Heavilin Elementary
October 2018 Newsletter
For Your Calendar
9 6:30pm PTO Meeting
10 9:00am Parent Connect
11 Spirit Wear Day
12 No School
17 Heavilin PRIDE Day
19 5:30-7:30pm Freaky Friday Family Event
22-26 Red Ribbon Week
24 Parent Teacher Conferences 4:30-7pm
25 Half Day - Parent Teacher Conferences 1-6pm
26 Half Day
26 Spirit Wear Day
29-Nov 2 Scholastic Book Fair
30 Picture Retake Day
Parent Connect
We are planning a few sessions just for parents this year called “Parent Connect”. Our first session is scheduled for next Wednesday, October 10 at 9:00am. We’d love for you to attend! It should last between 60-90 minutes.
Our topic for this first session has to do with our theme for this year: Give with PRIDE. Stephanie Jones, life coach, speaker and author of The Giving Challenge, will lead our session so we better understand how to help our kids lead more generous lives. Teachers from every grade level will participate in the sessions along with our parents, and there will be plenty of opportunity for dialogue and interaction between parents and with the teachers on the topic.
KidStop, our before and after school child care provider at Heavilin, will be providing free child care for non-school-aged children. If you plan to attend, please RSVP so we have an accurate count for child care.
RSVP here.
You can preview Stephanie's book here.
Parents who attend can enter Door L to check in. The sessions will be held in the cafeteria. We hope you can come!
Parent Teacher Conference Sign Ups
Report Cards
What is Bullying?
Bullying is defined as... repeated, unwanted, and intentional acts that can be verbal, online, written, physical, social/emotional.
Bullying is not...
- momentary, normal peer conflict
- personality conflicts
- a shift in friendship groups
- differences of opinion
- an accident or a momentary emotional outburst
All human beings will disagree and experience conflict at times. That's normal. Accidents, disagreements, and outbursts happen.
Avoid the labels: Research shows that labeling people "bullies" or "targets/victims" makes things worse for everyone and feeds into a fixed mindset.
So, what helps kids? According to the research, the three biggest protective factors for all kids are:
1) Connectedness - kids feel connected in some way to school, to peers, to mentors, to families
2) Higher Purpose - Community service and opportunities to help others are keys to mental health
3) Authoritative Schools and Families - Kids need boundaries and consistency at school and home to feel safe and develop pro-social skills an self-regulation
In Valparaiso Community Schools, we strive each day to provide our students with the opportunities, resilience, wisdom and emotional skill-set needed to grow into healthy, capable adults.
Video Game Reviews
Common Sense Media is the best resource we know of to help parents make technology and media decisions for their kids. If you have not already, we encourage all parents to create an account at www.commonsensemedia.org for all your technology and media parenting resources. Here are two articles about these particular video games:
Fortnite
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-fortnite
Five Nights at Freddy's
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/five-nights-at-freddys
If your kids are asking about playing these games, we encourage you to read up on it before you make a decision.
National School Lunch Week: October 15-19
To recognize the National School Lunch Program and the 30 million children it serves every day, Valparaiso Community Schools will celebrate National School Lunch Week from October 15-19, 2018. The theme, “Lots 2 Love,” encourages students and school nutrition professionals across the country to share what they love most about school lunch programs.
National School Lunch Week will emphasize the nearly one million healthy meals that are served each year at Valpo Schools. Elementary students will compete to name the cafeteria mascots, The Power Up Pals and all students will celebrate Indiana Food Day learning about the radish and sampling unusual varieties of this root vegetable like Purple Ninja, Daikon and Watermelon.
“School lunches are healthier than ever, with more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and less fat and sodium,” said Kathleen Kane, Director of School Nutrition. “National School Lunch Week helps us educate parents, teachers and students about all the benefits of our program to the classroom and to families. We are fortunate to have several newly renovated facilities with state of the art equipment which allow us to expand our culinary skills and offer a wider variety of fresh produce.” Have you tried school lunch lately?
From Our Nurse
We remind parents that the cold months are coming. Please make sure kids are dressed appropriately for the weather, including hats, mittens, scarves, boots and jackets. We go outside unless it is below zero (windchill included.)
Opportunities to Give with PRIDE
From Mrs. Maxwell:
My friend, Shawn Benham, organizes a race each fall to benefit the Christian Food Pantry. I will be helping with the water station this year and thought this would be a great way for Heavilin to "GIVE." The race is Saturday, October 20 beginning at Valplayso. The price to run (or walk) is $20 before October 9 and $25 after October 9, with 100% of proceeds going to the food pantry.
If you do not want to run or walk, you are invited to help me and the other volunteers with the water station or post-race food station or maybe just be part of the cheering section for free! Meet at Valplayso, Sunday, October 20, wear your Heavilin gear to help represent our school in the community.
If you want to run or walk, I will make sure your registration gets to the proper place in time. You can turn registrations into me with a check made out to "First Christian Church Food Pantry" until October 8. I hope to see you at Valplayso on the 20th!
From Mrs. Sibray:
For the October Heavilin PRIDE assembly we are teaming up with a local organization, 500 Turkeys. This year, 500 Turkeys will be distributing food boxes to 1500 families for Thanksgiving. Each Heavilin House will be assigned an item to collect (revealed at our October 17 Heavilin PRIDE day) and our goal is to fulfill our commitment of 200 pieces of that item from the 500 Turkeys list. We are excited to see our students Give with PRIDE! If you would like to learn more about 500 Turkeys, their volunteer, donation and giving opportunities, their website is www.500turkeys.com.
From Our Student Council:
SOCKTOBER (read more below!) At our first meeting, we agreed to launch SOCKTOBER as part of Give with PRIDE. Student Council challenges Heavilin students to bring in new packages of socks to be donated to area shelters. Our goal is to get 400 pairs of socks! When we reach this goal as a school, Heavilin will have a school-wide pajama and silly socks day. Help us collect socks for our community and have fun while doing it! Here is a link to learn more about Socktober!
Student Council News: SOCKTOBER
Congratulations to the 2018-2019 student council. The members are: Katelyn Kass, Ryker Finlay, Lexi Crane, Aaron Lash, Rowan Hatala, Sydney Murvine, Dewyn Taylor, Anya Fry, Olivia Newlin, Cooper Lanterman, Lorelei Murphy, Seth Hasapis, Malayna Bartley, Henry Heisel, Finley Devries, Molly Thieling, Kaenen Bartley, Teagan Lanterman, Ethan Poisel, Haley Campbell, Ava Hearn, Carter Tanis.
President: Kaenen Bartley
Vice-President: Malayna Bartley
Treasurer: Dewyn Taylor
Secretary: Teagan Lanterman
At our first meeting, we agreed to launch SOCKTOBER as part of Give with PRIDE. Student Council challenges Heavilin students to bring in new packages of socks to be donated to area shelters. Our goal is to get 400 pairs of socks! When we reach this goal as a school, Heavilin will have a school-wide pajama and silly socks day. Help us collect socks for our community and have fun while doing it! Here is a link to learn more about Socktober!
WIN
From Mrs. Sibray: Red Ribbon Week
There are so many great things about Fall! One event I look forward to is Red Ribbon Week. This year, we will celebrate being drug free October 22-26. We again will have themed dress up days and contests all in an effort to open discussion about living drug free lives. This year's theme is "LIFE IS YOUR JOURNEY SO TRAVEL DRUG FREE". More about the week's festivities will be coming out in the Red Ribbon Week Newsletter, so be sure to watch for that the week of 10/15. I hope you will take this opportunity to talk with the students in your life about making healthy choices!