Lovettsville Connection
December 2022
Dear Parents and Students,
November was a month filled with wonderful opportunities for learning and sharing with each other and the community. A highlight this month was our Veterans Day Assembly. Under the leadership of our music team, Mr. Ford, and Mrs. Stetz, we celebrated over 70 veterans from our community who represented all branches of the military. Our 5th graders also participated in the Town of Lovettsville Veterans Day Ceremony which was a special celebration of our veterans at the Lovettsville Volunteer Fire and Rescue Station Banquet Hall. We appreciate all the time people spent preparing our Wall of Heroes which created such a warm welcome for our Veterans and the community. We also appreciate our amazing LOV PTO for organizing the coffee and delicious treats for our veterans to enjoy prior to the ceremony.
We are excited to share that the volunteers we are seeing in the building continues to increase. Your support is always appreciated, and we enjoy having you in the building supporting what our students are learning. If you are interested in volunteering, please be sure to reach out to the PTO or your child’s teacher.
The PTO hosted our first Holiday Photo Fundraiser and provided the staff with your words of kindness and delicious pies. We can’t thank them enough for all they do for the school and the community. If you haven’t already joined the PTO, please consider doing so and join us at all their amazing events.
We look forward to a busy December as we wrap up 2022 and prepare for all the fun 2023 will bring.
Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy holiday season!
Respectfully,
Linda Textoris
Principal
Happy December!
Thank you so much for all your support with the Original Works orders! We had a very successful ordering season, and we hope you enjoy your holiday gifts for years to come. Original Works items will be going home with your child the week of December 12th. Thank you again for supporting our LOV art department and your child’s love of the arts.
Here is what our busy LOV artists have been up to…
Kindergarten: I’m so impressed with the Kindergarteners! They are great at following directions and we have been having a blast with some directed drawings. I’m loving their latest turkey watercolor art projects!
1st Grade: We will be learning about value in art, and adding highlights and shade to our artwork. We are pairing up our new art skill with a snowman art project.
2nd Grade: 2nd graders are busy glazing their pinch pots and finishing their Navajo paper rugs. Be on the lookout for pottery coming home soon!
3rd Grade: We coordinated with the 3rd grade team and are working on our own Balloon’s Over Broadway art project! It’s been a blast seeing their creativity come to life!
4th Grade: 4th graders are working on special winter art projects and diving deeper into learning more about the elements of art. I’m overwhelmed with the talent in this grade!
5th Grade: 5th graders will be glazing their clay projects (not giving away any surprises!) and starting a textile art project.
Sending my warmest holiday wishes to you all! I’m so thankful that I get to be your child’s art teacher, and I look forward to the amazing things we will do in 2023!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Rancourt
LOV Art Teacher
Hello Lovettsville Families ~
We will be wrapping up Lesson #4 from Second Step Bullying Prevention Curriculum in the first part of December. This lesson will focus on bystanders and upstanders (K-3) and cyberbullying (4 -5). The school and home partnership is a vital component of successful bullying prevention. As always please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns.
Please click HERE for the Second Step Bullying Prevention Follow Up Home Links for the classroom lessons being taught in each grade level. Thank you!
Good Digital Citizenship
The holiday season often brings new technology into many households. We encourage you to take a few minutes to visit https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ and check out the Parents Need to Know section. You will find current information on social media, gaming, security and privacy, and reviews of current media.
As we have experienced in the last few years more than ever, technology is here to stay both in and out of school! It continues to be extremely important for parents and educators to work together to ensure we are teaching children how to appropriately navigate the digital world.
Special November Classroom Lessons
The classroom school counseling lesson prior to Thanksgiving focused on GRATITUDE. All K-5 classrooms discussed the definition of gratitude, how we can focus on taking time each day to be grateful, and sharing something they are grateful for. We created pictures, Gobble Grams, played games, and our 2-5th grade students each created a leaf to display on our hallway Gratitude Trees.
CONTACT INFORMATION Katie Routzahn: Monday - Friday Supporting grades Parrish, Stokley, 1st, 2nd, Gary, Kamholtz, Sjostedt, Ciancio, Condon, 5th Cindy Walton: Monday & Thursday Supporting: Miller, Robic, Meadows, Deater & Wise 540-751-2470
Our School Counseling Webpage: https://www.lcps.org/domain/29416
Students have been busy in library!
Students in grades 3-5 completed digital breakouts before Thanksgiving. Breakouts are a series of puzzles that they must figure out and complete the breakout. We will continue doing virtual breakouts as well as learning about using the Makey Makeys for a special project in grades 3 and 4. Students in fifth grade will begin working on a special project in collaboration with art. More information will be in the next newsletter.
Grades K-2 continued to work on making predictions and connections with stories that were read aloud. Students in K-2 also had the opportunity to get creative with LEGOS, Keva Planks, Duplo Blocks, and MagnaForms.
Students in 3-5 were introduced to World Book Online and Britannica Image Quest. Students were able to explore the various links withing World Book Online. It is not only an online encyclopedia, but there are educational games to play, images and videos to watch on many topics, a dictionary, maps, science projects, and famous people.
