October 6th - BES Picture Day

October 11th- School Board Meeting 7pm at Rimrock

October 13th - End of 1st Quarter

October 14th - Teacher Inservice

October 18th & 19th - Parent Teacher Conferences

Bruneau-Grand View Families,

This year I want to give you information from the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids. We will be working through these habits over the course of the year and would love your support at home.

Habit 1—Be Proactive • You’re in Charge

I can’t count how many times my kids have whined, “Dad, we’re so bored. There’s nothing to do,” as if their boredom were somehow my fault. I’ll respond with something like, “So what are you going to do about it?” This usually keeps them out of my hair—at least for a little while. My point is: It’s vital to teach kids to take responsibility for their own lives, for their own fun or boredom, for their own happiness or unhappiness. This is Habit 1—Be Proactive. In other words, take charge of your own life and stop playing the victim.

In the story below, you may want to point out to the kids how Sammy tries to blame everyone else—his mom, his friends, life in general—for his boredom. He wants someone to fix his problem and to help him have fun. After talking with Allie’s Granny, he finally figures out that he’s in charge of making his own fun, and he makes it happen.

Here are some discussion questions for you and your student after watching the story:

1. Why was Sammy bored?

2. Whose fault was it that Sammy was bored? Was it Sophie’s fault? Pokey’s? Lily’s? Goob’s? Jumper’s? Granny’s? Or somebody else’s?

3. What did Allie’s Granny teach Sammy about having fun?

4. Do you ever feel bored? If so, what can you do about it?

5. Who is in charge of the choices you make: you or somebody else?

Kindergarten and first grade have had a busy month. We are enjoying our morning community groups and learning to use the choice wheel and have a growth mindset. In math, kindergarten is working on the ways to make 5 and numbers that are greater or less. First grade is working on finding the missing addend and solving word problems. In science we have been learning about our five senses, living and non-living things, and studying the life cycle of an apple. Our favorite part was making applesauce and learning that apples float.

We have been settling into a nice classroom routine and kept focused on our Growth Mindset. The 2nd and 3rd graders have been working hard. 2nd grade has been focused on solving two-step word problems, as well as long and short vowels. 3rd grade has been working hard on rounding, three-digit subtraction, and mastering multiplication facts. Recently, we had a project where the students had to choose, research, and present an extinct, endangered, or invasive species. It was a fun project but what I loved most were the unique topics—from Narwhals to Caribou, even a Babirusa Pig. Next up will be a campaign project for our economics portion of Social Studies, where students must research a topic then persuade consumers to buy it by creating a paper advertisement. Thanks for everyone’s patience as we settle into this school year!

Having tackled the challenges of adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers over the past couple of weeks, our fourth-grade students are making the transition to learning the basics of multiplication and division that will include various strategies aimed at helping them apply what they’ve learned in real-world situations. Meanwhile, our fifth graders completed a challenging review of calculating the volume of various three-dimensional objects and are now preparing to focus their attention on understanding decimals and how we use these numbers in real-world situations. After reviewing various ways authors tell stories through various genres and text elements, the students are continuing to review how to correctly use various forms of nouns and verbs in their own writing. Meanwhile, their work continues this week to develop a fictional city as part of our project-based learning program. After looking at how various cities in Idaho and other states came into being and continue to grow over the past three weeks, the two teams of students are applying this knowledge as they prepare to build a three-dimensional representation of their own town.

Our September students of the month were chosen for showing a growth mindset at BES.

Each month, we select students from each grade level that have shown outstanding growth on our Istation reading or math assessment to participate in our cape run.

September's students are: Aden Eldridge, Roan Folkman, Blaine Black, and Brylee Folkman.