Hillcrest Newsletter May 24, 2019
Hillcrest School Newsletter
May 2019
Dear Hillcrest Families,
This is the time of year when we are focused on maintaining a careful balance of keeping our students connected to the routines of the current school year while helping them prepare for their upcoming transitions. Keeping up with familiar schedules and routines is essential to school success all year long! While we are sprinkling in special events like field trips and celebrations, we continue to focus on building academic skills and promoting social and emotional learning.
Here are some important highlights regarding transition activities:
- We will be holding Kindergarten Screening Visits for our soon-to-be kindergarten students on the following days: May 28, May 30 and June 3. These short visits are a great way for our incoming students to begin building connections with our team of kindergarten teachers. If you have a current Hillcrest preschooler who will be attending kindergarten next year, your student’s Kindergarten Screening will take place during the school day -- there is no need for you to schedule a special appointment and you do not need to attend the screening session.
- Our current kindergarten students will be visiting the first grade classrooms during the weeks of May 27th and June 3rd. They will spend some time in each classroom and will have a chance to chat with our team of first grade teachers.
- Our first grade students visited Sheffield Elementary School for the May All School Sing on Thursday, May 23rd. They had a fabulous time participating in this Memorial Day-themed event. First graders will return to Sheffield on Tuesday, May 28th to tour the second grade classrooms, eat lunch in the Sheffield cafeteria and play on the Sheffield playground.
- Our preschoolers will celebrate the end of the school year with a festive gathering on Thursday, June 13th. This is annual event involves songs, a family “photo booth,” special preschool certificates and a delicious snack.
- Be sure to mark you calendars with these special events:
- First Grade Visit to Sheffield -- May 28th
- Friends of Hillcrest End of Year Celebration -- Friday, May 31st
- Hillcrest Field Day -- June 4th
- First Grade Field Trip -- June 6th
- Warrior Dash -- June 8th
- Preschool Year End Celebration -- June 13th
- Last Day of School -- June 14th
Wishing you a wonderful weekend ---
Sarah Burstein
Sarah Burstein, Principal
Preschool
These last few weeks of school are flying by! The children are enjoying getting outside more now that we have had some days without rain. They also had the opportunity this past week to visit all the preschool classrooms to play in centers. These integrated days are something the children really look forward to, and another opportunity to have social interactions with friends that they mostly see during lunch and recess only. This is very valuable socialization as the children transition to kindergarten where our preschool classes will be mixed together. We look forward to seeing everyone at our End of the Year Celebration on June 13th @ 9:30 a.m. See you then!
Kindergarten
At this time of the year we’re focusing on keeping our regular routines as much as possible at school.
We are continuing to enjoy the adventures of Jack and Annie in the Magic Tree House books. We are reading as Jack and Annie try to solve 4 riddles in their quest to become master librarians to help Morgan LeFay collect books over time and space!
In math we are focusing on subtraction and 3D shapes. Finding items at home that are shaped as cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, rectangular prisms, and pyramids is a good home extension.
Can your child start counting at 46? 75? 89? Can your child count backwards from 20? 34? 72? Can your child identify the number before or after 36? 99? 61? These skills are easy to practice in the car and are essential building blocks of numeration!
The Kindergarten Team: Ms. Fox, Ms. Hirst, Mrs. Lesenski
1st Grade News
It’s hard to believe that May is almost over! We have just finished our science unit on plants. We learned about plants, their life cycle, their parts and what they need to grow. We started our unit by planting bean plants and observing them as they grew. We learned about what plants need through experiments, read alouds, observations, and discussions. It was very fun and exciting.
In social studies we are continuing our year-long study of National Holidays and National Symbols. We will be learning about Memorial Day and what it means. The first graders will be learning about a variety of National Symbols and their significance. We will learn about The Bald Eagle, The American Flag, The Statue of Liberty and The Liberty Bell. It will be exciting and informative.
In math, we learned about telling time to the hour and half hour. You can help your children to remember the skills we learned in telling time by having them tell you what time it is or pointing out the time whenever you can. We have also learned about shapes, fractions and measuring. We will start working on our math unit about data collection, graphing and comparison problems. We will ask questions about kids’ favorite colors, favorite foods, etc. After we collect the data we will then graph how many kids in the class liked the same thing such as blue, green or red for a color. We will ask questions about which color has the most, the least, how many more picked one color than another color, etc.
Our writing focus has been on writing realistic fiction. We have been creating characters, choosing a setting and writing about a realistic problem and solution. Then we used the same characters in a new setting with a new problem and solution so that we created a series of books like the ones we have been reading –Cam Jansen, Henry and Mudge, etc. The children have learned a lot about realistic fiction reading and writing through this process. We will end the unit by using what we have learned about fiction writing to write fairy tales. The kids are very excited to begin creating their own fairy tales!
Miss Casey, Miss Matrishon, Miss Smith, Mrs. Saylor
English Learner News from Ms. Wulfkuhle
Kindergarten English Learners have been learning about the language of science while studying the weather and sunlight. Some of the questions we've been thinking about are: What is weather? How do we prepare for and protect ourselves from the weather? How does the sun affect our world? How can we use language to describe cause and effect? Students performed some basic experiments and made their own videotaped weather report.
In the First Grade English Learner groups, students have been exploring the traits that make a hero. We have been learning about real people by reading biographies. We have also been exploring fictional characters in folk tales from around the world. Students are expressing their opinions and finding evidence in the texts to support their thinking. Our final project will be to write about a real-life hero of their choosing.
Hello from the Health Office!
I hope everyone has been having lots of outdoor fun now that we have the warm weather back.
Keeping Kids Safe on Wheels (bikes, scooters, skates, and skateboards)
(from American Academy of Pediatrics at www.healthychildren.org
and Safe Kids Worldwide at www.safekids.org)
Choosing the Right Size Bicycle: Your child should be able to sit on the seat, with hands on the handlebars, and place the balls of both feet on the ground. Your child's first bike should also be equipped with footbrakes, since your children's hand muscles and coordination are not mature enough to control hand brakes.
All about Helmets: Your child needs to wear a helmet on every bike ride, no matter how short or how close to home. Many accidents happen in driveways, on sidewalks, and on bike paths, not just on streets. In fact, the majority of bike crashes happen near home. A helmet protects your child from serious injury, and should always be worn. Remember, wearing a helmet at all times helps children develop the helmet habit.
Only a bicycle helmet is made specifically to protect the head from any fall that may occur while biking. Other helmets or hard hats are made to protect the head from other types of injury. Never allow your child to wear another type of helmet when riding a bike.
How should a helmet fit? A helmet should be worn squarely on top of the head, covering the top of the forehead. If it is tipped back it will not protect the forehead. It fits well if it does not move around on the head or slide down over the eyes when pulled. Adjust chinstrap to fit snugly.
Other Safety Tips for Wheeled-Activities:
- It is never safe for your child to ride a bike at night. Night riding requires special skills and special equipment. Few youngsters are equipped with either. Never allow your child to ride at dusk or after dark.
- Your child should always ride on the right, with traffic. Riding against traffic confuses or surprises drivers. Almost one fourth of bicycle-car collisions result from bicyclists riding against traffic.
- Always check equipment before using
- Watch for and avoid road hazards
- Use knee and elbow pads for added protection
Health Office REMINDER: If your child has medication here at school please plan to pick it up on the last day of school. Any medication left behind will be destroyed per school policy.
Many thanks! Nurse Francis