Explorer Academy's Newsletter

Greetings Explorer Academy Community!

It is almost NOVEMBER! I am not sure I am ready for the cold, snow, and ice! I am, however, ready for November and looking forward to all of the activities our learners will partake in. October has been a busy month! On October 30th we will host our very first Family Engagement Event for the year! Please join us at Explorer Academy from 1:30-2:30 PM on October 30th for our Fall Festival and Trick or Treating! Learners are encouraged to bring their school appropriate Halloween Costume to school for this fun event. I hope that you, Explorer Academy Families, can join us for a little fall celebration on Friday afternoon. There will be snacks, games, trick or treating, and some fun (albeit slightly gross) activities. As we cap off October with our fun Fall Festival, we also look forward to our next Family Engagement Event, BINGO! This is a crowd favorite! We will host Bingo on December 17th from 5:00-6:30PM. Please mark your calendars and get ready for some friendly Bingo (and of course fabulous prizes).

Celebrating with our learners is something we enjoy around here. We will take every opportunity to brag out about our learners! One big accomplishment, that is often overlooked by others, is getting a haircut! A haircut experience can be exhilarating and freeing for some, while others dread the process. Haircuts can be over stimulating, hard for sensory sensitive individuals, and anxiety producing for families. We have been extremely lucky for the past few years to be able to welcome Skillz Cuts to our campus. The guys at Skillz Cuts bring the barbershop experience to our conference room and allow our students to experience a haircut in a setting that they are familiar with. This visit from Skillz Cuts was perfectly timed for school pictures so that our students looked their best! We appreciate the relationship that we have with Skillz Cuts and are thankful that they are able to volunteer their time! Thank you to Kenny and all of the guys for their patience and helping our community look their best.

Thank you for your support of our learners! We look forward to your attendance at all of our Family Engagement Events this year! Stay warm!

Sincerely-

Holli Huus, Dean of Students

Wednesday, November 11 - No School - Veteran's Day

Wednesday, November 25th - November 27th - No School - Holiday Break

Wednesday, December 9th - Early Out Day

Wednesday, December 23rd - January 3rd - No School - Holiday Break

🩺 October Health Suite Newsletter

Fall Into Healthy Habits! 🍂

Welcome to October! As the weather gets cooler and the school year gets busier, it is important to take care of both our bodies and our minds.

🧼 Keep Those Hands Clean!
Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially before eating, and after coughing, sneezing, or using the restroom. Good hand hygiene is one of the easiest ways to help prevent the spread of germs.

😴 Get Plenty of Rest
A good night's sleep can help you feel more focused, energized, and ready to learn. Try to keep a consistent bedtime routine, even on weekends.

💧 Stay Hydrated
Cooler weather doesn't mean you should stop drinking water. Remember to bring your water bottle to school and drink throughout the day.

🧠 Take Care of Your Mental Health
School can sometimes feel stressful. Take a few minutes to breathe, take a break when appropriate, and talk to a trusted adult if you are having a difficult time.

🎃 Have a Safe Halloween!
If you are celebrating Halloween, remember to stay with trusted adults or friends, use caution around traffic, and check treats before eating them.

A Message from the Health Suite

Your health matters! Small healthy choices each day can make a big difference. If you are feeling sick, injured, or need someone to talk to about a health concern at school, please visit the health suite or speak with a trusted adult.

Have a healthy and happy October! 🍁

Our class has settled into our daily classroom routines, and it has been wonderful to see students becoming more comfortable and confident in their classroom environment! Students have enjoyed working with all the adults in the room, building relationships with their classmates, and participating in our daily activities. We are continuing to work on following routines, becoming more independent, and being kind and helpful members of our classroom community.

Math: During our math stations, we have been working on number recognition, place value, addition, and subtraction. Students have been practicing important foundational skills through hands-on activities, games, and small-group instruction. We continue to build our confidence with numbers while learning at our own pace and celebrating our progress along the way!

Reading: Students have been working hard on recognizing all the letters of the alphabet and learning the sounds each letter makes. We have also been practicing blending CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words to help build our early reading skills. In addition, students have enjoyed exploring decodable books from our classroom bookshelf and practicing the skills we have been learning during reading stations. We are so proud of the effort students are putting into their reading!

Social Skills: We continue to learn alongside our Spot friends as we explore the different feelings we may experience throughout the day. Students have been reviewing emotions, learning how to recognize their feelings, and discussing ways to respond to those feelings in a positive way. We will continue practicing skills such as communicating our needs, making safe choices, and being respectful and caring toward others.

Science: We have been exploring the world around us by learning about different bugs! Students enjoyed discovering interesting facts about bugs and putting their knowledge to the test during a classroom bug scavenger hunt. It was exciting to explore and see how many different bugs we could find! These activities gave us a fun opportunity to practice observing, exploring, and learning more about the world around us.

As we continue to grow in our academic, social, and independence skills, we are excited for all the learning opportunities ahead! We are also looking forward to celebrating the season with some fun and festive Halloween activities next week. Thank you for your continued support and for being such an important part of your child's learning journey. We are excited to see what the rest of fall brings to our classroom! 🍁

October has been filled with Fossils, Fire Safety and Fundamentals.