K-2 students were able to learn how to access Pebble Go and World Book Online early Learners. These resources can also be found in LCPSGO under the Library Resources folder.
Be on the look out for a winter reading challenge to complete over the holidays!
Happy reading!
Music Update - December
Students have been singing, playing, dancing, and composing to music. In the month of December, students in Kindergarten and First grade continue to find their voice through vocal exploration activities and singing games. Second grade students are engaging in singing and rhythm games to reinforce new rhythm concepts in music. Students will also start to learn the joys of solfege! Third, Fourth, and Fifth grade students will be learning about the treble clef staff. Students will also compose complex rhythms for unpitched percussion instruments.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Winter Chorus Concert - Please join us on Wednesday, Dec. 14th at 6 pm for our Winter Chorus Concert. The concert will be held in the Cafetorium and will feature our 5th Grade Chorus.
The Musical Playground (With Experiments) - Instruments, Games, Singing, EXPERIMENTS, oh my!!! Join Mr. Ford in playing music games, creating instrument ensembles, doing music experiments, and so much more!! You can sign up for the winter ASP by clicking this link https://www.lovpto.org/events/asp/
Mr. Ford thanks all parents for your support of our music program! Please feel free to contact him anytime through email at antonio.ford@lcps.org !
PE News
In PE, we have introduced a fun way to give student choices. For daily warmups exercises and activities, students are given a choice from 8 different ways to exercise. They can choose any 5 and do them by themselves or with friends. It is a simple example of Personalized Learning in PE.
Next on our activity calendar is MAGIC club (a throwing and catching unit), and some fun seasonal games with teamwork.
Special Garden News
The carrots that all PE classes plant in September are doing great! Each week all classes have time to water and weed the plants to help them grow. We plan to harvest them right before winter break!
Please contact Hugh.Brockway@lcps.org if you have any questions or concerns.
Help Your Child Discover the Joy of Creativity!
The SEARCH program organizes its curriculum around the 5 Thinking Keys: Perceiving, Connecting, Reasoning, Creating, and Evaluating. Perhaps your student has come home and mentioned that he/she used connecting thinking that day in SEARCH to solve puzzles, or learned to do a logic puzzle using reasoning thinking, or practiced making decisions supported by facts and reasons using evaluating thinking. Quite often, perhaps, your student mentions that the day’s SEARCH lesson focused on creating thinking. Why is this so important in the SEARCH curriculum? Is it really all that valuable to practice being creative? Does it matter if children learn the 4 thinking strategies and processes to creativity (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration)?
"What is so odd about odd numbers?”
“That's not the kind of question most high school seniors expect to find on their college admission applications. But it is one of the essay options that applicants to the University of Chicago faced in their quest for a coveted freshman berth.
It is the kind of mind-stretching, offbeat or downright freaky essay question that is becoming more common these days…” (Los Angeles Times)
Even though it may seem to be in the very distant future for our elementary students, it’s interesting to read that colleges and universities are more and more often asking students to demonstrate creativity during the application process.
So, then how can parents help encourage creativity in their child?
Gail Post, Ph.D. offers a few tips for parents in her blog, Gifted Challenges, part of Hoagie’s Gifted Education Page.
- Emphasize the activity, not the outcome
- Shake up the routine
- Any activity can be creative (ANY activity, school subject or career)
- Banish perfectionism
- Support the traits that support creativity (plasticity, divergence, and convergence)
- Encourage reflection
Give your child the gift of creative freedom—it’s one of the most valuable gifts you’ll ever give!
Computer Science Week has been celebrated around the globe since December 2009. The main goals of this week are to inspire students in grades K-12 to learn about computer science, celebrate the contributions of students, teachers and experts, and to advocate for equity in the computer science field. The week’s finale is the Hour of Code, which is an initiative that creates a fun and creative way for students to be introduced to the ideas and concepts of computer science.
Students at Lovettsville will be participating in a variety of computer science activities to celebrate this week. Some classes will be using our Lego Spike kits to build and code. Others will be using our Blue Bot coding robots to practice addition and multiplication skills. Many students will be getting an introduction to Scratch and completing activities from CS First, which is Google’s coding platform. Some classes will get an introduction to coding and complete an “unplugged” coding activity. Mrs. Wetmore and I will also be pairing up to teach a Makey Makey lesson to several grades during library class. All of these coding activities will allow students to use critical thinking skills while creating, collaborating, and communicating with their peers.
Check out the choice boards below or links in my Schoology Technology Help course to help encourage your students to continue learning about coding outside of school. Happy coding!
Computer Science Week - December 5-9, 2022
PTO Reminders:
PTO Meeting - December 9 @7:45 in the cafeteria. Please come early for coffee and treats and stay after to help assemble felt holiday wreaths for the Bear's Den.
Winter After School Programs - Signups start Monday, December 5 at noon. Join the PTO and get early access starting Friday, December 2.
Lovettsville Elementary School
Email: linda.textoris@lcps.org
Website: lcps.org/lovettsville
Location: 49 South Loudoun Street, Lovettsville, VA, USA
Phone: 540-751-2470
Twitter: @LovettsvilleES