Exciting News for the month of April! ArtFest, which is held at the Oshkosh Public Library, exhibits Kindergarten through 5th grade art work for the month of April. 10-15 students from each Elementary School will be showcased at the library. Miss Stumpf has chosen ten Jefferson Patriots from Kindergarten through Fifth grade to be showcased. Those friends will receive a certificate. You all have been working hard in art class, so be proud of how far you have come and the art work you have made. We have one more art show in May that I cannot wait to showcase more awesome work at ! Happy Creating friends! 

 

REMINDERS IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Although the snow has melted, please remember that boots are not appropriate shoes to wear in the gym and all students need to have a SEPARATE pair of gym shoes to wear for Physical Education class. Ideally, they should have a separate pair of shoes for the gym no matter what shoes they wear to school. If this is an issue, please contact me so that we can work something out. Also, please ask your student(s) if their shoes still fit! Elementary students grow quickly and their gym shoes may not fit them the entire year. You may see reminder notes coming home with students that pertain to these items.

 

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION?

Students at Jefferson Elementary ended the month of March by working on our cardiovascular endurance. Now that we are allowed to be in the building without masks, it was time to train our hearts again to run for longer periods of time. Students at all grade levels worked on running the Pacer Test by playing relay races and partner games. We finished out the week before Spring Break by running the real thing. 

 

WHAT’S NEXT IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION?

In April, students will be working on basketball skills such as bouncing a ball (dribbling), passing and shooting. Many students ask if we play ‘real’ basketball games such as a team vs team, but in elementary school, the goal is to learn skills. We will take the skills we have learned to do some free shooting as well as games like H.O.R.S.E.,  around the world , and Lightning. When we finish a few weeks of basketball skills we will move on to our dance unit–we might even have a special guest to teach us some ZUMBA moves!

 

KIDS HEART CHALLENGE

Jefferson Patriots raised $4,274.75 for the American Heart Association and the Kids Heart Challenge. Emmet Good in 1st grade was our top fundraiser followed by his sister Murphy Good in 2nd grade. Between the two of them, they will get to pie Mrs. Patza (principal) and Mrs. Lange! We also went over $1000 over our goal this year so we decided to pie a third staff member. All students voted and Ms Cindy (one of our wonderful lunch ladies) will be pied in the face as well by Zoe Katz in 4th grade. The pie-ing will happen May 4th.

 

TIPS TO BE FIT AT HOME

1. Do you own a jump rope? Even though Jump Rope for Heart is over, many students have ‘jump rope fever’ and want every chance they have to practice! Jump Roping is a very underrated exercise and can burn calories very fast. 

2. Take the time after school/work or on the weekends to go to the park!  Maybe even walk there if it’s close. There is also more daylight so take advantage of the sunshine and get outside to play!

3. Make fitness fun! Exercise doesn’t have to be boring. Get the whole family involved and take a walk together, or even go to the gym/YMCA for a day of fun.

 

 

Opera for the Young is coming to Jefferson to present their version of Cinderella on Monday, April 25th! Opera for the Young is a group from Madison, WI who brings live, professional opera to elementary school audiences. All productions are fully staged, sung in English and created especially for children. A group of Jefferson Elementary students will appear onstage, performing right alongside Opera for the Young’s professional artists! The performance will be at 1:30 in the Jefferson Elementary Gym on Monday, April 25th. Jefferson families are welcome to attend!

Thank you to the Jefferson PTO who sponsored this wonderful opportunity!

 

Shower Your Shelf with Books: An April Reading Challenge for Kids  

 

Celebrate National Siblings Day on April 10 by reading a book about siblings. Share the story with your own sibling if you have one!  

Find a children’s poetry collection, and read the poem you find there.  

Laugh your way through a book of jokes. Memorize one of the jokes and tell it to a friend.  

Think of a skill or hobby you’d like to learn or get better at. Find a nonfiction book with information or how-tos.  

Read a book in a voice that sounds like your oldest or youngest relative.  

Check out a book with penguins to read on World Penguin Day, April 25. 

