Last 26 Days of School

Hi everyone!

I cannot believe we are at the last 26 days of school! Included at the end of this blog post is the A-Z theme countdown for school. There are a lot of fun dress-up days, so please take a look.

Monthly Theme
This month, each student received a habitat and chose an animal that lives within the habitat. We are working on a project that each student will present at the zoo. The project includes a main idea sheet in which the students describe some main facts about their habitat. We also have a circle map page of animals you might find in the habitat as well as a page completed with the help of Mrs. Sherlock in which the students describe the animal they will present at the zoo field trip. When we come back from the zoo, each student will write about their favorite part. It is a great trip where we can combine what we have been working on with the real deal!

A reminder that our trip is on May 3rd, and each student will need to have a sack lunch from home.

Yoga
As of two weeks ago, we have introduced yoga therapy into our schedule. We are very excited to have a yoga therapist who works with many students, so she is able to adapt her teaching to meet the needs of all our learners. We now have yoga every Thursday in place of our motor group. Our physical therapist, Cathy Knight, also comes to help (which all of the students love!). We have only had two sessions, but at our second session, there were so many improvements from each student. Looking forward to more practice!

A-Z Countdown
Here is the calendar for the A-Z Countdown.





As always, please e-mail me with any questions or concerns. I am looking forward to finishing out a great school year with a great group of students!

March!

Hi everyone!

We are quickly approaching Spring Break which means the last months of the school year! All of the students have been doing a great job, and I hope everyone has a great Spring Break!

Monthly Theme:

This month, we have been wrapping up our space projects, and will be sending those to you soon. Each student had a planet on which they did research and created a presentation. Students had to record themselves on each slide. They are doing a great job! We will hopefully have them ready to send out by the end of this week!

For the month of March, our unit is weather. We have been learning some vocabulary words about weather including precipitation, and meteorologist. We will continue to add more vocabulary. We have also been graphing the weather for the days we have been together. If you would like to, students can graph the weather over spring break. Please let me know if you would like a copy of the graph. We will continue this and use it to work on skills for reading a graph. There will be upcoming projects and assignments that we will complete, such as a cloud activity and a rainy day poem. For cooking group, we will make turkey and eggplant meatballs to associate with "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." 

STUDENT COUNCIL SPIRIT DAY ~ FRIDAY, MARCH 24TH

Our next Ivy Hall spirit day will be Friday, March 24th. It will be HAT DAY. Please wear a hat to school, you can use your creativity to create a hat or wear a hat you already own. 

Please check out the Principal's Message for other information you will need.

Allowance:

We have begun an allowance chart to show the students they have more connected to their morning and afternoon jobs. We will use the classroom money they earn as a means for the students to "buy" snack. If they have done their job, they will earn money at the end of the week to purchase snack. They keep their wallets near their schedules and practice purchasing and interacting with someone at a store, as well as using fine motor to retrieve and put away money. So far, the students have done a great job, and love getting in line to buy their snacks!

As always, please e-mail me if you have any questions, and ready Mrs. Gluck's principal message for up to date information. Thank you!

February

Hi everyone!

I can't believe we are over the halfway point in February! This year is really flying by!

Field Museum
Everyone did a great job on our field trip to the Field Museum! There was so much to see, and we had limited time, so we narrowed our scope to the dinosaur exhibits because that was what our monthly theme was all about for January. Everyone really loved seeing Sue the Dinosaur, as well as some of the other recreations of the dinosaurs on which they did their projects.

Monthly Theme
This month, our theme is outer space. We have begun talking about gravity as well as things/objects you see in space. We are discussing how big space is, and how we are so far away from everything up there. We will be talking about the phases of the moon and use oreos to do so. We will also be completing a planet project.  Each student will be creating a presentation about their planet. More to come on that later!

Reminder on Library Books
If you can please make sure you send your student's books back to school for our library time on Friday, it would be greatly appreciated.

Spirit Day
Our next spirit day is Friday, February 24, and it is "Dress Up Fancy" day. 

Lots of information

This post will have a lot of information from the principal's message regarding Valentine's Day, upcoming events, and other fun info!

HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT COMING SOON

During the 2016-2017 school year, Human Growth and Development will be taught to all third, fourth, and fifth grade students. The unit will be three days long and will begin February 1 and will deal primarily with the informational aspects of human growth and development. Instruction will be provided by our physical education teachers trained to teach our district’s program. Classes will meet for three, 30-minute sessions during your child's Physical Education period and will be taught by a same sex physical education teacher. Should you need further clarification on the objectives of the program, which were distributed during the week of registration, please contact Mrs. Gluck.

SPIRIT DAY- JANUARY 27TH

Our next spirit day will be color day on January 27th. Each grade level will wear a designated color. Please represent your grade level by wearing the color listed below next Friday. 

1st Grade- Red 

2nd Grade- Yellow

3rd Grade- Black 

4th Grade- Green 

5th Grade- Blue 

We will wear black as we are banded with 3rd grade.

VALENTINE'S DAY

Please look at teacher’s newsletters for class specific guidelines about sending Valentine’s to school. If you choose to include an item with your child's Valentines, please note that only non-food items are permissible.  Candy, snacks, or any sort of food item will be sent back home with your child on Valentine's day if sent to school.  Non-food items are permitted, and there are many pre-packaged Valentines that can be purchased that include a trinket (i.e., pencil, erasers, book mark, etc.). Card and party stores are a great place to look for these types of items.  Here are some ideas of non-food items if you choose to include something:  pencils, erasers, stickers, plastic or rubber figurines, mini deck of cards, spinning top, or crazy straws to name a few.

