Bruneau Elementary Newsletter
March 10, 2017 Issue 10
Upcoming Events
March 11th BES Winter Carnival
March 13th Teacher Inservice
March 14th BES Teacher/Student Basketball Game 4pm & Dinner 5pm
March 21st BES Student Led Conferences 4-8
March 24th Early Release
March 27th-April 3rd Spring Break
Free Community Dinner
Student vs. Staff Basketball Games
Games will run from 4:00 - 4:50pm. The elementary students will be facing district staff in a healthy game of basketball at Bruneau Elementary and Grand View Elementary. Come out and root for the players! (Students must return permission slip to stay after school).
Free Community Dinner
Students will be served after the basketball game, and parents are encouraged to join. Dinner for our community members begins at 5:15 - ALL ARE WELCOME!. The dinner is sponsored in part by Grand View PTA, Bruneau PTO, & Rimrock Boosters. Our menu consists of hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, and soda or water. This is a great time to socialize with friends and neighbors.
Thank you for supporting our schools!
School Improvements
New Swings: John and Brian installed new swing seats for our playground.
New Playground Equipment: Bruneau Elementary was able to purchase new playground equipment using our chocolate bar fundraising money from 2016. We were able to get new hula hoops, scoop balls, throwing discs, 4-square balls, basketballs, and volleyballs.P.E.: Using money from a $200 U.S. Ecology grant, Mrs. Pearson was able to purchase new scooters for P.E.
Classroom News
K/1 Miss Wampler
In math k/1 studnets have been using information they gather during class surveys (ex. What is your favorite fruit?) to make tally charts and bar graphs that represent their data. They have been working on answering questions about the bar graphs using the key words, total, altogether, how many more, and how many fewer. The goal is for students to create their own survey, tally chart, bar graph, and questions to use with their classmates.
2/3 Ms. Prucker
I’m very proud of with how hard the students are working on their travel project. They have so many fun ideas about what a vacation should look like. We have everything from exploring the mountains to bird watch to someone who wants to take a fabulous Hawaiian cruise.
Everyone is doing much better on their math facts. You can really see that most of them have been practicing at home a lot more. Even if they are only able to work on them a few minutes each night it will really make a difference. We even had one second grader and one third grader who got perfect scores on a recent math facts test. I was so very impressed with their hard work.
4/5 Mrs. Kangas-Hanes
Spring in the Bruneau Garden
On a warm fall day, long before winter came crashing in, the 4th and 5th Grrrrr Raiders took our learning out to our beautiful, but neglected garden. We discovered a surprise, Asian Pears, crispy and sweet, ready to be picked and devoured by eager students. In years past our garden was a place of wonderment, but as sometimes happens, the past three years were filled with diversions and the garden had become much neglected.
As we sat in our neglected garden, celebrated with wonder how resilient the environment was, our class decided to breathe new life into the space. Each grade is working on Project Based Learning, using a real life question as a catalyst to learning, and we decided that our garden could offer us a bountiful harvest of learning and nutrition.
Our magical fall day in the garden inspired us to breathe life into our garden. We launched our PBL in the garden by attending a lecture by Jim Duthie, Meteorologist and Master Gardener. We are now exploring the world of animal and plant cells, and the structures of plants. We have become vermiculturists…Mrs. K likes to call it our worm ranch, in order to learn about how soil is enriched with organic matter.
On Wednesday our Junior Master Gardener Handbooks arrived and today we cracked the covers. In the next week, parents of students in 4th and 5th will see a note from Mrs. K about the JMG Certificate. This program was developed by Texas A&M, in conjunction with the University of Idaho Extension Service. Once the students complete given activities (16) and leadership/service projects (8) they will qualify as Certified Junior Master Gardeners. This is a perfect integration of STEM and language arts in real-world problem-solving that needs addressed right here on our campus.
More news will be coming with each newsletter. If you are interested in helping in any way, please contact Mrs. Kangas-Hanes right away…we are all learning together, come join us! As John Haywood once said, “Many hands make light work.”
Music Ms. Volk
The highlight of 3rd quarter so far has been the field trip that Bruneau’s 4th and 5th graders took on Wednesday, March 8. They went with Grand View Elementary to see a Children’s Concert put on by the Boise Philharmonic. All the students loved the performance, which was set to the theme of Outer Space. They heard two movements from The Planets by Gustav Holst and were also treated to several film scores like Star Wars, Star Trek: Into Darkness and E.T.
In the classroom, students have been preparing final projects to show off to parents at Parent Teacher Conferences. Ms. Prucker’s class is creating rhythm sentences based on their favorite sports and Mrs. Hanes’ class is creating recorder melodies based on their favorite rhythms. Ms. Wampler’s class has been working hard at labeling instruments and exploring different ways to move in the music room.