Speaking of Spring! I am looking for parent volunteers for a new committee I am starting soon. The goal of this committee will be to assist MES in creating a community garden. The goal for our community garden will be to teach our students gardening skills, planning skills and responsibility. Growing up I learned so much by getting my hands dirty and working with my family in our garden. I want to create a space here at MES that our students can experience the joy of growing our own food.

If you are interested in serving on this committee, please call the school office 936-276-3600.

Hello Bearcat Families! Can you believe we are already in the month of February? This school year is going by so quickly. February is the start of a few busy months of testing for our students. Some of our Kindergarten-5th grade students will be participating in TELPAS testing during this month as well as the month of March.

I would like to say thank you to our families for helping us reach our goal of improving our campus daily attendance rate. Having your students attend school regularly not only helps them be successful, but also helps us reach our goal. During the month of January, our campus attendance rate was 95.43%!

Keeping students and staff members safe is our top priority at Montgomery Elementary. Please remember all visitors must sign in at the front office. As much as we love to have parents visit for lunch, due to safety, medical concerns, and allergies parents visiting during lunch are only permitted to provide lunch for their child/children. Thank you for your help in keeping MES safe!

Happy February Bearcat Family!

Our focus for February is KINDNESS and we will be celebrating Kindness Week from February 13th – 16th (No school on February 17th.) The phrase “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” was coined by Anne Herbert in 1982. She wrote it first on a placemat in Sausalito, California and it eventually turned into a children’s book called “Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”, which was published in 1993. Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) week was eventually created to show the world the positive effects of kindness on all who witness the act with efforts to try to make the world a better place for all. As we celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Week at school, I encourage you to do the same at home! A fun way to celebrate would be to have a Kindness Jar that your family can pull out of each day – make it suit your family! Some ideas to write on pieces of paper to draw from could be –

• Make someone smile today!
• Be encouraging to someone today!
• Make art for someone!
• Help clean up!
• Write someone a nice note/letter and give it to them!
• Send a card to someone who means a lot to you!
• Send a kind text to someone!
• Smile at everyone you see today!
• Help someone!

You may visit www.randomactsofkindness.org for free resources in helping instill and promote a kind and nurturing home environment!

Let us cultivate kindness and make it our norm!

Blessings,

Mrs. Skrehot

Hearing and Vision referrals: If you received a referral for your child, please return the paperwork to me once they have seen a doctor. I am still working on screening so you may get a referral letter for your child in February as well. Thank you for your help with this!

PreK will continue to investigate Making Music Unit.

• How can we make music with our voices?
• What different styles of music are there? How do they make us feel?
• Who works with music for their jobs? What tools do they use?

Reading

• Identify and describe the main characters in folktales and legends
• Make inferences and use evidence to support understanding
• Describe the setting in a story
• Describe the plot of a story
• Describe personal connections to different texts
• Recognize the central idea and supporting evidence
• Recognize characteristics and structures of informational text
• Discuss the author’s purpose for writing the text

Writing

• Writing about our own lives-personal narratives
• Writers will sketch and write a beginning, middle and end across pages
• Writers will use story details
• Writers will make their writing the best it can be

Math

• Composing and decomposing numbers 2-10
• Composing/addition with totals of 6-10
• Decomposing/subtraction from 10
• Patterns with adding 0 and 1
• Making 10

Science

• Objects in the sky
• Living and non-living

Social Studies

• Weather
• Adapting to Our location
• Modifying Our Location
• Culture

Phonics

• Digraphs (th, ch, sh, wh, ph, ck)
• Closed syllables
• the 3 sounds of -ed
• vowel families (-old, -ost)

Reading

• Unit 6:Literary & Persuasive Stories Teach Many Lessons
• Unit 7: Informational & Drama Text Past, Present, and Future

Writing

• Writing Reviews
• Poems that describe our world

Math

• Module 4: Place Value
• Comparison
• Addition
• Subtraction to 40

Science

• Objects in the sky
• Seasons day & Night

Social Studies

• Culture
• Folktales & Legends

Language Arts

• Literary Text
• Poetry
• oo and au/aw vowel teams
• Compound words
• Diagraphs

Math

• Module 6 - Foundations of Multiplication
• Division
• Area

Social Studies

• Human Processes
• Conservation
• Culture

Science

• Weather
• Objects in the Sky

Reading

• Starting unit 6 called "Decision, Decision". Students will study character traits, lessons learned by characters, and theme.

Math

• We will finish up our area unit and move into discovering fractions, with some fun food activities.

Science

• The next couple of weeks will be a lot of fun learning about weather, sun, and space.

Social Studies

• We will move from maps and landmarks to learning about culture and cultural heritages.

ELA

• In reading, we will be diving deeper into Literary Texts. We will study author’s voice and purpose, how characters change the dynamics of a story, plot, and other elements of drama. In writing, we will wrap up our opinion piece and have some fun with figurative language through poetry.

SS

• This month in social studies our 4th graders will Celebrate Freedom. They will discover how Texas was involved in The Civil War. Also, the students will learn about the Reconstruction of Texas and Settling the Texas Frontier.

