Hometown Family Buzz

We are excited to welcome all of our families this evening for our open house and ice cream social. Please join us starting at 5:45 for the ice cream social in the back of the building. We will start with a presentation in the gym at 6:30pm.

On Friday, September 8, students gathered in the lunch room for a very special breakfast treat! Along with their special grandparent, these Hometown kiddos enjoyed a breakfast of donuts and juice provided by our Hometown PTA. It was a great way to celebrate the upcoming holiday, Grandparent's Day on September 10. There was time for coloring, chatting with friends, and most important... plenty of snuggle time with grandmas and grandpas. Thank you to our PTA for hosting this amazing even.t.

Our first monthly family math challenge went home on Tueday September 4th, and we have already received some feedback and questions that we would like to clarify! As a reminder, these projects are designed to be open-ended, fun and engaging for the whole family with the goal of helping students recognize all the ways we use math in our everyday lives. There are many different ways to approach these projects and there is no right or wrong way, so be creative in how you approach the challenges.

Perhaps you could count steps, cars or houses walking to school, or use a timer to see how long the trip takes. Maybe you could create a map of your trip and look at different routes you could take to get to school. Look at a calendar and count how many days we are in school to consider how many lunches your student will eatlunches, or take a peek at the daily hot lunch offerings and decide how many your student likes and how many they do not like. Think about the sports or games your student plays. How do they sort teams, keep score, or track the amount of time alloted for the game? Finally, think about where we see math in other school subjects like in music, by keeping a beat or setting the tempo of a song. Think about how page numbers help us when reading a book. Consider how we use math to track the weather, decide which ingredients to use in a cake, or keep track of a collection. These are just a few ideas to get you started, but again, we just want to encourage your family to look at math in new ways!

Sneak preview...next month we will be designing a haunted house or your dream house, so you can start thinking about that early!

Please stop by our table outside the main office during the Open House tonight to say hello to Mrs. Fiinnegan and Mrs Malone, or if you can't make it tonighht, do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Please make sure your child is coming to school with a charged chromebook.

Parents may NOT pull into the back parking lot to drop off or pick up students. You will be asked to move your vehicle. This parking lot is for staff only.

We strongly encourage you to join our PTA at Hometown. We work together to provide many different events throughout the school year for the students. We always work with our volunteers to set them up for success. We will be offering all committee sign ups for trimester 1. Please consider joining this organization. The form is below.

We would like to welcome our new staff to Hometown this year by focusing on each one. This week will will shine a light on our new preschool teacher , Ms. Franke. Let's learn more about her!

1. I’m a big sister!!

2.I was in 4H. Head, Heart, Hands, and Health are the four Hs in 4‑H, and they are the four values members work on through fun and engaging programs.

3. I play the clarinet

4. I love to cook

4. I am good at organizing

If you see Ms. Franke in the hallway make sure to say hello!

Four of our elementary schools (Covington, Hannum, Hometown, and Sward) have each won grants for two new water filling stations to replace our existing water fountains. As part of this grant, our students at each school will also receive toothbrushes and branded water bottles. This grant opportunity is sponsored by Delta Dental, to encourage school age students to drink more water in place of sugary drinks. More information on this grant opportunity is available here. Each bottle filler station is worth $2,500 (including installation), bringing the cumulative value of this grant to $20,000. Water bottles will be coming home within the next few weeks.

We have extended spiritwear through the end of open house. If you are interested, please use the link.

Email: abencik@d123.org
Phone: 708-423-7360
Twitter: @AmandaBencik

Website: d123.org/hometown
Location: 8870 S Duffy Ave, Hometown, IL, USA
Phone: 708-423-7360
Twitter: @d123hometown