Our students have been working on their academic fundamentals and building fluency. Math had a focus on place value, fact speed and accuracy and fractions. Our class completed a group lesson on equivalent fractions by filling pie orders and making many imaginary customers happy. In reading we have been completing activities that are part of the fall themes of scarecrows, pumpkins, and of course finishing up with Halloween.

Some fun activities to enhance science and social studies have included cracking some dinosaur fossils for National Fossil Day and being great audience members for our Fire Safety presentation. This week we spent time focused on food and human body systems to help us understand why it is important to eat healthy foods and how our digestive, skeletal, and muscular system work together. We also spent a day talking about the food chain and how the sun is the source of all things we eat. We even put together some food chains to show what we learned.

It has been a great year so far!

Social Studies - students have been learning about geography, including mountains, plains, volcanoes, and bodies of water.

Science - they have been exploring different habitats. Students are also creating dioramas to showcase what they have learned.

Math - students have been working on DreamBox, counting money, and telling time on clocks.

ELA - students continue practicing reading comprehension skills by finding answers in reading materials and using evidence from the text to support their responses.

Thank you for your continued support. We are proud of the hard work and progress our students are making every day!

For the month of October we have been working on the following:

Reading class we have been reading different texts and identifying main ideas/themes and details. We have also been writing poems.

Math class - we have been adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions, as well as adding and subtracting decimals and learning basic algebra concepts.

Science class - we have been studying each planet in the solar system. We have concluded with the planet Mercury and are now onto the planet Venus.

Social Studies class - we continue to analyze current world-wide and local events and determine their effects on the planet and people.

October has been such a fun month in our classroom! How is it already time for Halloween?!

Some students are already finishing up their first novel studies of the year and moving into new books. In writing, we have written narratives, developed dialogue, and learned about different parts and types of sentences.

Everyone is doing a great job of working through DreamBox math lessons, completing math learning in the Number Worlds curriculum, and making progress in their own goal areas.

In science, we wrapped up our unit on atoms and molecules. The students blew me away with how well they learned the material and can share so much information about atoms and how they work! Next, we are moving on to learning about Newton’s Laws through carnival games and their tricks!

In social studies, we learned about the ancient civilizations of the Maya and Aztec, then did a mini-unit on media literacy, learning about primary and secondary sources, what bias is and how to detect it, as well as how to find reliable sources of information. After wrapping this up, we will jump back into learning about North America by looking at systems of government, including our own.

We also had our first coffee cart of the year and it was a blast! Barista skills were definitely not lost over the summer.

We celebrated National Real Sugar Day on October 15 and had so much fun using the resources and swag sent to us from Minn-Dak Farmers Coop. We learned about the differences and similarities of beet sugar and cane sugar, examined different kinds of sugar under magnifying glasses, made a flow-chart of the beet sugar-making process with the actual beets and other stages of the process, and made sugar molecules out of toothpicks and colored mini-marshmallows. It was such an enjoyable day!

I hope your October was just as fun as ours and I can’t wait to see what November has in store!

We have been staying busy in our 5th grade classroom and continuing to learn, grow, and challenge ourselves! As we move through the fall season, we are working hard on our academics while also building important social skills.

Math - we have been working on fractions and multiplication. Students are practicing their skills, building confidence, and learning different strategies to solve problems. We continue to encourage perseverance and a growth mindset when tackling challenging problems!

Language Arts - we are focusing on strengthening our writing skills, reading comprehension, and essay writing. Students are practicing how to organize their thoughts, develop their ideas, and express themselves clearly through writing. We are also working on understanding what we read and using details from the text to support our thinking.

Social Skills class, we have been focusing on good sportsmanship and having a growth mindset. We are learning how to be good teammates, encourage others, handle winning and losing gracefully, and keep trying even when things feel difficult. These skills help us build positive relationships and create a supportive classroom community.

We have been taking advantage of the beautiful fall weather and getting outside whenever we can! We know the colder temperatures are coming soon, so we are enjoying the fresh air and sunshine while it lasts. Please remember to send students with appropriate jackets and outdoor clothing so they can stay comfortable as the weather changes.

Thank you for your continued support! We are proud of the effort our students are putting into their learning and the progress they are making each day. We look forward to another great week of learning, growing, and working together!

In Mr. Patrick's class this month we have been busy!

Math - we have been working hard to meet our goals, and the progress towards that has been amazing! One learner even met their goal ahead of schedule.

ELA - We have seen great progress towards their goals.

Social Studies - We finished learning about all 50 states and have moved on to exploring the three brances of government and learning how checks and balances work within our government.

Social Skills - We have spent a lot of time exploring the idea of being a "forced" community, a term the learners chose themselves. We have been discussing how, even though we didn't choose to be here together, we are here, and that comes with responsibilities. We have been learning that being part of a community means making room for everyone.

We are very proud of our learners this month academically and behaviorally, and it has been wonderful to see their growth already. We look forward to seeing all the amazing things they continue to accomplish!

