May 27th, 2018

Our Week in PreK:

The students have been working hard on their environment signs to teach the community about air pollution.  We were preparing for our field trip during the week but due to the extreme heat, we changed the field trip date to Friday. 

Signs were hung in the basketball court temporarily when a high school student was spotted playing outside during an air pollution day. The children wanted to keep everyone at CAC safe by letting them know to "go inside" when there is air pollution!

A big thanks to everyone who was able to come out on Friday and support the Race to Clean Air and our students' efforts to reduce pollution in our environment. We all understand that it was hot and given the circumstances of Ramadan and the weekend timing, it wasn't easy for all to attend.  We appreciate your efforts and understand that families may choose to visit the garden at other times.  Here are some photos from Friday's visit to the Midan when we planted trees and hung our signs.

Another big part of our week was preparing for and sharing our portfolios and learning at student led conference day.  Thank you so much to families who came to celebrate student learning and the journeys that your children have been on during this school year.  It was incredible to hear the students reflecting on their experiences throughout the year, with statements such as "I remember this day, I was doing....." and to hear families asking questions including "can you tell me more about this?" to encourage conversation and understanding. Your child's portfolio video will be delivered to you very soon.  Thank you for your partnership.

Students preparing for SLC in the classroom together.

As the year begins to come to a conclusion, we are wrapping up some things. The students planned and created a goodbye celebration for Ms. Sanne on Thursday.  We discussed as a group what they would like to do for her, and the students created a plan to sing songs from a movie they have been very interested in lately ("The Greatest Showman"), make a movie for her, and have popcorn.

Here are the videos of the students' performances of two songs from "The Greatest Showman" for Ms. Sanne:

Ms. Sanne we will miss you a lot.  Best of luck in your next adventure and we hope to see you soon!

Here are some more photos from our week together:

Practicing with recycled material instruments (and drum stick tricks).

Play dough cupcakes with natural materials.

A recycled material dragon.

The great water table incident of 2018.

Next Week:

It's hard to believe that next week is our last full week together.  The students will be finishing up classroom studies and getting ready to say goodbye to their year in PreK.  We will introduce the idea of moving on from our classroom community and we will visit Kindergarten on Thursday.  We will also have our last meeting with our fifth grade buddies on Thursday, and say goodbye to them.

Reminders:

Greetings from the library!

Sunday was our last library class. We celebrated a year of reading by accessing our Scholastic BookFlix collection. BookFlix is a series of paired fiction and non-fiction stories. Picture books have been turned into animated stories and paired with a non-fiction ebook for an engaging online reading experience. We read a non-fiction book about squirrels and then watched a movie made from the book Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watts. 

Here's how to access BookFlix. 

1. Visit our library catalog, library.cacegypt.org. 

2. Click on the elementary library link. 

3. Log in to the catalog from the top right hand corner. Use the CAC Quick Login:  username - cacegypt, password - cacegypt. 

4. You will arrive at the home page. Scroll down the page until you find the link for BookFlix. Make a note of the username and password listed there. 

5. Allow the Flash plug-in to run. 

6. Choose a category and then a book. Let your child guide you and enjoy reading. 

Note that you will need an Internet connection to access BookFlix. Also, please keep the CAC Quick Login credentials to yourself. Certainly share with your children who attend CAC, but do not share it outside of the CAC community. 

Summer checkout starts on May 17. That's for returning families. Each patron can check out 25 books. They are all due back on the first day of school in August. Families are responsible for lost or damaged books. 

Happy summer reading!

Mrs. Fitzgerald

Upcoming Events:

March 29th: Big Splash!

All ES Students will have the last house event on March 29th, the BIG SPLASH!

We will go to the pool to watch older students jump from the diving boards and see who can make the biggest splash.  PreK students will have the opportunity to toss balls into a floating basket to get points for their team!

We will meet in the classroom and then walk to the pool at 7:50.  At the pool, students will remove their shoes and place them in a large basket labeled PREK.  Any clothing they are wearing will be removed as well and placed in the basket.  Students will enter the pool area wearing only their bathing suits to watch the event and cheer.

After the event, teachers will help all PreK students collect their towels and we will walk together to the classroom to get changed.  We already have extra teachers assigned to support with changing the PreK students in the classroom.

PLEASE:

• Send your child to school in their bathing suit.
• Pack a full change of clothes that your child can be changed into after the event (teachers will help) in their backpack.
• Pack a towel - labeled.
• Understand that your child will get wet, but will not go into the pool.  If you have concerns, email Ms. Trillian.

May 31st: Grade Up Visit

PreK students will visit Kindergarten classrooms to learn a bit about kindergarten and what to expect.  The current KG students will give them a tour.  The students will not be visiting their future classroom or be traveling with their future classmates; they have been randomly assigned a group and will be visiting a classroom randomly as well.

June 3: Grade 5 Moving On Ceremony (7:55)

All grade levels will attend the Grade Five moving on ceremony.  We are looking forward to wishing our fifth grade buddies (5J) best of luck. 

June 4: PreK End of Year Celebrations

Please click here to review the schedule for the day and sign up for volunteer opportunities!

June 5th: Last day of School

End of Year Assembly: 10:30 AM

Dismissal 11:30 AM

Please be sure to pick up your child's extra clothes and any other belongings that may be at school by the end of the day on June 5th.  If you prefer to take them home on June 4th, this is fine!

End of year dates for the ES Library:

May 27 - the first day of summer checkout
Summer checkout is available to all students and parents who:

• Have cleared their library accounts for the year
• Are returning to CAC in the 2018-2019 school year

Limits:

• 25 books per patron (parents must be present for checkout)
• 5 DVDs per family checked out to the parent

All books due back the first day of school in August
Damaged or lost books will have to be paid for by the patron who checked them out.

Parents' Corner:

At this time of year, student behaviors can change dramatically. It's a good reminder to step back and think about all of the transitions we are expecting young children to go through, that developmentally are quite a lot for them to process! Most of the children don't know what it means to "start kindergarten" and may be worried about leaving their friends, teachers, and community they have built over the past 10 months.  Click here to learn more about worry or anxiety in children and how you can support your child during this time.