Read a book aloud to a plant you want to see grow.  

Think of your favorite movies. Find out if any of them were books first and, if so, read the book! (Ask an adult for help with your research if needed.)  

Find your favorite reading spot in your home. If it’s possible, design a sign to make it yours.

Palmer, Iva. “Shower Your Shelf with Books: An April Reading Challenge for Kids | Brightly.” Read Brightly, https://www.readbrightly.com/april-reading-challenge-for-kids/. Accessed 16 March 2022.

 

We often think to read aloud to our younger children, but did you know it is also important to read aloud to older children? Below is an article from Brightly which talks more about the importance of this activity.

The Importance of Reading Aloud to Big Kids

by Melissa Taylor

Only 17% of parents of kids ages 9–11 read aloud to their children. Yet 83% of kids ages 6–17 say being read to is something they either loved or liked a lot (Scholastic’s “Kids & Family Reading Report”). Reading aloud to kids helps expand their literacy skills, love of reading, worldview, and more. Here are some key reasons it’s important to read aloud to your older kids:

Lets Them Experience the Joy of Story

The goal is to love the story. That’s the point of reading, [as well as] reading for meaning. I let [my eldest daughter] listen to hours of audiobooks and read aloud to her multiple times a day. I wanted her to get hooked on the stories in the chapter books. Like her, all readers — and especially struggling readers — learn to love stories by hearing stories.

Models Fluent Reading

When you read to kids, you’re modeling how to read language. You pause at commas and periods. Your voice inflection changes when you read questions or exclamations. And you can show what you, a fluent reader, do when you come to a word you don’t know. (Even if you’re pretending that you don’t know it.)

Helps Expand Their Vocabulary

Kids’ auditory comprehension is higher than their reading comprehension. When you pick a challenging book that your kids can’t read on their own, you are exposing them to a wealth of new vocabulary words. This stretches a child’s language development, particularly if you stop to talk about the meaning of these harder words.

Exposes Kids to New Authors, Texts, and Genres

Reading aloud can get kids hooked on a new author or series of books. Once a child falls in love with the story or author, it’s hard to hold them back from reading it on their own. Plus, reading aloud gives kids a chance to explore genres and texts they wouldn’t normally select. “I often read the first chapter or two of a new book to my daughter to pull her into a book that she might not have chosen otherwise,” says Natalie Figge. There are so many amazing books that kids don’t pick to read on their own. These books make great read alouds — in what I call the “just give this book a chance” category.

Builds Awareness and Empathy

Literature is one of the best ways to help kids understand something without experiencing it for themselves. And books do this with all sorts of subjects and concepts, building our children’s understanding of humanity and the world around them.

Improves Kids’ Long-Term Reading Success

Finally, decades of research shows that reading aloud to a child daily is one of the most important activities for reading success. That goes for older kids, too. Kids who are read to have good vocabularies, write well, and do well overall in school (Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985 U. S. Department of Education meta-study of 10,000 studies). They’re also more likely to keep reading on their own.

Awesome Read-Alouds for Big Kids

Looking for some great books to read aloud to your big kid tonight? Check these out:

 

https://www.readbrightly.com/importance-of-reading-aloud-to-big-kids/

 

 

 

 

Happy April everyone! Many times families have asked questions on how to help their child at home in the area of math. This is a great question and the answer is different for every single child. Each child is often in a developmental stage of learning that may or may not be different from his or her classmates. As guardians, we are at the higher level of the progression of mathematical learning.  It is important to remember that each individual is on their own learning path and there are developmental steps that children go through on this journey. 

The resource this month is from Graham Fletcher. He has developed a video collection that takes us through the progression of learning across math concepts throughout the grade levels. On his website there are five videos that take us through the progression of learning of Early Number and Counting, Addition and Subtraction, Division, Multiplication and Fractions. Please take a look at these short videos that are so powerful for us in helping our students. As always, your classroom teacher will be able to offer you insight on the support your child needs wherever they are in the learning progression. Please take a look at the following link to learn more about the learning progressions in math. 

 

Progression VIdeos with Graham Fletcher.