"Oh, the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we've no place to go

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...."

Those famous words are wonderful to hear during the Christmas season, but they seem to have described the beginning of 2016 perfectly this year. As we welcome everyone back for the start of the second semester, our schedules have been changed by those gently falling white snowflakes. In order to make up the four days of school that we have missed this month, the following Snow Make Up days have been established:

Snow Day-------- Make Up Date

January 11--------- February 15

January 12------------- March 18

January 20------------- March 28

January 22---------------- April 18

Any additional snow days will be added to the school calendar at the end of the school year in May.

If any middle school student is interested in signing up for Indiana Middle School Bowling, forms are available in the Middle School Office. Sign up dates are January 23, February 6, and February 13 from 10:00 a.m. - 12 p.m. Bowling starts on February 25. Cost and other information are on the sheet provided. For more information, please contact Bonnie Egler at 812-827-3078.

Preparing Students Today.......for Tomorrow

The Southwest Dubois County School Corporation Student of the Month for Southridge Middle School was Brianna Stasel, grade 8. Congratulations, Brianna! Brianna is pictured below with Mrs. Altmeyer and Mr. Ohanian.

The Southwest Dubois County School Corporation Student of the Month for Southridge Middle School was Aidan Blessinger, grade 7. Congratulations, Aidan! Aidan is pictured below with Mrs. Altmeyer and Mrs. Schaber.

Southridge Middle School and High School will be hosting the ISSMA Instrumental District Solo and Ensemble Contest on Saturday, February 6. Good Luck to all Southridge Middle School students who will be participating that day.

The sixth grade band held their first concert on Tuesday, January 26, in the high school auditorium. Per Mr. Butler, the students performed very well. Go Band!!! Congratulations on your first performance. May you have many more to come.

The Southridge Middle School choir members participated in the ISSMA Vocal District Contest this past weekend. The competition was held this year at Evansville North High School. All middle school groups that participated received either gold or silver ratings. Congratulations Mr. Kendall and middle school choir members.

Southridge Middle School sets high expectations while striving for excellence academically, physically, and socially through the combined efforts of students, staff, and family , to prepare students to reach their potential in a diverse, ever-changing society.

Due to a conflict in scheduling, the Valentine's Dance has been moved to Friday, February 5, from 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. Please mark the new date on your calendars. We hope to see you there.

Academic Bowl Preliminary Cookie results are in! Several students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades competed Wednesday, January 27th, to be entered into the Academic Bowl Cookie competition. This was a preliminary round. Only one person from each grade will compete during Academic Bowl, but we have first and second place finishers for our school wide competition. The first place winners will have to create their cookies at school by themselves the day prior to Academic Bowl, which will be April 30, 2016 at Wood Memorial Middle School.

6th Grade

1st place -- Ana Hewitt

2nd place -- Hunter Eckert

7th Grade

1st place -- Baileigh Schneider

8th Grade

1st place -- Chaney Barrett

2nd place -- Tatiana Delgado

Congratulations to each of these students. It looks like they might be strong competition for the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Betty Crocker!

Below are pictures taken recently at a 6th grade girls basketball game. Good luck with your season, girls.

A pep session was held in the gym on Friday, January 29. Below are pictures taken during the pep session.

Junior Achievement of Southwestern Indiana is empowering young people to own their economic success. Our volunteer-based K-12 programs foster work and career readiness, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy skills, and use experiential learning to inspire kids to dream big and reach their potential. JASWIN serves 11 counties and over 26,000 students in Southwestern Indiana and Southeastern Illinois and began in 1964. Junior Achievement in Dubois County provides over 170 JA programs serving over 4000 Dubois County students. For more information, visit www.jaswin.org.

We are on the lookout for Junior Achievement volunteers for our 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classrooms. This is a great way to be involved with your student's classroom! Volunteers would visit the classroom during the classroom day for 6 visits (1 x a week for 6 weeks) for about 40 minutes each visit. Students learn things like what not to do in a job interview, what are career clusters, what is a global economy, and all the way to, what is insurance and why would I need it? Teachers are wanting to host volunteers starting in the next 2 weeks at various class times and hope to be done by spring break. JA would provide training and material to mentor the students in the classroom. Anyone interested or wanting more information can contact Ruth Wilson, Program Manager, at 812-425-8152 or ruth.wilson@ja.org.

Through the Hoosier Family of Readers Initiative, students and their families across the state of Indiana will have unlimited access to reading material on myON, giving families an opportunity to share rich literacy experiences together regardless of their socioeconomic status or whether or not there is a proficient reader in the home.

myON has more than 4,000 digital books ranging from illustrated and picture books to chapter books, graphic novels, literary non-fiction, photo and informational texts spanning multiple eras and cultures.

Books are available online 24 hours a day. Students can download up to 20 titles for offline reading using free mobile apps for iPad and Android tablets.

How to Log In

1. Go to https://www.myon.com/school/hoosier/

2. Enter the School Name: Hoosier Family of Readers

3. Enter the user name read and the password read

4. Click the green Sign In button

Click on All Books to browse through the entire myON Library and enjoy reading. ACCESS RUNS THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2016.

The Middle School Library has been undergoing "spring cleaning" this year. We have deleted some books in order to make more room on our shelves. In doing so, we discovered some "lost" books, and some we didn't know we had. The reference and nonfiction sections are pretty well finished. Our next task will be the fiction section.

Even though it looks like we have gotten rid of almost all of the encyclopedias, our students do have access to World Book Online. We can access this resource through the Huntingburg Library. For access to World Book Online, go to www.worldbookonline.com.

For the User Name type huntingburg, and for the password type books. This can be a very valuable resource tool for the students.

There are several new books that will be added to our shelves in the next week or so. Some of them seem to be generating a great deal of interest. There are also many books that are missing from our shelves, either from being overdue or lost. If you happen to find one of our books at home under the bed or under a pile of clothes, in the backseat of the car, or wherever else a book can hide, please return it to the library. New books can be expensive, and replacing lost ones takes away from some other new and exciting books we might want to purchase.

SMS prepares students to succeed academically , accept responsibility, and achieve their highest level of ability.