Cooper Elementary Newsletter

December 23rd - January 3rd ... NO SCHOOL!!!

January 6th ... School Resumes

January 15th ... Spartan Family Forest Fest

January 23rd ... Early Childhood Family Night 5-7 pm @ YMCA

Wow! What a year for our Celebration of Giving! This is the first year ever that we took in over $6,000!!!

The office hallways are overflowing with presents! Through the sale and our generous adopt-a-family sponsors, we were able to provide gifts for 75 kids from Cooper families. We also reached another 12 kids in shelters with their families at Harbor House and CASDA, providing them with gift cards! The remaining funds will allow us to help out families in need throughout the year, as those needs arise. As always, our mission is to reduce the impact of poverty on local families and ensure a more equitable education for all children in our community.

A special THANK YOU goes out to Sandy Archambeau, Jesse Olson and Emily Sharrow for their time and energies in planning, coordinating, and making the Celebration of Giving such an amazing part of our Cooper Community each and every year! Thank you, too, to all who donated, shopped, wrapped, and made this year's Celebration of Giving a huge success!

Cooper Families,

It has been a very busy month here at Cooper! We are all so proud of the concert performances of our students last week, and would like to thank Mrs. Hallsten for her hard work preparing our students! Excellent job to all! If you were unable to attend in person, you can still watch our afternoon concert on our district YouTube page.

With the long break, I have included some activities you can do with your child at home if you would like.

• Practice with coins. Make believe you and your family are at a store. Use coins to help decide how much an object is and how to make change when purchasing something.
• Letter/sight word scavenger hunt. Use post-it notes to write letters or sight words and hide them around the house. Have your child find the words and then tell what the letter or word is when they bring it to you. You could extend the activity by having them tell the sound the letter makes and a word that starts with it, or telling you a sentence with the sight word in it.
• Do a book study with your child. Read the same story as your child and then when you have completed the chapter or a certain number of pages, come together and talk about what you read. Talk about your favorite parts or who the characters were.
• Play the card game war. Reinforce terminology your child hears in school by using terms such as greater or less than while you play.
• Reading with your child. This is always a great option to do with your child. Not only does it help build fluency and interest in books, but it is a great opportunity to get to know more about your child and books they are interested in.

If you are in need of any ideas of other ways to support your child academically, please feel free to reach out to myself or your child's teacher.

Friday will be our last day of school for 2024! We will see everyone back at Cooper on Monday, January 6th!

Kristene Stariha, Principal

The holidays can be a wonderful time of kindness, love, and giving. They can also be a time that can cause people to feel overwhelmed and stressed. We have been working with all students on how to manage big feelings. First recognizing what signals our bodies give us when we are experiencing a strong emotions. Then learning and using strategies that can help us calm down to be able to think clearly about what will help us deal with whatever is happening. We practice belly breathing, positive self-talk, and other self care strategies to help our brains and bodies when we feel scared, angry, stressed, or anxious. These are good strategies not just for kids but for adults as well. Take time to take care of yourself this holiday season. Making sure you are emotionally regulated allows you to then help those around you feel better as well.

These flyers are distributed as a courtesy to families in the School District of Superior; however, distribution does not imply that the School District endorses or approves the activities or viewpoints promoted in these materials.

Please email flyers to socialmedia@superior.k12.wi.us for approval in a png format.

• REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION FOR DISABLED PERSONS The director of human resource, who is the ADA Compliance Officer, shall ensure that the following notice is made a part of each communication concerning a District activity to which the public is invited: "Upon request to the director of human resource, the District shall make reasonable accommodation including the provision of informational material in an alternative format for a disabled person to be able to participate in this activity."