GES Grey Wolf Gazette
December 9, 2022
End 68 Hours of Hunger Program Information
Happy December!!
Dear Greenfield Families and Friends,
We enjoyed another successful week of learning together at GES. Mr. Shapiro returned for our second rotation of Art. We are getting outside as much as possible and we are also anxiously awaiting the first real snowfall of the season!
Please note: The ConVal School Board voted to make Friday, December 23rd a NO SCHOOL day for staff and students at this week's board meeting. Our last day of school before the holiday break will be Thursday, December 22nd.
Our third episode of Gabbing with Grey Wolves is currently in production and will be released the week of December 13th! You can look forward to interviews with Mr. Jeremy Griffus who brought us all the fun science activities on STEAM Day and Mr. Zak Shapiro, our new Art Teacher! The 4th graders are busy creating new content and are really having fun with this!
With temperatures dropping and snow on the horizon please be sure to send in cold weather gear for outdoor learning and recess. We do have a supply of extra jackets and gloves available, but it's helpful for students to have their own gear to wear. Please label jackets, snow pants and boots in order to avoid any confusion! Many children have black or blue snow pants and it can be hard to figure out who things belong to sometimes!
The GES PTO is sponsoring two fundraisers right now! If you're looking for beautiful holiday decorations for your home or as a gift, check out the Lynch Creek Farm fundraiser! They have wreaths, garlands, centerpieces and more! They are gorgeous and they last a long time! You pick your ship date and items are delivered to your door! If you're already dreading all the cooking the holiday season why not order some make at home pizzas to keep in the freezer? Use this link for the Little Caesar's Pizza Fundraiser. The kits are delivered to your door and are easy to freeze and use whenever you need a quick meal!
UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES-PLEASE CHECK AND ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR!
12/9/22: First trimester report cards will be coming home today! Please check your child's backpack!
12/12-12/16/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
12/19-12/23/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
12/22/22: Solstice Day! Last Day of School before the Holiday Break!
12/23/22-1/2/23: Holiday Break!
1/3-1/6/23: Special: Music with our new Music teacher-Mrs. Neilssen! We are excited to meet and make music with her!
1/4/23: GES PTO Meeting at 5:30 in the Library. Childcare is available if needed.
1/9-1/13/23: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
1/16/23: No School: MLK Day
1/17-1/20/23: Special: Art with Mr. Shapiro
1/23-1/27/23: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
S.E.L Corner with Mrs. Styren
Hi everyone! We hope you've had another great week and hope these resources will help you navigate the holiday season as an even more confident parent!
Resource of the Week:
- Common Sense Media - This is one of my favorite resources, as both a parent and educator. Here, you can search everything from the book your child is reading to a movie you want to watch as a family but don't have time to pre-screen! Parents and educators have shared their own reviews, and there are recommendations for appropriate ages for almost everything, with comments as to why. Sadly, there is now a paid version, but I haven't run into the need to subscribe just yet
Article of the Week:
- How to Make Elf on the Shelf a Self-Esteem Building Tradition - The "article" this week is a video from Big Little Feelings, a Facebook/Instagram blog account that I love love love! Elf on the Shelf is quite popular, though not for everyone (I, myself, do not have one and am not sure if we'll do it when my kids are in elementary school). It can be very fun - Elves doing silly things certainly brings alive the magic of the season! The key takeaway here is to make sure that when you refer to Santa or an Elf watching your children, that you not refer to them as "good" or "bad" - all kids are "nice" and we all make mistakes from time to time. We need to be sure to use those mistakes as a learning opportunity, rather than labeling them as "bad" or "naughty." So have fun with Elf on the Shelf, or whatever you do, but refrain from tying whether or not your child will get a present to their behavior.
Sidenote: Big Little Feelings also has an email newsletter and I receive tips every week and have found them so helpful for helping to validate children's feelings while also teaching them perspective-taking and how to move forward with their big feelings
Family Activity:
- Pick a night and decorate together! Spending time together as a family is always important, but there is so much going on this time of year, that it's even more important to slow down and enjoy in a family activity together. I am reminded of cutting snowflakes - it's one of my favorites, as there are templates, but once you've folded into triangles, there's almost nothing that won't turn into a beautiful and unique snowflake! It's fun, and very empowering for kids to be able to do something on their own that turns into something truly beautiful that they can help decorate with! Check out the template below-it's just one of many you can find online!
