October 2002 News and Notes

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Kindness Becomes the Focus for E.K.E.S.

For several years the EKES paraprofessionals have been sponsoring a program known as the Tree of Kindness. It has been a quiet, behind the scenes vehicle for recognizing students who are kind to others or who are helpful in some way. Because we are becoming a Responsive School, the Tree of Kindness plays a large role in helping us build community. The kindness our students extend to others truly contributes to the overall climate of the school, and those giving students deserve to be recognized and thanked.

Every time a student is spotted being kind to someone else, or willingly pitches in to do some kind of job around the classroom or the school, he or she is recognized by a leaf being placed on the Tree of Kindness. This year we are publicly announcing the names of those students every Friday at the all-school morning meeting. The students are asked to come to the front of the group, and they receive applause and appreciation. Then they lead the entire student body in the Pledge and our patriotic song. This is just a small way for us to thank those students for thinking of others and being kind and helpful. The leaves will be sent home to the parents to see.

We are proud of our wonderful students, and their kindness is just one of the reasons EKES is such a special school.

On September 3, twenty-nine eager kindergartners began their educational journey at East Kingston Elementary School. It is our largest Kindergarten class to date! We had a wonderful beginning with bright shining faces greeting us as the children arrived by bus or car. Since then we've been working hard to become a community of friends and learners.

Using Responsive Classroom techniques we're learning about each other, how our classroom works, and what a big school we're attending. Our Morning Message with its question of the day is helping us find out many things about our new, as well as old, friends. Using surveys and graphs we found out such things as favorite colors, numbers of people in our families, favorite foods and desserts, how many pets people have, who our heroes are, and many other interesting facts about each other. We've even made a pie graph of our birthdays to show when everyone was born, who has a common birthday or month, who is older, who just turned five, and if one class is older or younger than the other class. On Curriculum Night the parents enjoyed reading our messages that were hanging around the room.

Speaking of Curriculum Night, we had a wonderful turnout. Thanks to everyone who came. It was great fun to talk with you and share your child's day. Thank you also for supporting the book fair that night.

We've begun our study of bears. Our concentration is on the habits and habitats of the bear in autumn. This year our course of study will focus on the seasons and how they affect the animals, plants and weather as we go through a yearly cycle. We will also look at how we change over the year as we get to know ourselves better.

In conjunction with our study of the seasons and their effect on everything else, we took our first field trip to Rogers' Spring Hill Farm in Ward Hill, MA. We had glorious weather and a wonderful time that included a ride in a bale stacker pulled by a tractor to the pumpkin patch. There we each picked a pumpkin, piled back into the bale stacker and proceeded back up the hill for a snack of cookies and milk followed by a visit to the petting zoo.

Back to academics, we are starting the famous "Artist Alphabet Books" as we learn the name and sound of letters, how to write both upper and lower case letters. This is a year long project but it’s a great one! We've started our first emergent reader, The Bear Went Over The Mountain, and will bring home copies to share with our families.

As you can see, Kindergarten at E.K.E.S. is a very busy and happy place.

We are the caring classroom.
We’re glad that we are here.
We welcome all to East Kingston.
We give a great big cheer.
1-2-3 Welcome!

Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Huss welcome the 22 children in our first grade room. We’ve spent time through our Responsive Classroom activities to get to know each other better. The children have decorated the hallway outside our room with their life-size portraits. There are clues along with our drawings so you can try to identify us.

First graders are working with the alphabet, its letters and sounds. Daily we chant, write and discuss the name of the day. We have individual reading folders where we keep, record and retire our "just right" books. Mrs. Huss is working with the children daily using the Project Read phonics program and other phonemic awareness activities. The Project Read program teaches the relationship between symbols and sounds of our language which enables us to both read and write. Mrs. Lord, our reading specialist, comes in each day to work on phonemic awareness and writing. We have been having writing mini-lessons and have learned to sound out and use our "ears" to help us read and write. In October we will be publishing class books with each child contributing a page. These will go in our reading buckets for Sustained Silent Reading. All components of the 4 Blocks Literacy Program are being taught this year in Grade One.

