

Our 3rd and 4th grade students are reviewing musical skills while playing musical games and

singing! Our K-2 students are learning about musical elements by singing, playing instruments and movement games! We look forward to an exciting year in our music classes!

Thank you for your support of our music program!

Art

September is as good a month as any to start off with drawing. We will be drawing Still Life objects. Items will be placed in front of the students and they will attempt to draw them as they see it. The mediums they will be using are graphite pencil, charcoal pencil, colored pencils, chalk pastels, and oil pastels. Some of our projects will be messy so please do not send the students wearing their nicer clothing on the days they have art.

A big thank you to Mrs. Cindy Cram for donating wonderful pencil sets and erasers to our class! The kids will put them to good use.