January 7
Muskrat News
Upcoming events:
January 11 Restore Day 8:30-9:45am
January 12 Writing Club 3pm
January 13 Homework Club every Thursday 3-3:45pm
January 13 Scratch Club every Thursday 3pm
January 17 Martin Luther King Jr. Day NO School
January 20 ICP Board meeting 7pm
February 21 Snow day make up School is IN
From our Executive Director
We worked on Friendship as a LIFESKILL this week. At the All School Meeting on Wednesday morning, I chose to describe it as “to have friends, you need to be a friend”. We also reviewed all of the LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines, and I spoke to how these skills and guidelines help us make friends. I was very impressed by how well all of our students sat and paid attention. The students have impressed me before and I believe they will again. All of our teachers and support staff are doing a wonderful job of crafting friendly, respectful relationships with our students.
This next week we will be working on Initiative – defined as “to do something of one’s own free will because it needs to be done”. All of these LIFESKILLS are couched in doing our “Personal Best”, the last of the five Lifelong Guidelines. As always, any reinforcement you parents are able to provide at home helps our students better internalize the skill and make it a habit.
Our school has finally become equipped with an intercom system that allows us to speak to all rooms, the hallways, and the playground in the event of an emergency. This week we used the system to practice our procedures for earthquakes (required by law). In the future we will practice a “lock-down drill” used in cases of an external threat– also required by law. We take extra steps to see to it that our youngest students are not traumatized by these exercises. Ask your children all about it. –Dan
Classroom News
Room 1 – We have started our Ocean unit. So far we have been looking at the globes and thinking about the question: What is a fish? We made up a song about the characteristics of a fish. Ask your child to sing it for you. In math we have finished up our penguin unit. Today we took home our folders and games. If you get the chance try a few of the games with your child this weekend.
– Miss Bridget
Room 2 has been busy this week. In literacy and during project time, students have been learning about beaches and shorelines. We had a deep debate about whether the world was “covered” with more land or water. You would think by looking at the globe that more of the area was ocean…but the students made the important observation that the undersea landscape is land as well. One first grader pointed out that the earth’s crust was thicker than the several mile-depth of the ocean. I love seeing such good critical thinking! We have also been writing shape poems about the trees that we adopted outside our classroom. Look for the poems on display in the hall in upcoming weeks. – Ms. Gorman
Kinder News – The classroom is once again alive with laughter and learning. The bird activity on the north side of our classroom is totally busy with our winter friends. The children are learning to recognize the daily visitors and notice when a new bird species arrives. The children especially enjoy the House Finch that is a bright color of orange instead of the usual red/rose color. Our new arrivals include a Yellow-rumped Warbler and a Fox Sparrow. I’m hoping that the suet feeder pulls in a hungry woodpecker or two.
I would like to thank Fox, Celia’s dad, for building several new garden boxes that will be used for our potato and pea trials. The north edge of the property, which is just outside the Kinder classroom, has a border of trees that will protect our garden boxes from the cold wind. I think we will be able to successfully harvest peas and potatoes by June, if we plant them in mid-February. Someone once said, “When you plant a seed, you are expecting a miracle”. 🙂 Ms. Jenny
Room 4 – The students dissected owl pellets this week and found all sorts of cool stuff inside. They filled out a lab report and glued the bones they found inside onto a black piece of paper to take home. We are freeing up some personal interest time for the students for projects that they will be sharing with the class, school, and future students. For example, a few students are working on a welcome CD to give to new families that enroll at MCCS. They came up with the idea and they are doing it all by themselves! – Mr. Day
RESTORE Day returns in January
As with any landscaping project, we have been letting the plants in our restoration area rest for the winter. However, January brings an important deadline for anyone who loves native plants — the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District Plant Sale. Our students will be selecting the plants to grow this year in the RESTORE area. If you are interested in growing native plants in your yard, check out their web site and don’t miss the January 19th order deadline.
From the Board
Good news! The 509J board has voted to renew the charter of MCCS for another 3 years. The terms of the charter are yet to be negotiated. The minimum uncertainty is whether the final contract will be for K-5 or K-8. We anticipate knowing this by late February.
Happy New Year! Thanks to all who have made a donation or a pledge of donation to MCCS.
Please contribute to our giving campaign to make MCCS all it can be.
Volunteer(s) Needed
We are looking for a volunteer(s) to help Cedar in the office when she is out at test training. This will be in the morning and consist of answering the phone and helping with office projects. Please let Cedar know if you can help out. Thank you!
Muddy Creek Scratch Club
Scratch Club is off and running. We meet in the library on every Thursday from 3 -4:15pm. What is Scratch? Visit the website at http://scratch.mit.edu/. Have any questions? Please contact Bill Pfeil (Casey’s Dad) at bill@dropdstudios.com. See you there!
Muddy Creek Writing Club
Cedar is forming a Writing Club for 4th and 5th graders. The club starts January 12th and will meet every Wednesday right after school. It looks like we will definitely be tackling playwriting! If you have any questions you can reach me at cedar.dunn@muddycreekcharterschool.org or 752-0377. Mr. Day will have permission slips for interested students to take home today.
Muddy Creek Homework Club
Homework club will now be meeting on Thursdays from 3-3:45pm and is open to kids in the 4/5 grade. Bring reading, math, spelling or whatever you need to get caught up on. Snack will be provided.
Open Gym time at MCCS
Are your natives restless? Cabin fever? Monkeys climbing the walls? I am gauging interest in having Open Gym Time at MCCS after school 1-2 times weekly. There would be structured games and activities, plus some free choice time to burn off some energy and have fun with friends. I am willing to organize and supervise, but would need additional parent volunteers. Please contact Kerry Pfeil at kerrypfeil@gmail.com or call me (541) 224-2539.
Girl Sprouts Troop
If you like to have fun with other girls, earn badges and be creative, join our Girl Sprouts Troop. Girl Sprouts is a loosely organized group of elementary-aged girls who meet once a month for friendship, activities and fun. Girl Sprouts is not affiliated with Girl Scouts or anything else. The dates TBD when we get a core group of girls. Contact Lisa Yagoda for more information, 541-753-1416 or yago16@gmail.com.
Franklin Middle School
There will be flyers placed in the 5th graders mailboxes about the Franklin Middle School option and their open house on January 11th.
Scrip
Target has joined the Scrip family! You can now purchase $25 or $100 Target gift cards through Scrip. Many people have also asked about Market of Choice. They do not participate in regular Scrip, but they are a merchant through eScrip. If you register your debit or credit cards that you use at Market of Choice through www.escrip.com, and list MCCS as the school you want contributions to go to, a percentage of what you spend will automatically go to the school. New order forms are now available with updated due dates for the remainder of the school year. You can pick up a form from one of the boxes to the right of the parent mailboxes. The next order due date for Scrip is next Thursday January 13 by 3pm.
eScrip
Safeway’s “10% Goes Back to Schools” promotion is going on right now! Purchase selected items at Safeway (look for the yellow school bus labels), use your Safeway Club Card or enter the number at the bottom of your receipt at www.escrip.com (list Muddy Creek as your school) and 10% of that purchase will go to MCCS! This is one of the easiest ways to help the school.
Special Thanks To:
All the Read-a-thon volunteers.
To the crafty person that made all those bookmarks for the library.
Carla and John Callahan for their school supply donation and their help picking up our milk.
Lisal Barnard for her donation of bulbs and gloves.
All the parents and relatives of our kids here and community members who have made monetary donations – every dollar helps!