September 26^th found us celebrating Johnny Appleseed’s birthday with our Apple Day celebration. We sang about, counted with, estimated, measured and graphed our apples. They enjoyed a special snack and read various fiction and non-fiction apple books. An art project was also made using our apples.

The seasonal changes will be observed and we hope all will come see the "Learning Tree" growing in our room. Come watch the changes with us. It will be a focal point for our thematic units.

Mrs. Huss and I want to invite all parents to be part of our learning community. The homework journal is a communication tool to keep in touch. Thanks for the support in your child’s first weeks of school. We look forward to learning, growing, sharing and enjoying our time together in Grade One. Meeting you all on Back-to School night was great. Again-Welcome! Together we can make Grade One a special place to be!

WOW! We have started the year off with such a bang! It is so great to be together for a second year in second grade! We have some new faces in our classroom this year -- Ms. Zimar and Mrs. Nigrello. We are so fortunate to have such great teachers working with us -- we are looking forward to making some new, fabulous memories with you both!

There are a lot of fun things that have been keeping us busy this September. We are learning about pets -- we wrote some super "begging" stories trying to convince our parents to get us the pet that we want! We also had two special visitors from the S.P.C.A. come to our classroom. Paula Parisi and her puppy, Nelly, taught us about all of the wonderful things that the shelter does for animals. As a class we plan to have a bake sale on October 10 to raise money for the shelter. So, if you like yummy treats for snack, please bring some money with you on that day so that you can help us help the shelter! Thank you to all the families who sent in food and other items for the animals. Paula and Nelly were very appreciative! We are looking forward to having a very unusual visiting animal at the beginning of October -- Bator the Pot Belly Pig!

This month we also had our very first spelling test and our first homework assignment! The traveling book and journal began again in our classroom. This month it is Donald Hall’s book, I am the Cat, I am the Dog. It has been a great story to share with our families! We think that the two characters are very cute and very funny!

At the end of September all of us traveled to York, Maine to see Ms. Merrill get married! We were so lucky to be able to attend! We’re also looking forward to meeting Toshi-Sensei again! He came from Japan to see Ms. Merrill get married, too! We want to show him what we learned last year during our Japan study!

That’s all the news from our second grade classroom! We hope that some of you will stop by and see some of the reasons we think looping classrooms are great! We have a memory wall just outside our classroom! Come check it out!

In September second graders worked to build our classroom community by getting used to each other and all our routines and procedures. Our first unit was Pets. We read many fiction and non-fiction books and poems about pets and created a gallery of pictures of our own pets. We made our own pet rocks and published a whole class Pet Gazette Magazine. Cats and dogs were tied as the pet most of us have. Second graders enjoyed having Paula Parisi and her dog, Nellie, visit us from the NH SPCA. We collected pet food that we donated to the NHSPCA and we are participating in a bake sale with 2M on October 10. The proceeds will be donated to the to the NHSPCA.

October’s theme for reading and writing will be "Fears and Frights," emphasizing character, setting, problem and solution. We will spend time learning about fire safety, drug and alcohol awareness and personal safety. In Social Studies we will read about Columbus and work on more map and globe skills.

In Math, we reviewed addition and subtraction and symmetry. In October second graders will be working with numbers 1 to 100, thinking about concepts of greater than and less than and what number comes before, after, and between. We are using Cuisenaire Rods and base ten blocks as concrete models. We are looking forward to a fun and productive month.

The 3S classroom community is off to a wonderful start. We happily welcome Samantha Madden, our teaching intern from UNH. Ms. Madden has earned a BA in English from the University and is currently working towards a Masters Degree in Education. It great to have her knowledge and energy in the classroom. We also are very lucky to have an old friend working with us, Mary George. The students are fortunate to have Mary for two years in a row.

