December 2019 Newsletter

Make end of year giving go further.

When you make your donation on Colorado Gives Day, we have an opportunity to take part in the Incentive Fund to increase the value of every donation we receive. Please consider a gift to Golden Schools Foundation tomorrow, December 10th.

GOLDEN HIGH SCHOOL Golden Area Schools Family Engagement Night Success on Dec. 6.

There were 31 people in attendance during the first session of the Family Engagement Night. It was so popular that even though it ended at 6:45pm, conversations were still happening until 8pm. The topic was vaping and how parents can use restorative practices to make and mend relationships around this topic. Congratulations to the New Golden One Winner! Bobby Vermulen took the top honor this year supporting Robbies Hope and Carter Thompson took 2nd place representing Global Down Syndrome. Well done, gentlemen!

BELL MIDDLE SCHOOL Bell Bell Middle School is proud to continue its tradition of the Bell Giving Tree! Bell's Student Council helps to organize the event and anonymously help students in their own school. You can also support the Bell Giving Tree on December 10th by eating at Bob's Atomic Burgers.Eat lunch or dinner at Bob's Atomic Burgers in Golden! 20% of proceeds will be donated to Bell's Giving Tree, benefiting Bell students in need www.facebook.com/bobsatomicburgers/

iSTEM Students Present to Governor Polis. On November 19th, select Bell iSTEM students presented their thought-provoking proposals to reduce carbon emissions in Colorado by 2025 (in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement) to Governor Jared Polis at the Colorado State Capitol. Governor Polis was on a tight schedule and yet still asked detailed questions about their proposals and was very interested in the students' ideas.

KYFFIN ELEMENTARY Learning for All. Enrichment Rotations are underway and is a popular learning time for both our students and teachers.  While students rotate through 45 minute blocks around technology, creative and critical thinking, and social emotional learning while working with our Social Emotional Learning Specialist,  our Instructional Coach is working alongside teachers as part of our Professional Learning Community.  Below is a group of third grade students exploring with Cublelets to create and design robots.  Our parents are learning too! At our most recent School Accountability Committee meeting, we dug into the Jeffco Deeper Learning Model which is a continuous improvement model the district is implementing with a variety of resources to support teachers and leaders.  Parents and community members were able to brainstorm ways families might also support this initiative.

Sharing Kindness and Gratitude. While Kyffin staff have been filling up their Gratitude Forest on the front office bulletin board by sharing something something they are grateful for on a tree, our students have been participating in the Kindness Campaign with Kyffin PTA as a lead up to Colorado Gives Day. Students have written kindness cards for themselves and others and to "Be the 'I' in Kind." In addition Student Council has launched a sock drive for people in need in our community and Kyffin is collecting donations for Serving Kids which is operated through the Jeffco Schools Foundation. Please feel free to drop off donations at our front office!

Congratulations! Kyffin has a number of students moving onto the State level for the PTA Reflections program.  Congrats to Emma Dorobek and Alice Harada for their Literature pieces, Logan Martin and Avery Peabody for their Photography submissions, Paloma Masching for her Music Composition piece, and Ruby Codalbu for her Dance Choreography! The Kyffin community spent a wonderful evening coming together for our Family Heritage Night and enjoyed the Golden area Band and Orchestra concerts, as well as a fun Spirit Week. Kyffin will be hosting a Prospective Kindergarten Info Night on December 10th and a Prospective GT Info Night on December 11th.  Our next PTA meeting is January  6th and our next SAC meeting is January 13th. Talent show auditions are right around the corner and so is Winter Break! MITCHELL ELEMENTARY Spirit Week Dec 16-20th! Mitchell is celebrating Winter by allowing students to wear winter-themed hats and holiday head gear (ears, headbands, etc...) with Spirit Week. Input  was gathered from our PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Support) Team and some student leaders. Students may choose to participate if they'd like. See the Friday Note for the unique theme for each day of the week! Tips for Equity and Diversity Conversation with Kids Workshop. Save the Date: Wednesday January 15th, 545-7:30pm. Mitchell is hosting Dr. Kinette Richards a school psychologist, to discuss tips on how to talk with your children about Equity and Diversity. Dinner and childcare will be provided. More info to follow in the Friday note. RALSTON ELEMENTARY Kindness Chain through Ralston. Students from every class connected their kindness paper chains on Friday, November 1st, each link symbolizes an act of kindness, to see if the chain would extend from one end of the school to the other. It was exciting to see that all the acts of kindness performed throughout the school during the month of October stretched all the way from the front doors to nearly the back doors. Students vowed to keep the acts of kindness going as they moved into a focus on thankfulness for the month of November.

First Grade to Wow! Children's Museum. On November 5th, Ralston first graders visited the Wow! Children's Museum as part of a unit on the study of matter. Students participated in a guided experiment to make slime, which breaks the rules of matter, as well as other activities to put what they learned about the states of matter into action. Students also had time to explore other hands on exhibits highlighting science concepts.

Second Grade to Lookout Mountain Nature Center. Ralston's second grade students visited the Lookout Mountain Nature Center on November 8th to deliver posters they created as part of their problem-based learning project centered on uncovering and proposing solutions to local environmental issues. The posters are designed to educate the larger community about steps they can take to address problems. Students enjoyed several nature-based activities and exploration experiences.

