All families will be receiving the letter below in the mail this weekend. For parents who drop off K-5 students: Students will still report directly to the cafeteria and wait until the bell rings to report to their lockers. Students may leave the cafeteria and report to their lockers when the 8:10 am bell rings. NOTE: (This is a 5 minute adjustment of time compared to when the bell rang to be released prior to Spring Break) MARK YOUR CALENDAR
Thursday April 6 Evening Events @ Emerald Elementary Math Family Night (Title 1 Program): 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm Come enjoy fun math activities with your families throughout the building. Families & students may travel to the 15 minute station activities throughout the evening. Each station is designed by grade level teachers. Buy One - Get One FREE Book Fair: 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm The book fair is a one day event where you can purchase a book and receive the second one for free. The book fair will be available during the school day and from 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm. Don’t miss out on this once a year opportunity to fill your child’s room with books! Registration Table for: Pre-School Kindergarten New Students (grades 1- 5) We are excited to see multiple families taking advantage of the past 2 registration events at Emerald Elementary (see photos below). Children enjoyed listening to a story and taking part in activities throughout the cafeteria and gym. The next event will take place on Tuesday, March 21 from 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm in the Elementary Cafeteria.
The information below may be obtained from the Michigan Department of Education Website: (http://www.michigan.gov/mde) Children who turn 5 before September 1, 2017 may register for Kindergarten. Registration forms are available in the office and may be picked up during school hours. Parents and children may also take part in the upcoming events taking place at Emerald Elementary from 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm on the following dates (look in the Advisor or read the post further below):
Below are photos of the 1st registration night that took place on March 7: Why Read 20 Minutes a Day? posted on: k12reader.com Let’s face it…parents (and kids) are busy! It is difficult to “fit in” all that needs to be done in a day. We are often faced with having to make choices about what stays and what goes in our schedules. So, why is it so critical to include 20 minutes of reading in your child’s daily schedule? There is a wealth of research supporting daily reading with your child especially prior to and during the period when s/he is learning to read. Here are a few of the ways reading with your child for 20 (or more) minutes a day benefits him or her. Reading is “brain food” Our brains develop as we “feed” them with experiences. The experience of reading (whether you’re the reader or the one being read to) activates and “exercises” many of the areas of the brain. The visual cortex works as your eyes track the words on the page and look at the illustrations. Your memory makes connections between what you already know about the topic of the story and its content. You integrate new information learned through reading further strengthening and growing your network of knowledge. Reading provides one of the most enriching and complex brain activities available in life. Reading improves listening skills What parent doesn’t want their child to be a good listener? The experience of being read to helps children develop good listening skills by keying them into the components of language. Through reading they learn to recognize phonemes (the sound building blocks of language), learn new words to add to their oral vocabularies and connect written words to their real world applications. Reading builds early literacy skills Before a child can read independently she must have phonemic awareness and a basic understanding of phonics. Phonemic awareness or the understanding that words are made up of distinct sounds that affect their meaning is the precursor to reading. Reading aloud to your child is one of the main ways to help him develop phonemic awareness. Beyond this, in order to read, a person must understand that there is a connection between letters and sounds. Without this knowledge letters are just squiggles on a page! When you read with your child she learns that print is a representation of the words you say aloud. Repeated experiences with reading allow this understanding to grow. The single greatest factor in a child’s ability to read is early experiences being read aloud to. Reading prepares children for kindergarten In this day and age children are expected to come into kindergarten with a strong knowledge base. Today’s kindergarteners are expected to enter the classroom on day one with a knowledge of upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, the ability to recognize basic shapes and colors and the ability to count to ten. Reading books tailored towards youngsters with your child helps them develop these important and necessary skills. Practice makes perfect Generally, the more time you are exposed to something and the more time you spend practicing it, the better you’ll become at performing it. This is absolutely true for reading. Research shows that children who have repeatedly been exposed to books from birth generally exhibit strong reading abilities. Reading improves academic performance There is a strong correlation between a child’s ability to read and her academic performance. Because so much of our schooling relies on our abilities to read, children must have strong reading skills to succeed and thrive in school. Reading just makes “cents” For every year that a person spends reading (either independently or being read aloud to), his/her lifetime earning potential goes up considerably. For a time investment of approximately 87 hours a year (20 minutes a day for 5 days a week), you can increase your child’s ability to support him or herself in the future considerably. Reading improves relationships Because we are busy it is difficult to have “quality” one-on-one time with our children without distractions. Building 20 minutes into each day for reading together provides this important bonding time. There is nothing more wonderful than snuggling a young child on your lap while reading a few storybooks aloud. Even if your child is beyond the “snuggling” stage, spending 20 minutes reading independently provides you with quiet, uninterrupted time together engaged in the same activity. |
Erik E. Mason
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