We began the year by working together to brainstorm our hopes and dreams for the school year ahead and have discussed how we can help each other reach our goals. This led to establishing classroom rules that the class felt were necessary to help everyone have a great year of learning.

Our beginning theme for the year has been Native Americans, and we have really enjoyed learning how these first Americans made great contributions. In guided reading we have enjoyed many Native American legends, a Magic Tree House selection that illustrated how the buffalo were so important to Native American Tribes, and a biography about Squanto, a Native American that made important contributions to the Pilgrims. This provided great background information for our field trip to The Little Bay Buffalo Farm in Durham. In self- selected reading, the students have been reading books of their choice and recording them in their classroom logs and taking Accelerated Reader tests when applicable. We also try to take the opportunity to share good titles with each other. In our working with works block, we have been focusing on our word wall words and spelling patterns. We have also incorporated a weekly practice of working with spelling patterns to extend our spelling knowledge. In writing we have worked on topics of our choice. We are using the writing process to improve our editing and revising skills, as well as looking at the purpose and content of our writing. We are working to bring our writing pieces to final draft form for publishing.

In Math, we have worked on patterns, skip counting, reviewed basic facts, adding with 100’s and 1,000’s, area and estimation using Cuisenaire Rods. We work daily with problem solving and reviewing the process of regrouping We also discuss the ways we choose to arrive at our answers, which helps us to see many math strategies. Next, we will begin work on the process of multiplication.

In Science our beginning focus has been healthy bodies. We have discussed what causes us to get sick and precautions we can take to stay healthy. We will continue this study by learning about healthy food choices, the food pyramid, a balanced diet and our digestive system.

In Social Studies, we have increased our map skills by constructing paper mache globes to help us understand the location of the continents and oceans. This was a fun learning activity for everyone! We have also been researching various groups of Native Americans and have compiled A to Z facts about them. The students worked in cooperative groups centering on either the Plains, Southwest or Woodland Native American tribes. We also were fortunate enough to have Professor Tom Schram of UNH as a guest speaker. Professor Schram constructed a replica of a teepee with the students and will visit again to discuss the tanning process and show an authentic Native American cradleboard. A BIG thanks to Professor Schram for sharing this valuable information. Everyone enjoyed our field trip to the buffalo farm and we thank all our chaperones for accompanying the class. We are now looking forward to our October 2 trip to Plimoth Plantation (old English spelling), which will kick off our Pilgrim simulation unit.

Thank you so much for your support and for sending such great and enthusiastic learners. I truly enjoyed seeing all of you at Back to School Night.

Welcome back. We're off to a great start in third grade! Our class is piloting the Everyday Math program, and we're finding it to be a very exciting way to learn math. We've been investigating the manipulatives and the reference book, as well as playing some of the learning games to become familiar with how the program works. So far in Unit 1 we've been reviewing measurement, telling time, skip counting, place value, and learning how to use the number grid for counting. With each unit we will have some new concepts introduced and a lot of review of the concepts and strategies already covered. Home Links (math homework) will be sent home Monday through Thursday nights. This is usually a review of the concept covered that day in class. Parents can check with their 'Yellow Pages' as a reference guide, or call if there are any questions. Overall it promises to be a fun learning experience for all of us!

Our trip to Little Bay Buffalo Farm went wonderfully. The gentleman who runs the farm told us that our third grade students were outstanding" (twice!). Of course, we already knew that, but it's always nice to hear. We rode in a covered wagon to the fields to see the buffalo, shared knowledge of Native Americans inside a real tipi (this is actually the correct spelling), and checked out buffalo artifacts in the farm's buffalo museum. All in all it was a terrific day. A huge thank you to all of the third grade parents who drove and chaperoned. We really appreciated your help.

We were treated to a wonderful presentation with 3S. Mr. Tom Schram shared both his knowledge of the Native Americans and his experiences of living in a real tipi. He brought a model of a tipi and did problem solving with the third graders to figure out how the Native Americans transported and constructed the tipi. He showed them the different parts of a tipi, and how they fit together. It was a great experience, and we thank Mr. Schram for sharing with us.

