Keeping an Open Mind Wherever You Go

According to the Positivity Project's calendar, this week's character strength is open mindedness. According to the project's website posproject.org,  open-mindedness means that you like to consider new ideas and try new things. You examine things from all sides and don’t jump to conclusions. Students have been learning the importance of open-mindedness and what it means to have an open mind. What other strengths might be associated with it. 

“Progress is impossible without change; those who
cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
-GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

To learn more about the character strengths, please click here:  https://posproject.org/character-strengths/


For even more information about how the program works and a letter especially written for parents, click here.

Johnny Appleseed Plants Seeds of Fun!
Tuesday, September 26 marked the anniversary of Johnny Appleseed's birthday. That meant a lot of great learning around apples for our kindergarten friends. Students made applesauce from scratch, heard about Johnny Appleseed's life, and made apple-themed crafts.

Dates to Remember:

Author Frank Cammuso Visit - Friday, September 29

Book Fair- October 3,4,5 from 3-7 p.m. in the Gold Lobby

PTA Meeting - October 18, 6:30 p.m. Stonehedge Library 

Thanks, 

Lori

A Positively Exciting First Week

Welcome back to our returning students, and WELCOME to our new kindergarten families. The first week of school is always an exciting one! New faces, new friends, new teachers, new routines. It's all new and we strive to make the transition from summer living to school a smooth and enjoyable one for our students. (Please be sure to scroll through the blog post for even more pictures from our great first week!)

One way we did this was to help our students learn the behavior expectations for our building. Students spent their first day in classrooms becoming acquainted with their peers and teachers. Thursday and Friday the students rotated through stations around the building, on the playground, and on the bus and met with Instructional Specialists who explained the behavior expectations for that area. Each child now knows what it means to be responsible, be respectful, and be safe everywhere in the school!

Mrs. Stone met with students and discussed bus behavior. She spoke with students then they went on the bus to demonstrate respectful, responsible, and safe behavior.

Mrs. Farrow joined students in the cafeteria and spoke about expectations for behavior during lunch.

Mrs. Vislosky walked the halls with classes and spoke about ways to walk down the hallways in a respectful, responsible, and safe manner. 

These student expectations blend seamlessly as an introduction to our brand new character education program The Positivity Project. The Positivity Project teaches children by acknowledging and defining 24 different character strengths and that these strengths are already a part of who we are as people. It helps children to identify that as individuals we have these strengths and we continue to develop different strengths throughout life. It is such a positive way to appreciate the strengths in others as well as in ourselves! Next week we talk about #OtherPeopleMatter.  The premise of this slogan is that building healthy and lasting relationships between and among people is going to make you happy because other people matter! We will be providing continuous information as the program unfolds.

Important Dates to Remember:

September 14, Fall Open House

September 20, 6:30 p.m., Welcome Back PTA Meeting

September 19 and 20, Picture Day

Welcome Back!

~Lori