Family Picnic Cancelled

Due to the rain, the picnic for today, September23rd, has been cancelled. I apologize for the inconvenience. I look forward to seeing everyone at the next school event. ~Amy

Chestnut Family Picnic, September 23rd

Chestnut PTA will be hosting a Family Picnic on Friday, September 23 from 5:30-7pm behind the school. We hope you will be able to come, meet your student's classmates and mingle with parents and staff. More information will be sent home with students.

Welcome Back!

The 2011-12 school year has begun! The first PTA meeting of the year will be Wednesday, September 7 at 4:45pm in the Music Room. The business meeting will start promptly at 5pm. Everyone is welcome to attend but only current paid members are able to participate. Membership forms will be available at the meeting. Dues are $6 per person. Forms are also available in the school office and can be turned in at any time to the office or through your child's classroom teacher.

Meeting agenda items include budget approval, upcoming fundraisers, programs and activities needing volunteers, and the formation of an audit committee and bylaws review committee.

Your participation is greatly appreciated. I hope to see you Wednesday, September 7th!
~Amy

May Meeting Items

We will be electing officers for 2011-2012 on May 4 at 5pm in the Music Room. The following individuals have been nominated:

President: Amy Basco
Vice-President: Jennifer Palinkas
Secretary: Stephanie Romig
Treasurer: Michelle Anderson

Other topics include upcoming events (Muffins for Mom, Member Appreciation, Family Picnic) and future planning for the summer and next year. Please plan to attend.

Math Fair: We had fun!

A big THANK YOU! to everyone for a successful partnership program! Parents and staff worked hard to bring three areas of focus together for 1 1/2 hours of fun for all students. Math facts or number sense, measurement and geometry were the three areas each grade focused on for about 25 minutes each. Here is a synopsis of the activities.

Pocket Day: Everyone was encouraged to wear as many pockets as possible. Some students wore shorts over pants. Others made shirts covered with pockets. Kindergarten and first grade counted the number of pockets each person had and the total pockets for their class. Second and third grade looked at their class data to determine the frequency each number of pockets occurred. Fourth and fifth grade were compiling school wide data to determine the average number of pockets, class averages, pod totals, school total, mean, median, mode and more.

Sawtooth Quilts were made by the Kindergarten and first grade classes to explore shape relations. They also made 12 inch rulers using 1-inch squares for measuring.

Tangrams were featured in second and third grade for shape relations and area. Kits will be provided for all second and third grade classrooms for further exploration. They also had fun with the Minute Madness activity. Do you know how many time you can write your name, hop or the number of jumping jacks you can do in one minute? They do now and for many of them it varied greatly from their predictions.

A place value game, As Close as Possible, required the fourth and fifth graders to use logic, strategy and subtraction/addition skills to reach the lowest score. Geoboards allowed them to explore shapes, angles, area and perimeter.

Please ask your students about these activities to reinforce what they experienced. It was great to see many parents come and participate with their children as well. Thanks for making Math Fair a great experience for everyone! ~Amy