Our reading and writing has been centered around a fairy tale unit, which reviewed and retaught the elements of a story. We also did a lot of reading about Native Americans. We will now begin our Plimoth Plantation unit which will be the focus of our reading and writing. We will also be reading mysteries as our genre for the month.

It was great to see so many of our parents at Open House. We're looking forward to a super year together!

We had a wonderful turnout for Back-to-School Night. Thank you all for coming. Our class is very fortunate to have Mrs. Woods with us as a student teacher until Christmas vacation. She has begun a unit on colonial New Hampshire, which will culminate with a field trip to the American Independence Museum in Exeter in mid-October. We are reading colonial novels to learn more about this time period and have dyed muslin using natural resources that might have been available to the colonists.

Plants have been our science focus this year. We’ve done a whole-class experiment about germination by making "chia" pets. Each fourth grader planted two, a control and variable, to see the conditions under which grass seed best germinated. Now each student is doing a plant related experiment individually and will share the results with the class. Meanwhile we’re learning about other ways plants propagate; we’ve taken cuttings and will look at spores and budding in the next few days.

In math we’ve reviewed place value through the millions period, done some rounding of whole numbers, learned a little about decimals through keeping track of our Accelerated Reader points which are reported in tenths, and worked on the draw-a-picture or diagram problem solving strategy. We’re working on making change by first stating the cost, then counting up using coins of least value first, and ending with the amount given.

After writing our goals, we typed them using Word and had them inserted into a Power Point presentation. We’re also learning about desktop publishing with Publisher and have just about completed "Me Posters" for which we’ve imported a photo, used Word Art, made borders, and found clip art on line to reflect our personal interests. We’ll be using Power Point, Publisher, and, hopefully, Netscape Composer as presentation tools often this year.

Our school year is now underway, and fourth graders are off to a great start. We enjoyed meeting and seeing many of the parents of our students on Back-to-School Night. Please stop by if we haven’t had a chance to meet you.

This year we are very fortunate to have Lindsay Crapser, a fifth year graduate student at UNH, in our class. Lindsay will take part in all the class and school activities to find out first hand what it is like to teach. Lindsay has already endeared herself to the students, and we are glad to have her in 4H!

We began science with the study of green plants. We’re learning about the parts of green plants, germination, photosynthesis, the flower and pollination and fertilization. Individual experiments to do with plants will begin soon. We gather and organize information for presentations that will be shared. The students will practice taking notes and putting the information into their own words. They will also learn how to write a bibliography of their sources of information.

Fourth graders have also been brushing up on their language arts skills with spelling and dictation. Rules for C.O.P.S. (capitalization, omissions, punctuation, spelling) are introduced at the beginning of each week and practiced throughout the week. The students are expected to apply the knowledge they gain from dictation and spelling as they write in all areas of the curriculum. They are learning that, in order to do well, they must study each night and check their work!

The students are reading independently toward their Accelerated Reader goals. They are encouraged to read each evening at home for at least 20 minutes. We have two reading groups that are reading historical fiction books: A Home for Jamie and The Spy at Tory Hole. The class is being read a book by Lemony Snicket: Bad Beginnings.

School has opened with much excitement. We begin each Monday through Thursday with a combined morning meeting and writing period. Morning meetings help us set daily agendas, emphasize weekly focus on curriculum items or classroom goals, and contribute to our sense of community through personal greeting and sharing and group processing of classroom challenges.

In science we have learned about the five great spheres of the earth, what characterizes each, and how each interacts with the other. This knowledge will form the basis for on-going study and discussion throughout the school year.

We have spent some time learning about and using one of our science tools, the platform balance. The balances that we are using have a protocol for zeroing the scale before use and are accurate from .5 - 2000 g. These devices provide a nice introduction to scientific data gathering, metric measurement (grams), and the concept of mass vs. weight. The students have had a variety of experiences zeroing and finding the mass of different objects and are becoming proficient with this tool.