We’ve been busy in PE developing our movement skills! Learners have been practicing throwing and catching, soccer dribbling, kicking, and volleying through a variety of fun games and activities. These skills help build coordination, confidence, and teamwork while keeping everyone active!

Friendly Reminder: As colder weather approaches, please remember to pack a pair of tennis shoes for your learner. Having appropriate footwear helps everyone participate safely and successfully in PE!

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which has overcome” – Booker T Washington

The school year in the fall presents so many obstacles for so many families. The cold weather brings the flu season, needing winter gear, and purchasing food for all the holiday events. Fargo Cass Public Health offers walk-in and appointment based options for flu-shots which can be given at low cost or free depending on qualifying families. The Salvation Army’s Coats for Kids event had their distribution on October 15th and 16th. Heading into November the Salvation Army’s Thanksgiving Food Box pick up will be on Friday, November 21st. Speaking of November, Daylight Savings Time will begin Sunday, November 1st which can take time to get used to. A suggestion from USA Today is, “In the days leading up to the fall time change, try going to bed 15 to 20 minutes later each night to help ease the transition to standard time.” As this year motto goes, “All In, Every Day”, we are all in this together and together we can overcome all obstacles! As always, if you need anything please feel free to reach out to me at 701-566-4725 or schmidn@fargo.k12.nd.us

Speech/Language students are settled into their schedules and working toward building stronger communication skills each day! While we continue to build communication skills and social skills, October will bring about some fun activities too! Although your student does not bring home Speech/Language homework, building skills at home and in the community is so important. Here are a few ideas for building skills;

• Practice listing the steps to washing hands, making a pb&j sandwich, or how to carve a pumpkin

• Name 5 items that belong in a category (halloween candy, costumes, things we see in fall)

• Name 5 words that start/end with your Speech sound

• After watching a TV show or movie, retell what happened at the beginning, middle, and end

• Name 5 things that are orange, big, round, found in nature
  

• Explain how a bat and a witch are alike/different

Happy Fall Everyone!

In art and music, students have continued with individualized learning, creating a pace and choosing activities that best suit them. Some popular activities this month have been learning rhythms with You’ve Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story and a variety of origami.

Some students are even volunteering to find brand new activities or take step-by-step pictures of their art projects. These will be used to create visual instructions for other students in the future.

I have been impressed by how well students have adapted to individualized learning. They have shown creativity, persistence, and more resilience to challenge. Student choice leads to improved learning and a desire to continue learning.

This month in Smartlab we started with a bridge building challenge. Students were tasked with creating a K'NEX bridge that will hold the most amount of weight. Students took the time to brainstorm, plan, and build their K'NEX bridges over the course of two weeks. After everyone was finished with the building stage, students got to test their bridges to see how much weight their bridge could hold. After the K'NEX bridges, we turned our focus to drones. Students learned how to operate the drone before getting the chance to fly the drones outside or in the sensory gym.

Gifted services have been working with math students on growing their algebraic thinking skills and strategies using the Hands-On Equations curriculum. This is both a visual and kinesthetic math program created to help students create a deep foundational understanding of algebraic concepts. Here is how it works:

• Physical Manipulatives: Students use a flat laminated balance scale (representing the equal sign), colored pawns (representing positive and negative unknown variables like x), and number cubes (representing constants).
• Legal Moves: Instead of memorizing abstract rules right away, students physically set up equations and execute "legal moves" (such as removing the same number of pawns or cubes from both sides) to find the value of the unknown.
• Self-Checking: Students test and verify their answers by substituting the discovered value back into both sides of the equation to ensure they balance.

Math students have also been engaged in STEM related activities too which engage their interests in 3D printing, Littlebits and Ozobots. Students also have independent resources available to grow their math skills in their pods as well.

Gifted students engaged in reading language arts curriculum have been reading the award-winning novel Holes by Louis Sacher. Students have been using textual evidence to name each of the novel chapters, showing their deeper understanding of the story's plot elements and characters. After reading the novel we plan to watch the movie adaptation to compare and contrast the two formats of this awarding winning realistic fiction novel.

Students at Explorer Academy received a visit from members of the Concordia Cobbers Women’s Basketball team. Students participated in questions/answers, compared heights, played basketball trivia, and collected autographs from the Cobbers. The visit was in preparation for an upcoming exhibition game the students will attend, when the Cobbers face the NDSU Bison. Roll Cobbs!

Every parent wants to show up full for their child, but constant caregiving can take a toll. Learn the signs of compassion fatigue and how self-care makes you a better, more present caregiver in November’s Mental Health Newsletter.

Explore November's virtual, live events covering today’s most important parenting topics. Register for events and view the full library of on-demand videos, quick facts, practical tips, and articles at ParentGuidance.org Mental Health Series Catalog.

Join as many as you would like at no cost!

Parents and caregivers are invited to join Ask a Therapist Live on Tuesday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. for an anonymous opportunity to ask a licensed family therapist questions about youth mental health and parenting. Register for the live event to participate and receive access to the replay all free of charge.