Week of August 28th

The Monkey class had another awesome week!  In math, we have engaged in many fun activities to see numbers 0-5 in different ways.

In science, we learned all about what science is and discussed what we want to learn in science this year.  We will discuss safety in science this upcoming week and begin a unit on properties of objects.

In language arts, we focus on so many things each week.  We have really been focusing on our names and how they are special.  We will continue that and discuss a different sight word each week with poetry.  Last week, we read the poem The Beach, which highlighted the word "the."  We added our poem to our poetry folders.  We listened to many wonderful books and made some predictions about what may happen in the story.  We also learned about the steps and procedures we use when writing stories during writing workshop.  We thought about how authors come up with ideas and shared our ideas for stories with partners.

Our school will begin a Box Tops collection on September 11th.  A couple of years ago, Mrs. Morris' Monkeys won this competition and got to have a pizza party and keep the trophy all year long!  Please start collecting those Box Tops so our class can have a chance at winning one of the top 5 prizes!

This year our school will be participating in the Box Tops for Education program through General Mills by having our annual Box Tops Contest. My name is Cory Vessa and I am the Box Tops Coordinator and will be facilitating the competition. Classes compete against each other to bring in the most Box Tops. The competition starts September 11th and ends October 6th. Those classes in the top five receive prizes. The winning class receives a pizza party provided by Papa John’s Pizza at Volente Plaza. Second place receives a Dairy Queen Blizzard provided by Qualtech Automotive. Third place receives a free kids’ meal at Chicken Express. Fourth place receives a free kids’ meal from Subway at Four Points. And fifth place receives 2 doughnuts from Ms. Doughnuts. The competition is fierce and each week as you bring in the pink Box Tops from General Mills products, the totals will be displayed for all the children to see. Box Tops Certificates from HEB are also a great way to edge your student’s class closer to victory. HEB runs a promotion (Sept. 6 - 19) in whereby if you purchase 10 Box Top items you receive 60 bonus Box Tops and if you purchase 15 Box Top items you receive 100 bonus Box Tops. Each student that brings an HEB bonus certificate of 60 Box Tops or more will also receive a small prize from the class prize basket provided by the PTA. But competition aside, this is a great and fun way to raise money for our school. Last year we raised over $3000 during our Box Top competition and we hope to do the same this year. The certificates are the key to reaching this goal. Each year almost half of our Box Tops come from the bonus certificates from HEB. For a list of Box Tops items go to http://www.boxtops4education.com/. That way you can plan which items to purchase in advance. The children truly love this competition and look forward to it every year. If you are like me, you have a large bag of Box Tops that have been collected all year just waiting for the competition to begin. If you have any questions, please contact me at vessacory@hotmail.com. I’m here to help make our school’s Box Tops for Education program a success again this year! 

Thanks for your help! Cory Vessa