The Heart of Haleʻiwa

• Save the date: Tie Dye Twos Days
• National School Counselor Week
• Haleʻiwa ESSENCE Week pictures
• Preschool: Chinese New Year
• EOEL: Butterfly's Life Cycle
• Kindergarten: 100th Day
• 1st Grade: One Word & Leaf Rubbings
• 2nd Grade: Butterflies & Grass Heads
• Third Grade Writing Club: Finish the Story
• Literacy Corner: Read Aloud Winner
• School Quality Survey link

This is my 31st year as a counselor at HES. I have the best job because I get to help students succeed in school and be life-long learners. One of our main focuses is to teach our students about social-emotional learning such as the Choose Love formula (=Courage + Gratitude + Forgiveness + Compassion in Action) and our Haleiwa Essence (Honor, Respect, Kindness and Love to make the world a better place). I am also the test coordinator for our state assessments. If I could be any animal I would be a cat. My cat Tobi just eats and sleeps all day. My 22 year old triplets are adulting now. One daughter will be starting her job as a Music Therapist in March. The other daughter is at Colorado State University learning to be a veterinarian. My son is still figuring out what to do in life.

My words of wisdom are:

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can choose to change the world." -Nelson Mandela

I have been so fortunate to be at Haleʻiwa Elementary School for 4 years now as the school counselor. Some of my school counseling duties and responsibilities include creating SEL lessons, teaching SEL lessons to all our classes, individual and group counseling support, and of course supporting our amazing teachers. Being a school counselor allows me to be part of making a positive impact on our students' accomplishments and successes. My absolute favorite thing about being a school counselor at Haleiwa Elementary School is that I am able to work with every single student on campus through teaching social emotional learning. I am very blessed to have a 7 year old daughter and a 5 year old son who always keep me on my toes. My family enjoys going to the beach, watching movies, and going to Fun Factory.

My words of wisdom that I try my best to live by are:

"It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive." "Forgive everybody." By: Maya Angelou

We had a great time celebrating our ESSENCE Spirit Week! Here are some of the fun pictures from the different days:

The Preschool celebrated Chinese New Year with a class parade wearing student - made dragon / lion / tiger head pieces. We learned about Chinese culture ( foods, language, and dress ) through books, videos and DVD.

Our students are really enjoying learning about the Butterfly's life cycle, focusing first on the first stage which is the egg. The students practiced their fine motor skills by coloring, cutting, and gluing "eggs" onto their leaves. They then practiced counting by counting how many "eggs" they had and writing numbers on their leaves.The students are also loving that we have our very own Butterfly Garden in our classroom where they can use their creativity and imagination by pretending to garden and grow flowers for their butterflies.

Kindergarten had fun celebrating the 100th day of school week before last. The students dressed as if they were 100, made 100 day projects at home, and did different activities throughout the day.

Please watch the two videos below to see what amazing things first grade has been working on lately.

Thanks to Mrs. Lee's 1st grade class, 2nd grade has gotten in on some of the butterfly magic! Our students have taken an active role in taking care of our caterpillars by going and getting them new leaves every day! It is always a good day when we get to release one of the beautiful butterflies we helped nurture!

Students learned the importance of sunlight to plants, which is collected by their leaves. In the activity, Grass Head, students made a person out of a paper towel and a popsicle stick with grass for hair! Then, students make predictions about the direction that the grass will grow based on the orientation (standing up or lying down) that they place the Grass Head.

Kari started thinking. Then she saw her cats through the window. She got an idea.

“Kitty, come here!” Kari yelled.

“What are you doing?” Kolbi said. The cats ran up to the door. They jumped and put their paws on the handle.

“Swish!” the door swung open. Kari and Kolbi ran through the door.

“YAY!” Kari and Kolbi yelled.

“We better get to work,” said Kari.

Kolbi said, “Let's go to the front of the house.”

“Ok,” said Kari.

So they rushed to the front of the house and they tried to open the windows but they didn’t budge.

“What do we do?” said Kolbi.

“We're doomed!” said Kari.

“Wait, remember last time we were locked out of the house,” said Kolbi.

“Oh yeah. There's an extra key under the doormat,” said Kari.

They flipped over the doormat and got the key.

“Phew! I thought we were done for,” said Kari.

“Finally, we can go inside and feed the cat,” said Kolbi.

Congratulations to Kira Owens for winning our World Read Aloud Day prize! You will receive your prize next week!

We hope everyone continues to read every day!

Email: haleiwaschool@haleiwa.k12.hi.us
Website: haleiwaelementary.com
Phone: (808)637-8237
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/haleiwaelementary
Twitter: @HaleiwaElement1