Dear Families:

It has been a powerful week of learning. This week, fourth graders have been creating inventions in the CKLA unit Eureka. This may be one of my favorite lessons of the entire year. It is awe inspiring to hear students create and develop their own inventions and slogans foe well known inventions. Students identify a problem and how to solve it with great thought. See the pictures below.

Ms. Lawson and several students participated in the Colorado Springs All State Choir last weekend at the Broadmoor. A shout out to Ms. Lawson and her students and families for their long hours creating beautiful music!

Thank you to our SAC, School Accountability Committee, for the thoughtful discussion around iReady and DIBELS scores.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Warmly,

Maria

• Feb 9: Meet the High School Principal Candidates @ MSHS, 3:45-4:45pm
• Feb 10: No School for Students - Conference Prep/Staff Work Day
• Feb 16: Half Day - 12:00pm Dismissal - Family Conferences
• Feb 17: No School for Students - Family Conferences
• Feb 20: School Closed - Presidents' Day
• Mar 1: Late Start Wednesday (2 Hour Delay for Students)
• Mar 8: Late Start Wednesday (2 Hour Delay for Students)
• Mar 15: Late Start Wednesday (2 Hour Delay for Students)
• Mar 16: MSES Space Night! @ Space Foundation Discovery Center, 5-7pm
• Mar 22: Late Start Wednesday (2 Hour Delay for Students)
• Mar 27-31: SCHOOL CLOSED - SPRING BREAK!

We had a successful—and fun—fundraiser at Altitude Ninja Gym last month. We raised $345 while building community and supporting a business owned by a Manitou Springs family. A win-win! Thanks to everyone who came out! Save the date for a Trivia Night fundraiser at Manitou Winery on May 6! More details to come!

We’re working to get more families to link their King Soopers Card to MSES, which allows our Parent Action Committee to earn 5% back from your grocery shopping. It’s the easiest way to raise money for our school—just scan the QR code on the attached flyer to sign up. Friends, family, anyone can sign up to help our school. They just need a King Soopers Card.

PAC is contributing half of the cost ($600) for a fun MSES Space Night at the Space Foundation March 16. Stay tuned for details in Mustang Tales! This spring, we plan to award another round of Mini Grants to teachers and staff to support the important work they do with our kids.

Kindergarten students just completed a domain about kings and queens. In this domain, they learned about the role of a king and a queen, the royal family, and listened to many fairy tales that have kings, queens, princes, and princesses as the main characters. Here are a few questions that you can ask your expert:

• Who are the members of a royal family? (king, queen, and their children--boys are princes, and girls and princesses.)
• What is the oldest son called who is the heir to the throne? (Crown Prince)
• What does the queen do to find out if the princess in the story The Princess and the Pea is a “real princess?” (She puts a pea under 20 mattresses and 20 quilts to see if the princess can feel it.)
• What does the Fairy Godmother in the story Cinderella help Cinderella do? (go to the royal ball by turning a pumpkin into a coach, a rat into her driver, and mice into horses)
• What time does Cinderella need to leave the ball by? (midnight)
• In the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, how does the queen feel when her magic mirror tells her that Snow White is more beautiful than she is? (jealous, angry)

Our Second Graders finished a big addition and subtraction unit this week! We learned many different strategies to add and subtract. Ask your expert what their favorite strategy is and why? We started a new math unit on Geometry. We learned about polygons and how to describe them. Ask your expert the attributes of a polygon.

We are also learning how to add details to our paragraphs. We are making our paragraphs longer and more interesting to read. This week, we wrote about penguins and the tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur. Ask your experts what make the t-rex a good predator.

Our students are becoming great researchers in science class. We are studying states of matter, ecosystems, and landforms. Ask your expert what they will be researching next week.

In fourth grade, we are continuing our exciting invention-based unit, Eureka! Student Inventor. Students have been working hard to develop the skills and systems needed to become an effective inventor themselves! Ask your expert: What does “invention breeds invention” mean? (Previous inventions inspire new invention ideas; old inventions can be used when creating new inventions; inventions help us see “problems” to solve that haven’t been solved yet). Tell a family member about how the lightbulb is an example of an invention breeding an invention (Possible answer: Because of lightbulbs, headlights on cars were invented and made driving so much safer.). Some classes have begun the process of documenting their invention ideas. What do you need to do when drawing an effective diagram? (3D drawing, descriptive materials label, explanation of how things work).

In Kindergarten, artists learned how illustrator and author, Eric Carle, mixed the Primary colors when painting the papers he would use to create his story collages like, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We also painted our own papers by experimenting with color mixing and used our papers to create our own caterpillar collages. Super cute and fun!

First grade artists are learning about Piet Mondrian and his use of the Primary colors along with his focus on using straight, horizontal and vertical bold black lines. These young artists have become so skilled in using rulers, coloring with control and considering color placement that balances their composition. These are total masterpieces!

Second grade artists will begin using oil pastels to mix the primary colors while drawing tulips and insects during their unit on celebrating color in nature! Can you tell we are ready for Spring:)

Third, Fourth and Fifth grade artists are learning about how artists create the illusion of space.

Third grade artists have finished their landscape unit where they mastered their use and understanding of the layers of a landscape (foreground, middleground and background) as well as considering size, detail and overlapping in order to enhance the illusion of space. They are currently applying these same concepts as they design their own outer space t-shirt to accompany their projects and experiences at the Space Foundation on March 16th.

Fourth graders are learning how to draw basic 2-D shapes (triangles, rectangles, circles and squares) as 3-D forms (prisms, cones, cylinders, cubes and spheres). They are realizing that learning how to draw these basic shapes and forms correctly, will allow them the ability to draw virtually any object. It is a lesson that reveals the magic behind art tricks;)

Fifth grade will begin their unit on the illusion of space, through understanding how to create and use one- point perspective. Students will learn about a vanishing point, orthogonal lines and value using color.