Fifth Grade Colonial Day. Ralston's fifth graders experienced a full-scale simulated colonial school day on Friday, November 22nd. Life for a student during the colonial period was re-enacted as closely as possible. Students and teachers donned colonial attire, used slates, quill pens, readers and other authentic school resources. The curriculum was delivered colonial style, complete with a dunce cap and yardstick (no one was injured!). Lunch was provided by parents and included as many colonial recipes as possible. Students made use of tin dishes and cutlery. This is just one example, among many, of how teachers are bringing the content to life for students.

SHELTON ELEMENTARY Veterans Day Celebration. Shelton students and staff participated in a Veterans Day celebration assembly that was truly amazing! The Coyote Choir put together a string of songs that encompassed all areas of the armed services and brought tears to the eyes. Their performance was outstanding! Shelton's AMP team put in many hours with their students making items to hand out to the Veterans in the audience, practicing songs, creating the slideshow, decorating the stage and recreating Shelton's "Wall of Honor" for family members that have served in the armed forces. Thank you AMP team for all you do! Shelton International Night. On November 14th Shelton celebrated the diversity of their school with International Night. Students are given a passport and can travel around the world, trying food samples and learning about countries such as Libya, Cuba, Sweden, Aruba, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, China and many more. Several families host a table and present cultural items, food samples, and custom or crafts so students may learn about all the different heritages. This is a wonderful way to celebrate the diversity of their school, honor heritage of the students and families, and learn about one another. It is one of the biggest events of the year at Shelton and definitely a student and staff highlight.

Giving Tree Kindness Drive. Shelton's Student Clubs are coming together this month to give back to our community with their 2nd annual Giving Drive. They will be collecting essentials for families in need and creating essential/emergency needs bags. Their goal is to create 100 bags. The Student Council, Health Heroes, and Kindness Club will have a special meeting to assemble the bags. Great job students! AMP Special Programs. Shelton 1st and 3rd grade students worked hard to put together their special AMP performances and were able to show their parents all they have learned on November 21st. First Grade performed "Come Dance With Me!" and 3rd Grade performed "Life Cycles of a Butterfly." It was a great night with lots of smiles, way to go 1st and 3rd graders! La Cadena Meetings at Shelton. La Cadena is a new Spanish Meet-Up Group at Shelton that meets monthly to eat dinner together, speak Spanish, celebrate our various cultures, and make new friends. La Cadena is best translated as "the chain". The intent of the group is to strengthen our community by creating new friendships and connections.  We had a harvest festival in the school garden in October, celebrated Dia de los Muertos in November, and we will be having a Fiesta de Baile in December.  All are welcome.

Hands on Nature. The Hands-on-Nature Program is an In-Class, Hands-On, Volunteer-Lead program. Hands-on-Nature encourages students to interpret what they learn by asking "Why?" and "How?" and to answer questions by making observations in nature. It also is designed to encourage students to care about nature and to be environmentally responsible. The program is based on the ELF Program (Environmental Learning for the Future), but at Shelton it has been adapted to include a garden focus. The Shelton School and Community Garden is intended to be an outdoor classroom. The Hands-on-Nature Program allows classes to get out into the garden and study various nature topics. Each class gets to participate once in the Fall and again in the Spring to coincide with Fall / Spring Gardening. This Fall we kicked off the program by studying Honeybees. Students learned about bee keeping, they made beeswax candles, they learned about pollination, how honey is made, the importance of bees to our availability of food, and much more. This is the 2nd year that Shelton has brought learning for all grades KG - 5th to the outdoors with this program and with the community garden collaboration there are big plans for the future. WELCHESTER ELEMENTARY Over the River & Through the Woods

Fantastic Events. We had several enjoyable events this last quarter with all at our Chili Cook-off (and Silent Auction) and Holiday Night at Barnes & Noble. Our kids sang beautifully and we also enjoyed the talents of the Second Nature youth band. You all make this an incredible community to be a part of.

All Three Art Prints are Up! The third and final art print is now available for purchase on our Welchester Wellness website here. And guess what? We've already sold our first prints! Come see some of the beautiful donated work of artist Christina Morrison. We have worked with a benevolent artist and a local printing company to provide art prints as a Welchester PTA fundraiser. After a bit of work, we have all three art pieces available for purchase, Mademoiselle Flo, Doorway to Reading & Bob's Atomic Burgers. It has been such a treat to benefit both the school and local Golden businesses. You can see the original Flo at Cafe 13 and the Bob's painting is obviously at Bob's Atomic Burgers. We also want to say a huge thank you to 1Stop Printing for their generous support. Our Upcoming Open House is December 10th. We are looking forward to it with this delightful invitation video from our current Kindergarten students. Enjoy and we'll see you all there at 4:30pm.

Video Studio Grant Pursuit. We made it to the next level with the JeffCo Innovations grant submission (in the top 1% of submissions) and are continuing to work on getting this project funded and implemented. Welchester PTA has designed and are working to get a full turnkey video studio funded and implemented in our library. Special thanks to everyone who has shared their expertise to help us move closer to the goal on this.