We are piloting a new math program called Everyday Mathematics. This program will be implemented in all SAU 16 elementary school classrooms by 2005. It is a fast paced program which relies heavily on the students’ understanding of math vocabulary. This vocabulary is advanced. We have been (and will continue) studying and applying this vocabulary weekly in order to expand our knowledge base. It is critical that students have a working knowledge of the vocabulary and processes associated with it. When you are helping at home, please try to use the same vocabulary as the kids. The Student Reference Book is a gold mine of information. It contains a glossary for vocabulary and an index to direct you to pages that will explain and give examples of the processes we are studying. Please call anytime with any questions or concerns you might have. It is a learning process for all of us.

Thanks to all who came to the fifth grade curriculum open house. It is a pleasure to talk with you about the programs for the children of our school.

Greetings from fifth grade. It is wonderful to start every morning with children eager to be at school and ready to learn! Thank you, parents!

The overall theme in Reading and Social Studies is "Making Connections." We make connections through research and the study of U.S. history with books chosen for reading. We’ll map experiences of young travelers in books and those who explored and settled land in the Americas. Field trips are connected to the curriculum as well. We strive to provide experiences for all types of learners.

Soon we’ll wrap up a unit on mapping. Some of this unit was review for the fifth graders. I’m impressed with how much information students retained from last year.

We’ve chosen books about young survivors to read. Students completed Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Sign of the Beaver and Call It Courage are the next book choices for our survival/adventure unit. Students chose an adventure book to read for a book report. First, I will model the process of building a book report, using the book, Hatchet. This way students will have a better understanding of writing a book report and should feel successful working independently.

Maria DeGrappo is our intern from U.N.H. She is already a wonderful asset to this class and our school.

Please keep your eye out for a field trip permission form to America’s Stonehenge scheduled for October 22.

Happy children, smiling faces—what a wonderful school to return to! September has flown by! This year we will focus on using all of our talents through improvisation, interpretation, dramatization, and movement added to our singing and instruments. This whole child approach helps children"feel" and become part of their music. It is a marvelous way to promote literacy through music. A beautiful example was performed by Mrs. Brown’s first grade this week. They used all the rhythm instruments and sound effects to create a "sound carpet" of nature. With background music we interpreted the book In the Tall, Tall Grass. It was sensational!

Second graders are singing about pets and doing tone matching. Fourth grade is also integrating their classroom studies. We have sung NH songs and performed early American dances to recorder harmonies. We are learning that it is easier to learn a dance if you feel the form and have learned to distinguish how sections change. Dramatization and interpretation of the old Abenaki legend, "Gluskabi and the Wind Eagle," is our goal for October. Improvising melody and rhythm is a focus of fifth grade this month. We’re composing!

Our music classes have also adopted the Responsive Classroom model and adapted it to our time limit. Our greeting is in song, and our sharing is something musical—something we’ve learned in private piano lessons, for example. We all have unique talents to share.

We have signed up many new band members. This year instrumental lessons are opened up to Grade 3, as well as 4 and 5. If anyone missed the informational meeting and would still like to take lessons on clarinet, flute, sax, trombone, trumpet, french horn, drums, or piano, PLEASE give Mrs. Leavitt a call any Tuesday or Thursday.

Third graders will order recorders this week, We have already begun a good working knowledge of notation and are off to a great start. Even if you have a book or recorder from previous years, remember to order neckstraps for our performance in May, and get those order forms in by October 1, please.

It was nice to see so many familiar faces at the Open House. We hope you had the opportunity to see what the children have been studying in art class. Grade 1 has focused on themselves by doing self-portraits. We saw work by VanGogh, then created our own. Next we did drawings focusing on children’s homes. Both lessons explored the concepts of line and shape. Torn paper apples were made emphasizing the concept of value. Tearing paper provides opportunities to strengthen hand muscles.