Math

• In math, your 4th grader will spend Valentine's month developing a LOVE for fractions!

Science

• This month in science, we will examine the continuous movement of water on the Earth through the water cycle and explore the various patterns on Earth such as seasons, moon phases, and the day-night cycle.

Science

• Transpiration & the Water Cycle

Social Studies

• American Revolution

ELAR

• Struggles for Survival
• Elements of Folktale
• Connections
• Theme
• Context Clues

Math

• Ordered Pairs on a Plane
• 2-D Shapes

February is National Heart Health Month! Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. During this month, let's take steps to understand the importance of a healthy heart and actions we can take to live a heart healthy life.

Heart healthy tips:

• Limit screen time to less than 2 hours per day
• Enjoy outdoor activities
• Get involved in sports / routine exercise
• Give gifts that promote fitness like a jump rope, trampoline, bike, basketball, etc.
• Eat healthy snacks and meals

This month in PE we will be learning jump rope! Jump rope is a low-cost activity that can be enjoyed at almost any stage of life. A jump rope can be carried with you anywhere and is a fun way to stay healthy!

Reasons why jumping rope is good for your child:

• Cognitive and emotional benefits
• Creativity
• Better balance and coordination
• Stronger bones
• Self-Esteem
• Muscular strength and endurance

Ask your child about their progress in becoming a "jump rope ninja"! I challenge you to provide your children with a jump rope at home and enjoy letting them teach you some of the things they learn and accomplish during this PE unit.

Much love,

Coach Carpenter

Hello!!

Next week, February 6-10, we have a HUGE surprise coming to the art room. We will have a particularly bright unit of study happening, and I am asking students to wear neon colors or white on the day they come to art! Additionally, I would like to invite parents to come to art with their kiddo this week! We’d love for you to come along and show off what we do here in the art classroom! **Mrs.Reibenstein, Hendon, & Smyth’s class – ask your child which class they travel with.**

Calling all doodlers: Have you ever seen the doodles on google? Your child’s doodles could be next!! If your kiddo wants to enter the Doodle for Google competition – they can pick up entry forms in my classroom. The theme this year is “I am grateful for…”! They can create their Doodle using any material they want. Be sure the form is filled out completely and signed by a parent/guardian. Then you can either submit it digitally at doodle4google.com or send it in to Miss Petty! Entries are due by March 7.

As always, thank you for your support of the ARTS!!

Sincerely,

Miss Petty, Art Teacher

There is a lot of love going around in the month of February...and what better way to express it than through music!

*5th Graders are reviewing notation, dynamics and musical styles while beginning to play ukuleles.

*4th graders are traveling to the world of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as they rehearse for their upcoming production of "Joust, A Medieval Musical" that will be performed on Thursday, February 23rd at 6:30pm on the MES stage! They have also started their exciting journey with recorders!

*3rd Graders are adding sixteenth notes to their repertoire as they explore notes and rests.

*2nd Graders are learning to improvise with the pentatonic scale and are beginning work on their musical performance of "Circus, Circus!" which will be presented on March 23rd at 6:30pm on the MES stage!

*First Graders are studying all about pitches, intervals and melodic direction.

*Rhythmic patterns and meter are the focus of our Kindergarteners.

*PreK is exploring the dynamics of loud and soft in music!

*K-3 will also be working on their musicianship by playing our Orff Instruments!

*Our 5th Grade MES Bearcat Choir members will be joining those of all of the other MISD elementary schools for our 4th Annual MISD 5th Grade District Choir Performance at Montgomery High School on February 7th at 6:00pm. Come join us for an evening of beautiful music!

*We hope that you can come and support the MES Bearcat Choir as they sing the National Anthem at the Texas A&M Men's Basketball Game at Reed Arena in College Station on Wednesday, February 15th! Pregame begins at 7:30pm. Please be sure to visit our link to purchase discounted tickets for our special MES Spirit Section!

https://fevo.me/montgomeryelementarynationalanthem

Gig 'em, Aggies!

​

*Our MES Bearcat Choir will also be singing the National Anthem for the Sam Houston State University Men's Basketball Game on Saturday, February 25th. Stay tuned for details!

*Did you know that we have TWO Destination Imagination Teams at MES this year! The Rubber BanDITs and the Texas Bluebonnet Puzzlers have been hard at work on their challenges for the Texas Regional competition on Saturday, February 18th! We are so proud of all of their creativity, ingenuity, and hard work and wish them all of the best!

*The cast of "James and the Giant Peach, Jr." will be beginning rehearsals this month for their production at Montgomery High School in May of this year. We are super excited about this production, funded by the Montgomery ISD Education Foundation! What an amazing experience this is going to be for cast and audience alike!! It will be quite a "masterpeach" to behold!

*Coming up soon will be our MES Talent Show! Auditions are on Monday, March 6th after school at 4:15 pm, so right now is a great time to begin rehearsing your act!

Thank you always for your support and for giving us the opportunity to share a love for music together! - Cindy Siple

“Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.” - Maria von Trapp