Thank you and have a wonderful weekend/week ahead!
Kristina Styren, Ed.S., NCSP
School PsychologistKindergarten News from Mrs. Hodgen
Literacy: This week we learned about two new letters with Noisy Nick and Peter Puppy in LetterLand. We are starting to practice blending sounds together and tapping them apart to read and spell two and three sound words with short vowel sounds!
Science & Social Studies: This week we started talking about wants and needs. Students have been great at identifying things that they need to live versus things that are wants but we don’t really need.
SEL: How to handle frustration and what tools work for us when we are frustrated.
Read Aloud: We are now on chapter 6 of Ramona the Pest. We have also been reading all of the Bear books by Karma Wilson over the last two weeks.
First Grade News from Mrs. Barnes
Literacy: We are reading and spelling words with four or even five sounds that have beginning and ending blends. We've begun to work with silent-e words too! We are reading out loud every day to build our fluency. We are really excited to welcome Mrs. LaChance into our classroom to work on some fun writing in small groups! She read us The Jolly Postman books and we are excited to practice writing letters to some of the characters.
Science & Social Studies: We studied animal survival, adaptations, and relationships through our reindeer research.
SEL: We practiced using strategies to identify how our friends are feeling.
Classroom Counseling Focus with Mrs. Lofstedt
Kindergarten: This week we learned about compassion. Students looked at pictures and identified how compassion was being shown. We reviewed a variety of scenarios to determine if they were examples of compassion or not. Students then drew a picture showing an example of how to show compassion.
1st grade: We continued our empathy unit with a lesson about listening to voices and thinking about a situation to give us more clues about a person’s feelings. Students looked at pictures and considered the situations to determine how the students were feeling.
2nd Grade: We finished our bullying prevention unit with a lesson about being upstanders. Students learned the difference between bystanders and upstanders. We discussed the four ways bystanders can become upstanders by helping to stop bullying: be a buddy, interrupt, speak out (refuse), and/or tell an adult (report). Students reviewed a variety of scenarios and identified ways bystanders intervened and became upstanders to help stop bullying.
3rd Grade: We continued our unit on empathy with a lesson about considering the perspectives of others. We watched a video that demonstrated how feelings about a situation can change when you consider another person’s perspective. Students listened to a story and then worked together to identify each character’s perspective of the situation. Students then reviewed a variety of scenarios and practiced identifying the different perspectives of people.
4th Grade: This week we began our Bullying Prevention Unit with a lesson about recognizing, reporting, and refusing bullying. We reviewed the definition of bullying and reviewed video and scenarios to practice identifying bullying situations. Students worked with a partner to practice reporting and refusing bullying.
For more information about my counseling program, please visit my website at https://sites.google.com/conval.edu/lofstedt/home
Good News from Mrs. Goodspeed's 2nd Grade Classroom!
During Literacy we practiced reading and spelling words with -tch. We have been reading fairy tales, fables, and folktales. Second graders are working hard to complete a book report about a fairytale they chose.
We have been studying holidays around the world. This week we visited Italy, England, Canada, and Israel. We made stockings for the Italian Befana (Christmas Witch) to fill with treats and UK Christmas crackers to exchange. We also played dreidel after learning about Hanukkah. It has been a fun week traveling around the world and we’re looking forward to learning about more holiday traditions next week!
We have been talking about how we can change our negative thought into a positive thought and persevering through a challenge.
Read Alouds we are enjoying include Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Lon Po Po, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Tricky Trolls, Christmas Magic, The Snowglobe Family, Game of Gnomes, Queen of Christmas, Latkes Latkes Good to Eat, and Hedgie’s Surprise.
Overheard in Third with Ms. Heard
Literacy & Science: In literacy and science this week we continued our study of extreme weather. Each students has become an expert on one type of severe weather and are taking notes that we will use in a research project. Look for an email with an extreme weather presentation in the next few weeks!