Grade 2 created tissue trees with emphasis on color and texture. In conjunction with the classroom unit on animals, children did line drawings of animals. Torn paper cats were made. This gave the children the chance to see that torn paper creates texture. Then, texture was created by using scratch art paper. Lines were drawn to create the texture of fur. It is important for children to be aware that texture can be created in a variety of ways. In Grade 3 the Native American Unit has given us the opportunity to do original stories on "buffalo hides" and make pattern shields. This is an exciting unit that we will expand in October. We started the year with patriotic red, white and blue weavings. The children wrote their personal Hopes and Dreams on a star that was added to the weaving in conjunction with the school’s theme on the Responsive Classroom.

Grade 4 also did this lesson. Next, sunflower studies were done in conjunction with the classroom theme on plants. Direct observations of sunflowers were created into black pen line drawings. Each child could also do a colored drawing. Grade 5 did the patriotic weavings too. A favorite lesson each year for the children is the drawing of posters for the school store—lots of opportunity for imaginative drawing. The children are each creating a "sphere" design drawing based on the science studies of the four spheres. This design unit allows them to explore the concepts of line, shape, color and texture.

We are off to an exciting start. The children are such hard workers.

Here is a little information about your new Physical Education teacher, Mr. Benson. I am a New Hampshire native, born and raised in Manchester. I graduated from Castleton State College earning a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education. My first teaching job was in a school of 300 students at Chester-Andover Elementary School in Chester, VT. After teaching there for nine years, my family decided to move closer to family and back home to New Hampshire. I am excited to be a member of the East Kingston family and look forward to working and playing with the students and faculty here.

Outside of school I enjoy running, reading, computers, golf, downhill skiing, volleyball and being with family.

In physical education this past month the students and I have been working to get to know one another. Kindergartners are working to become skilled movers, chasers and dodgers. In first and second grades we have been exploring different ways to move, with heights, levels, pathways, and speeds. In third to fifth grades we have been working on adventure education challenges. These are group activities that challenge the students to problem solve, communicate, and learn more on how to work cooperatively.

In October all classes will be working on improving soccer skills, football skills, and perceptual motor skills. We will be exploring fitness concepts. Also in the coming month, check E.K.E.S.’s web page for Mr. B’s Physical Education page, loaded with my favorite links, E.K.E.S. P.E. news and notes.

As a parent of a young child, one of the most important jobs I feel I have is to build in my son a lifelong love of reading and writing, often in recent years called "literacy." I have always felt that I want to work together with the school on this journey so knowing their direction is very helpful to me. I want to share some thoughts with you on what we at East Kingston feel are good practices at various levels and how you can help at home. Many of the ideas come from a group of educators who comprise the Learning First Alliance paper, "Every Child Reading: An Action Plan" (Washington, D.C., June 1998). This month will be focused on Kindergarten and First Grade.

Before starting school, young children benefit from parents helping their child label things in their world. In addition to spending as much time as possible reading with your child, learning the words that describe things, talking about things in the past, and predicting what will happen in the future are also helpful. Doing lots of talking about things and encouraging conversation has a great deal to do with reading success. Developing knowledge about colors and shapes, prepositions, sequence, and classification all give children a good start. Every opportunity children are given to learn about their world, including science, geography, and history gives them a frame of reference upon which to draw when they read or listen to stories.

Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten programs build upon what is done in the home to instill an appreciation of stories and books. At home, talk about how the characters feel and what they are going to do. Explore the meanings of new words and help them to retell the story. Give them lots of clues as they are learning to do this. Practicing these things actually helps their little brains to grow! In addition to the above, children will learn that print goes left to right, there are spaces between words, and you point to each word as you read it (one at a time). They learn that there are things called letters, that these make sounds, and that these sounds make words. Practicing rhyming is a wonderful way to help young children learn about sounds. When they acquire some sound knowledge and know they can tell a story with pictures and letters, they can begin writing simple stories. Some young children love to write little books and staple them together. This can be as simple as a few pictures and some letters on pages. The emphasis is on getting very comfortable with language and its power to communicate.

