Pacifica Wednesday Weekly

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March 22, 2006

Important Calendar Dates

If you have items to add to the calendar, please e-mail the date and time along with a description to calendar@pacificaschool.org

Re-Enrollment Forms for 2006-2007 Due Friday, March 24th

Re-enrollment forms for the 2006-2007 school year will be in boxes today or
tomorrow. Please fill out and return by this Friday, March 24th. And remember, if you are planning on enrolling a sibling for next year, please pick up an application from the office and turn it in by Friday as well.

If you are interested in helping the Enrollment Committee, please contact Alison@pacificaschool.org or leave a note in Adesina Brown's parent box.

Pacifica Beautification Day, This Saturday, 10am – 2pm

All Community Event! Breakfast-type snacks provided, but food & drink donations are welcome. Our focus will be on cleaning, yard beautification, watering, any classroom needs teachers feel necessary, shed & side yard organization, etc. This is a great opportunity to get in those participation hours for those families that haven't been able to contribute as much as they want. The more people we get to help, the more beautiful our campus will be!

Our Recycling Mission

By Lilly L-M

Melinda, Kamala, Andrew, Marlon, Alex P., Savitri and I have started a class recycling committee.  We had our first meeting last week. What we want to do is get a recycling program for our class, and eventually the whole school. We want to put a recycling bin for each type of recyclable material, which are: paper, plastic, cardboard, bottles, and other. We also want to have one for compostable materials.  We want each bin to be a different color so it's easier to tell them apart. We also want to put signs above the recycling bins to make it easier to see where they are.

This is a list of of immediate goals:

• Earn money with recyclables

• Educate other classes and possibly other schools about recycling

• Buy recycled school supplies

We are hoping that we can have fundraisers, such as bake sales, gather donations, and get grants to buy bins and supplies.  We will have updates on this project each week.

Spring Break

·         Students will be released at noon on Friday 4/7. THERE WILL BE NO AFTERCARE – ALL STUDENTS MUST BE PICKED UP AT NOON.

·         No School on Monday, 4/17 – The teachers will be in Professional Development all day.

·         School resumes on Tuesday, 4/18.

Help Wanted!

In order to more effectively reach out to our community regarding our maintenance needs, we're starting a 'Help Wanted' list for the Wednesday Weekly. A number of people have asked how they can help & contribute more around school. The following list will give everyone an opportunity to see what tasks need doing here at school, and hopefully meet the flexibility needs of some families. A lot of the tasks can be done outside of class time. If you are able to tackle a task, (these are just a few to  start) please check in with the office and we'll get you going. Thanks!

• Light fixtures need to be replace in girl's & boy's bathrooms

• Sweep off rubber surfacing (ongoing)

• Glass replacement on front door and Miriam's class door

• Move flammable containers (paint) and cleaning products from heater closets to paint cabinet & housekeeping closet

• Tree Watering (ongoing)

• Repair weather-stripping on John Robin's class door

• Take off and re-hang 3rd stall door in girl's bathroom (it's not closing due to toilet paper dispenser)

• locker removal to side yard (will need a dolly)

• Reattach down spout to rain gutter at NE corner of west classrooms

CALLING ALL COOKS! Kids! Teachers! Parents! We want your Recipes! This is a call for your recipes and artwork, to be printed in:

PacificArt Cookbook

Please submit your recipe ideas, typed or printed legibly on standard white paper, accompanied by kids art (black and white only) to decorate the page.  This cook book will be sold, with profits to benefit Pacifica, at the Spring Faire on May 6, 2006.
Please give us your favorite recipes in the following categories:

• School Lunchbox

• After School Snacks

• Healthy Desserts

• "You Just Must Try This!"

Place your recipes and original artwork in the recipe box in our entryway.
Deadline for submissions is Spring Break.  Please participate in this great idea, sure to be a family treasure! Questions? Ask Lakshmi Lambert (Zhuba's Mom) 

Group 6, John Robin and Melinda’s Class:

Group 6 has been learning how to play West African drum rhythms from Instructor Malick Sow (pronounced "Ma-leek So") and many of us are sad to say goodbye, as this was the last week of this workshop. In other news, we are practicing distributive properties in Math, looking at the world through the eyes of a chicken in Science, examining government propaganda techniques in History, and as always, exploring a host of other topics with our dedicated teaching team, John-Robin and Melinda. 

Fire Breathing Phoenixes:

Lots of great ideas were explored when our group visited ReDiscover. We sorted objects together by material content, we hunted through the supply shelves to discover what pieces would have made our treasure picture and we got to use anything we wanted on those shelves to create our own artwork.  Our class brought home a very, very large cardboard tube and it immediately became a member of our class as the children gave this roll character with color and design. This 'Master Jim' even did some of our assignments! Imagine that.  Our class recently made a group decision by casting votes.  The vote was on whether or not to bring toys, dolls and costumes from home.  The first step in this process was identifying all the different types of things that might come from home.  We created a few large categories.  For instance, books and educational tools could come from home as well as food, extra clothes, slippers and blankets.  Well, I think you get the idea.  The whole process was very educational for the children and teachers, I was surprised when the majority of the children voted that toys should not come to school!!  IT'S OFFICIAL FOR OUR CLASS. Please help your child to remember our group decision. 

Recently we have acted out our first number stories or as is commonly called story problems.  The children were very engaged when they got to be part of the action as horses in the barn.  It is a lot of fun to learn number combinations in this way!  Another decision the group chose was to hear a presentation from a local park ranger that Sascha's class invited to our school.  Our class even got to host the event in our room with many other classes visiting.  There were many questions from all ages and I have a feeling Ranger Rich will be back to visit us again.  He had a full presentation including a purification circle outside where he burned sage ending with an honoring dedication to nature.  He explained about our local environment from the days when natives inhabited the land.  An African drumming group entertained and educated us in an assembly last week and all participated on some level from hand clapping, to chanting, to drumming, to dancing.  That's all for now.  We will continue next week with more from our class events and as always feel free to call with comments or questions. 

Miriam- (323-309-8420)

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