Many of our students have medically based dietary restrictions and this does not include students on specific diets of family choice such as vegetarian, low cal/sugar, religious, and so on.  Monitoring the individual needs and requests is not feasible, thus not safe. In addition it is frequently reported that several children eat Valentine's treats on the bus, as evidenced by an abundance of wrappers found.  This poses a choking risk, as well as exposure for students with specific health restrictions. Thank you for your assistance in helping us maintain the health, safety, and personal family preferences of our students.

Field Trip

A reminder to please send back permission slips for the field trip to the Field Museum. The cost is $8.88 and checks should be made payable to Ivy Hall School.

Monthly Theme

We are continuing work with our monthly theme. We will be working on our dinosaur research projects!! Each student will fill in a report about their dinosaur and present it to our class.

Happy January!

Hello everyone! We have made it through the first part of January with some more mild winter weather, so I'm happy! Just a few notes in this week's blog!

CBI/Swimming:
I know there has been some confusion in regards to what days we take our shopping trips versus swimming. Please take the top portion of the permission slips when they come home to help remember-that is for you to have. I will also do my best to e-mail the night before to remind you if it is a shopping day. If I do not e-mail, you can assume it's swimming.

Homework:
I do not typically assign too much homework for our students, as their days are packed with different learning opportunities. I do send homework from the Edmark program. Please do your best to complete this homework when it does come home and return it in their folder. This helps me to see that they are completing the work, while also establishing that sometimes we just have to do homework (even though it's not the most fun :) )

Monthly Theme:
This month, we are going to be learning about dinosaurs. We read a book with the students and completed some vocabulary cards. There were two copies of the book, and students could share 1 with someone else. We will continue this throughout January. We will be completing a small research project where each student will have to find information about their assigned dinosaur. We will be working on these for the month. We will also make fossils out of clay since we have been talking about fossils. For cooking, we are making dirt cups and are going to put little candies within to show how paleontologists have to dig for fossils like we dig for candy through the mud and rocks.

As always, please e-mail me with any questions you may have! Please check out the Principal's Message for important information. Something to note:

VALENTINE'S DAY

Please look at teacher’s newsletters for class specific guidelines about sending Valentine’s to school. If you choose to include an item with your child's Valentines, please note that only non-food items are permissible.  Candy, snacks, or any sort of food item will be sent back home with your child on Valentine's day if sent to school.  Non-food items are permitted, and there are many pre-packaged Valentines that can be purchased that include a trinket (i.e., pencil, erasers, book mark, etc.). Card and party stores are a great place to look for these types of items.  Here are some ideas of non-food items if you choose to include something:  pencils, erasers, stickers, plastic or rubber figurines, mini deck of cards, spinning top, or crazy straws to name a few.

Many of our students have medically based dietary restrictions and this does not include students on specific diets of family choice such as vegetarian, low cal/sugar, religious, and so on.  Monitoring the individual needs and requests is not feasible, thus not safe. In addition it is frequently reported that several children eat Valentine's treats on the bus, as evidenced by an abundance of wrappers found.  This poses a choking risk, as well as exposure for students with specific health restrictions. Thank you for your assistance in helping us maintain the health, safety, and personal family preferences of our students.

Have a great week!

Winter is Surely Coming

Hi everyone!

Wow, what a snow we got over the weekend! It was beautiful to watch! This blog has some information for upcoming events and reminders for winter.

Toys for Tots

Toys for Tots is a program that provides new, packaged toys for children who are less fortunate.

Please bring in new (unused) toys in the original unopened packaging to the office marked Toys for Tots by December 14.

Any toys, books, arts and crafts supplies are fine. No weapons or food products.

Thank you for giving this holiday season.

Home Depot Project
One of the Occupational Therapists at our school scheduled an amazing, hands-on activity with employees from Home Depot. The students will take about 45 minutes total from their day on Friday, December 9, to make a white board for themselves. This will be amazing fine motor practice and incorporate other skills such as direction following and other motor planning. We are so excited!

Shopping Wednesday
A Reminder that this Wednesday, we will be shopping instead of our normal swimming.

Spirit Day
There is a spirit day this Friday. It will be Sports Wear, so students can wear any sports shirt or jersey.

MAP Testing
We will be working on our second round of MAP testing this week.

Winter Parties
Please remember that if you are donating snacks and/or drinks for the winter parties on December 16th, these items MUST come from the Approved Snack List. Please also have these items at school by Friday, December 16th at 10:00am to be approved by the nurse. 

If you have any questions, please let me know! 


Have a great week!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi everyone! Happy Thanksgiving this upcoming week! I hope it is a time for family and rest for all of you! I am so appreciative of all of your support as we team to make school the best environment for your kids! Thank you!

Some notes for the week:

A note from our PTO:

Ivy Hall PTO has partnered with Papa John's Buffalo Grove for a month-long fundraiser. Every Wednesday in November, mention Ivy Hall when you order pizza and earn money for Ivy Hall Elementary - it's as easy and tasty as that! A flyer is available in Virtual Backpack with more details.

Thanks for helping to support the PTO! 

Parent/Teacher Conferences

A reminder that if you still need to sign up for a conference, please do so ASAP as we try to assemble as much of the team as possible for these. Please e-mail if you have any questions! The link is here: Parent/Teacher Conference Sign up

Report Cards

Report cards will be sent home this Friday, November 18th. You will receive IEP goal updates as well as a narrative report card from all service providers and specials teachers.

Library Books

Please return library books on Friday mornings so your child can get new books from our awesome library!

Pajama Day

We will have a spirit day celebration this Friday, November 18th: PAJAMA DAY! Please make sure your student has appropriate shoes for PE class.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please send me an e-mail. Thank you for your continued collaboration! Happy Thanksgiving next week!