Beginning readers need to know their letters and sounds as well as the concept of how letters in words, going from left to right, make sounds. It is helpful to talk about this at home as you read with your child. As they write and read at home, talk about the sounds they are hearing and encourage them to begin saying and writing the sounds. Point to the words as you are reading and encourage your child to do this. They will use many strategies to figure out words (picture clues and their own experiences) and adding this element of sounds gives them more information to draw upon. Reading lots of books that feature great characters and good stories that make children want to read is at the center of creating lifelong readers. When they also begin to be able to actually read words themselves, the sense of accomplishment is fun to watch. As you look for books in the library, try to choose books that have print that is large enough for young readers and have a few words they can read themselves. Often when you go to the library, it is very difficult for young children to make choices about "just right" books, so lots of guidance and advice from the librarian is necessary. As you read with and to your child, talk about what is going on with the characters and any problems that have come up (or just the fun in the story, poem, etc.). Pretend you aren’t sure what is happening or what might happen and see it your child can "help" you. Make an obvious mistake that changes totally what is going on in the story and help you child learn to listen for these. Then as they read more and more, they will learn to pick out little mistakes in their own reading. Reading familiar books over and over continues to be very valuable, even in First Grade.

These first years are so wonderful in all ways and in the area of early literacy the changes and growth are so exciting to watch. Enjoy this journey!!!

I hope the beginning of the school year has gotten off to a good start for all of you. Going from a relaxing summer schedule into a new schedule and routine can take some time to get used to. After many years of sending my kids off to school here are a few ideas to start the new school year off in a positive direction:

Set Routines: Establishing good set routines right from the beginning will help your child off to a successful start. Children need a schedule they can depend on - one that includes definite times for homework, meals, and sleep. Then work around those times to include the extras.

Limit TV and Video games: Decide how much of this kind of free time to allow and stick to it. Otherwise these activities can consume too much of your child’s time.

Share Time Reading: Continue to set time to share reading with your children, even after they can read by themselves. This allows them to enjoy stories that may be too difficult for them to read alone. For variety, try reading newspapers, magazines, and even the comic strips.

Discuss the Day: Take a few minutes every day to look at what your child brings home from school. Talk about the schoolwork together. This shows that you care about the things your child spends most of the day doing.

Finally, as a family discuss ways you can spend time together that are enjoyable for everyone and schedule this into your week. Celebrate your family!

I would like to offer a computer class to the residents of East Kingston. The class would include an introduction to the MS Windows operating system, using email and the Internet, and learning to use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Look for more on computer classes on our website www.sau16.org and the monthly "East Kingston Newsletter."

Tree of Kindness

Have you noticed the Tree of Kindness in the lobby? The leaves are in honor of students who have performed random acts of kindness. The tree was created and is maintained by our classroom assistants. Each Friday during the school’s morning meeting our principal will announce the weekly additions to the Tree of Kindness, and those students will be acknowledged.

During the next few months vision and hearing screening will be conducted in the school. It is important that students are screened annually during their growing years. The purpose of the screening program is to identify those children who have no vision concerns or hearing loss. Young children are curious about their health. Prior to the screening, the children will be informed about the purpose and procedures to be followed. If a vision or hearing problem is identified, the child will be rescreened in one or two weeks.

If your child is found to have a vision or hearing concern following the second examination, you will be notified by the school nurse. Vision and hearing screenings are opportunities to integrate health education concepts by explaining how the eyes and ears function. If you have any questions, please contact me.

October is National Children’s Health Month, sponsored by the American Association of Pediatrics. November National Smoke Free Month, sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

Children’s Health Web Sites

www.coal.org - National Association of Children

www.aap.org - American Academy of Pediatricians

www.tobaccofreekids.org - Tobacco Prevention Program

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Last Updated:  Thursday, July 19, 2007