SEL: In SEL we continue to learn about the importance of having a growth mindset. We discussed the difference between natural talent and effort and decided that effort is much more important in helping you reach your goals.
Read Aloud: The Magical Yet, The Terrible Two
What's Cooking in Fourth Grade This Week?
Literacy: We read “The Horned Toad Prince” this week and talked about the author's purpose and the moral or message of the story. In writing, students explored a piece of informational text about George Washington Carver. They learned what a gist is in writing, and how to pull facts from the text to include in their paragraphs. Students have been working very hard to improve the mechanics of their writing.
Science: We continued to explore waves of sound, through building cup phones and experimenting with different length strings and varying sized cups. We had a great time playing with the Chrome Music Lab. Ask your student to show you what its all about!
SEL: Listening skills are important in our classroom, and we practiced listening through a really interesting and fun group exercise with the whole class. Each student was given a card with a direction, and they had to perform the act from the card (such as turning the lights on or off) and then follow the direction on their card. We set time goals to get through the activity. It was very challenging and the class made some valuable observations about the importance of listening to the speaker in order to follow the next direction.
Read Aloud: We finished Holes. And students chose the next book: Junie B., First Grader: Jungle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May).
First Friends News from Trish, Savannah and Judy
First Friends students in Trish's room have been busy learning about our forest animals and how they get ready for winter. We learned how to sign the animals for our fall song. With Sue, we were bears hunting for food. Jaime, our Harris Center naturalist, came and played chipmunk games and taught us how chipmunks store food and hibernate for the winter. Alisa made us a kindness poster and we have been covering it with hearts , earning hearts for acts of kindness. Kerry helps with beginning writing skills. We have learned lots of shape names, read books about shapes in our world and made shapes with our playdoh and pattern blocks. We are singing holiday songs and learning the hand signs for Jingle bells. Holiday crafts are abundant in our classroom and we will be making gifts to share for the upcoming holidays. The afternoon group has been learning how to do addition with counters, Letterland characters and letter sounds , rhyming words and the concept of opposites.
First Friends News from Ms. Colleen, Ms. Tracy and Ms. Judy
First Friends students have been busy learning about our forest animals and how they get ready for winter. During our enrichment lesson with Sue, we were bears hunting for food. Jaime, our Harris Center naturalist, came and played chipmunk games and taught us how chipmunks store food and hibernate for the winter. Alisa our social worker made us a kindness poster and we have been covering it with hearts, earning hearts for acts of kindness. Kerry, our OT specialist, has been helping us with beginning writing skills. Our preschool class has started singing holiday songs, the children know a lot of songs already. We have also started holiday crafts and are busy making crafts for families. Preschoolers are playing more math games with counters, learning how to count correctly and match the correct numbers and objects together. We have also been very busy learning our Letterland sounds and characters and how to write our first and last names.
Local Events and Activities
2022-2023 Calendar
Resources
Where to find ConVal District and GES News!
GES has a facebook page! You can find the link here:
https://www.facebook.com/Greenfield-Elementary-School-532738607668635
The ConVal School District has news blog to serve as a hub for the latest updates, information and news about the district’s schools, students, faculty, events and accomplishments.
The blog, ConValNews.com is integrated into the schools and District’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and will automatically broadcast news blog content onto these platforms, connecting directly with the district community.
With a clean, user-friendly and mobile responsive layout, the news blog allows for easy navigation throughout. It can be accessed on computers, cell phones and tablets. Community members can subscribe and be notified by email when new posts are published.
Parents/guardians, students, staff, and community members should still utilize the district’s main website, Convalsd.net, to access the District-wide calendar of events, contact information, school committee meeting notices and minutes, important documents and notices and to view general information about the district and its schools.
Connect with us!
Email: croy@conval.edu
Website: https://ges.convalsd.net/
Location: 860 Forest Road, Greenfield, NH 03047, USA
Phone: 603-547-3334
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Greenfield-Elementary-School-532738607668635
Twitter: @ges_royc