Greetings Hereford Families,

We are now counting down the last five days to Christmas break-day and the end of the first semester of school. The Penguin Patch starts tomorrow. Our Holiday Program is Thursday at 9:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. following a brief PTA meeting at 5:15 p.m. School ends at 11:30 a.m. on Friday.

December 11-15 Continue 12-Day of Christmas Dress Up Days

December 11-14 Penguin Patch Holiday Shop

December 14- 9:00 AM Winter Program- Santa and His Crew Visit S.H.E. School

December 15- Early Dismissal at 11:30

Wishing you the best!

Principal Williams

• Dec. 11-15 - Penguin Patch Holiday Shop

• December 12 - Parent Advisory Committee Meeting (1:00 p.m.)

• December 14 - Holiday Program (9:00 a.m. & 5:30 p.m.)

• December 14 - PTA Meeting (5:15 p.m.)

• December 15 - Early Dismissal (11:30)

PBIS is a behavior management system adopted by many schools, and the premise is simple – teach expected behaviors and focus on the good behaviors that you see. Below is a guide on how to use PBIS at home to help manage behavior.

PBIS at Home Guide

1. Expectations

Create a list of 3 -5 POSITIVELY worded expectations for the whole house. Keep it simple!

• Be respectful
• Be understanding
• Be helpful

2. Examples

Create a few examples of what each of those expectations looks like for the house. Ask your kids to contribute!

Respectful

• I can be respectful by… staying quiet when the adults are working.
• I can be respectful by… waiting for my turn to use the computer/device.

Understanding

• I can be understanding by… recognizing our new reality and the challenges it presents.

Helpful

• I can be helpful by… cleaning up the messes I make or cleaning up a mess I see.

Greetings, Hereford Families!

Greetings, Hereford families. The Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) has created a family newsletter for the winter holidays full of meaningful literacy activities to do with your child(ren). Please take a look and sign up for future updates. Here is the link:

https://www.smore.com/3bc5k4-holiday-parent-newsletter?fbclid=IwAR3nE3b9DlaT9lWbGxcOyNDESVE8gFx_mvy_96chAKN7nuvGf28rBv8QAVs_aem_AV0xi0xjGbp-TL2oX1-_AfcxMMgSvrEGitXLxQlsK57_hdfdYUFlpMj3KbzIgQi2c50

Sincerely,

Stephanie Tomes

I hope you all enjoyed some fun family friendly activities this weekend!

Just a reminder to check those bookbags for Christmas candy this week before your children come to school. Children love to share with their friends, but you never know what kind of allergies another child may have.

This week’s focus is on practicing our fact fluency using Reflex math for students in grades 2nd-6th. Reflex math is an online program provided by Huntsville City Schools to strengthen students’ fact fluency skills. Fact fluency is a foundational math skill that means mastering sums between 0–20 so students can produce the answers quickly and accurately. For example, with addition fact fluency, students can recall 1 + 4 = 5 without hesitation. Building fact fluency is an important step toward thinking about math more critically. Huntsville City Schools has provided a program for students to use to practice and master fluency. Once students log in to Clever, they can click on the orange Explore Learning app. Once students get into the app, they choose Reflex to begin working. This app will allow scholars to practice math facts by levels, starting with addition and subtraction!

Let’s finish this week strong and move our Group Fluency Average closer to the 50% mark.

Ways to Build Number Sense at Home

Number sense is a person’s understanding of number concepts, operations like addition and subtraction, and the application of numbers and operations. This group of key math skills includes estimation, measurement, relative size (more, less), number relationships, and mental math.

1. Ask questions to help your child develop a strong sense of numbers…

Which is most/greatest? How do you know? Which is least/smallest? How do you know? What else can you tell me about those numbers? About how much would that be? How did you get that answer? Does that make sense?

1. Count, count, count! Give your child sets of items...

Have your child count how many items are in each set. (Example: books, fruit, stuffed animals)

1. Dice—One More/Less and Two More/Less.

Roll the dice. Build a set of beans (or any object) that is one more or less than the number rolled. Players should take turns rolling the dice.

Get started today with any of these activities that will help your child to build number sense!

The month of December is known as the season of giving. Learning to give and being generous are traits that can be difficult to teach to children. Click the link below to read an article that gives some great ideas and books to read to encourage generosity in children. It discusses the joy of giving, sharing your talents, being generous with your time and being generous with kindness.

My parent focus meeting for this month was “Dealing with stress over the holidays”. I wanted to share a small part of my slideshow that we probably all could use a reminder about -

Parties. Shopping. Family. Travel. The holidays can be demanding. There's no wonder it’s so easy to be stressed.

But the holidays are meant for relaxing and enjoying yourself. Don’t let stress get to you. Your health depends on it.

Here are some tips to keep stress at bay during the holidays:

• Be realistic. The holidays don’t have to be perfect.
• Plan ahead. Do your online ordering and shopping early.
• Reach out. Talk with family or friends if you need support.
• Set a budget. Know in advance how much you can afford to spend.
• Learn to say no. Know your limits, and be firm about them.
• Keep healthy habits. Eat healthy, get plenty of sleep and be active.
• Make time for yourself. This can be as simple as taking a bath or reading a book.

Thank you!

Ann Elkins

Hello Parents,

This week during our Guidance, our scholars will learn what it means to have “Self-Respect”. This week our scholars are making King and Queen Crowns. They are learning that they are kings and queens and that they can achieve their goals if they keep their minds focused.

DON’T FIGHT IT OUT…LET’S LEARN TO TALK IT OUT!

Parents should teach teens that healthy friendships occur when both people:

• Care about each other.
• Understand and respect each other.
• Are responsible for each other.
• Solve problems together and communicate with honesty.
• Share at least some of the same goals and values.

Parents should teach teens that destructive friendship involve:

• Manipulation and jealousy.
• Negative attitudes and dishonesty.
• Blaming each other for their problems.

Parents, please talk to your child about being kind to one another. Please teach your child that fighting is no way to solve our problems. Let’s find ways to talk about solving our differences.

• Supervision of students begin at 7:30 each morning; therefore, students should not arrive to school before 7:30 AM.

• Students who are walkers are to follow the sidewalk leading to the crossing guard and to the front door of the school.

• Students who are walkers should not walk across the Pre-K parking lot without being supervised by parent/guardian.

• Parents who enter Pre-K parking lot (yellow arrows) to drop off Kinder-6th grade students must park and escort student(s) to front of school.

• Parents who enter faculty and staff parking lot (blue arrows) to drop off Kinder-6th grade students must park and escort student(s) to crosswalk.

• School starts promptly at 8:00 AM.

• Students arriving after 8:00 AM are tardy and must have a parent or a guardian sign them in at the main office.

Student check-out ends at 1:45-must have valid identification and listed as a contact in

PowerSchool SIS.

• All students will be dismissed at 2:30.

• Students are either a bus rider, car rider or walker.

• Parents are asked not to congregate near the front door of the school or the pick-up area. You

will be asked to clear the dismissal area- please do so.

• Parents of walkers are asked to meet your children at home or at the crosswalk.

• Parents of car riders are asked to remain in your vehicle in the car line during pick-up.

• Pre-K parking lot (yellow arrows) is reserved only for Pre-K families with Parking Permit displayed.

• WALKERS- in the event of rain, parents are asked to provide child/ren with rain gear or send a written/typed note to teacher to change dismissal to car rider for that day by 1:30 pm.