AES Eagle Eye Tribune

Dear AES Families,

As we head into the final week of school for the 2024 calendar year, we’re filled with excitement for the holiday season ahead and hope everyone will return rejuvenated and ready to go on January 6th, 2025! When we return, we’ll also reach the halfway point of the school year—time flies!

👏 Thank You for Joining Us at STEM Night! A big thank-you to those who braved the rain on Wednesday night to attend our STEM Night! It’s important to us to offer engaging opportunities for students and families each year.

We Need Your Feedback!

Please take a moment to complete our STEM Event Reflection Survey—whether you attended or weren’t able to make it, your input matters. Your feedback will help us understand:
✅ Whether we’re meeting the needs of our school community
✅ What types of events you’re interested in for the future Click Here to Share Your Thoughts]

Thank you for your time and valuable suggestions! 💡

❄️Winter Spirit Week❄️

Next week is Winter Spirit Week, and we’re so excited for all the fun ahead! Check out the schedule below for themed days, plus some extra surprises sprinkled throughout the week. While we’re embracing the excitement of the holidays, we’re also committed to maintaining a balance of routine and structure to keep everyone feeling supported.

🎯 Our Goal: Find the perfect mix of learning, routine, and festive fun for all!

🎵Winter Concert and Sing-a-Long🎵

Mark your calendars! On Friday, December 20th, at 2 PM, we’ll host our Winter Concert and Sing-a-Long in the AES gym. Families are welcome to join us for this festive celebration!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Warmly,
Beth Gibney

Join us on Friday, December 20th at 2:00 in the AES Gym for the annual Winter Sing-A-Long. We look forward to having you there!

The students in 4th grade have been traveling over to Gread Brook Middle School to practice with their chorus. They had their big night this week, they sang in the Middle School Winter Concert. Watch part of their performance. They were amazing!

Press release - Charlotte Brett, the librarian at Antrim Elementary School in New Hampshire is

the winner of the grand prize of a $4,000 gift certificate in the Lexia Library Wish program. Created by

Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group brand, in collaboration with the nonprofit First Book, the program

offered Title 1 educators the chance to win a total of over $16,000 for stocking their classroom or school library with books from the First Book Marketplace. Brett’s prize funding will be enough to buy

approximately 800 books. Link to full Press Release.

Thank you to all those who attended the STEM night last night at AES! Please take a moment to complete this survey if you DID or DID NOT attend the event. Your feedback is critical to our success as a community. We are looking for feedback as we prepare for our next community event.

What an exciting week of learning we’ve had in Kindergarten this week! Students have been working hard to count and create collections. Students worked together in pairs to create math posters representing different numbers using objects they found in the classroom and then drawings. We’re becoming excellent counters! We’ve also made the exciting leap into writing our sight words, some students have even started writing full sentences!

Mrs. Phaneuf’s class used our knowledge of shapes to make winter scenes. This goes well with our new geometry unit!

Library News

This Week: This week Fourth Grade group B worked on coding and the Ladybug book competition. Mrs. Sullivan’s first grade and Mrs. Lawler’s Kindergarten also did the Ladybug book competition. On Thursday we held our First Book and Lexia celebration for the $4,000 gift to the library. With that money we were able to purchase 665 brand new books for the library! Thank you so much to First Book and Lexia.

Next Week: Next week Third Grade, Ms. Voorhees’ First Grade and Mrs. Del Rossi’s Second Grade will have library.

Upcoming:

PJ Day: The school has filled up yet another person in the Read a Person’s height challenge. This time it was Mr. Josh, our wonderful new custodian. The students voted for a PJ Day which we will be having Friday 12/20!

Mrs. Sullivan’s class began learning about wild reindeer. Did you know they live in the Arctic tundra? Brrr! We are reading books to find new learning about reindeer and then writing our new learning in a flip book. At the end of next week, we will make a craft to go along with our flip book. In math, we are studying the addition strategies doubles and doubles plus one. We began our phonics lessons, studying words with “Sneaky E” starting with the long a sound.

WHOO loves owls? Second Graders Do! As part of our science and writing lessons, Ms. Del Rossi’s second graders explored the fascinating world of owls. These learners posed wondering questions, shared their initial schema about owls, and then chose several subtopics to research. Together, we learned how to take notes while exploring a variety of resources such as, nonfiction books, magazines, short videos and class discussions. After gathering important information about these amazing creatures, each student wrote an informative report on owls. As a culminating activity, our ornithologists used the online site, KidWings to complete a virtual dissection of an owl pellet. This virtual dissection allowed our scientists to explore a food chain and "uncover" bones and other prey items. Owl-standing work second graders!

Third graders started a new math unit last week focused on place value concepts and metric measurement. We spent time weighing items with grams and kilograms, then measuring liquids with liters and milliliters. Then we tackled word problems with all four units of measure. We’re also learning to read and take notes from informational text, and turn our notes into an informational paragraph to share. To end our week, we baked pumpkin bread and banana bread to share with our reading buddies!

This week fourth graders were invited to participate in Great Brook School’s Winter concert! After spending weeks practicing our song, students were excited to get on the risers and perform with the chorus students of Great Break! It was a wonderful experience for all!

We also started our lessons with Harris Center naturalist, Kara Reynolds. Mrs. Kara brought in mounts and skulls of local mammals. Students observed the structures of this mammals and learned about which structures help them to survive in the wild. We also learned that certain animals have different structures based on their diets. Ask your child about the teeth of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores! How are they similar? How are they different? Thank you Mrs. Kara!

Kindergarten: In this week’s lesson, your child learned to use body language and context clues to figure out when someone feels mad. They practiced looking at the person’s face and body, as well as thinking about what’s going on in the situation. Encourage your child to notice when others around them feel mad. Have them practice using body language and context clues to figure out when family members, friends, or characters in books, movies, or on TV might be feeling mad.

Mrs. Sullivan’s Class: In this week’s lesson, your child showed that they can use body language and context clues to figure out how someone is feeling. They also showed that they know ways to help themselves feel calm when they encounter strong feelings. Ask your child to tell you some ways they’ve learned to feel calm when they get upset. Have them teach you how to use slow counting to feel calm.

Ms. Voorhees’s Class: In this week’s lesson, your child learned to use body language and context clues to figure out when someone feels frustrated. They practiced looking at the person’s face and body, as well as thinking about what’s going on in the situation. They also learned about a new strategy for feeling calm when they get frustrated: slow counting. Encourage your child to notice when others around them feel frustrated. Have them practice using body language and context clues to figure out when family members, friends, or characters in books, movies, or on TV might be feeling frustrated.

2nd Grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned that people can have different feelings in the same situation because of their experiences. Ask your child for an example of something that people can have different feelings about. Talk about the reasons people might have different feelings about it.

3rd Grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned words for three degrees of happiness: content, happy, and excited. Ask your child to explain the differences between feeling content, happy, and excited.

4th Grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned what it means to rethink a situation and how it can help them calm strong emotions. Tell your child about a time when rethinking a situation, or thinking about it in a different way, helped you feel better. Encourage your child to talk about times in their lives when rethinking could have helped them.