Week of November 19

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, please allow me to extend my warm wishes for a happy Thanksgiving to all of our BCHMCPS families and friends. When I count my blessings, I count all of you among those blessings. Thank you for all you do!

Calendar Reminders:

• Picture Retake Day is Tuesday November 27th
• PTO General Meeting is Wednesday November 28th 
• Parent/Teacher conferences will be held December 4th. Thank you to all families who have signed up for the conferences. This is an important time to meet with your child's teacher and we encourage all families to attend. 
• Book Fair- December 2-6 
• Screens Off/Minds On family Night- December 12th

PTO News

The PTO will be holding the BCHMCPS Scholastic Book Fair December 2-6. Please watch for book fliers to come home next week! This great fundraiser not only supports our school, encourages student reading (yay!!) but also helps with your holiday shopping. Books make a great gift for all ages. The Book Fair will be open during parent conferences on December 4th; this is a great time to browse and shop the selection of books. Please remember to support the PTO Book Fair.

You can easily support our school while doing your in other ways while doing your holiday shopping. Here are some ways to easily do this :

1. You can sign up with Amazon Smile. Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible Amazon smile purchase to our school. If you use your phone or tablet for shopping you’ll have to go to your web browser and go through smile.amazon.com when you check out.

Follow this link: https://smile.amazon.com/ch/20-3849692

And choose: Barnstable Community Horace Mann Charter Public School PTO Inc

Remember to go to smile.amazon.com every time you shop.

2. Our Yankee Candle online store will remain open until January 9th 2019.

Follow this link: https://www.yankeecandlefundraising.com/store.htm

And type in our group number: 999987808

Thank you for supporting our PTO.

On December 12th, we are hosting the family event- "Screens Off/Minds On". Attached are fliers in English, Portuguese and Spanish. These fliers will also be sent home in your child's backpack. This is a fun night for the whole family! Pizza will be served, so you don't even need to think about dinner. Students are encouraged to come in pajamas if they would like and they will have stories read to them as parents/guardians attend the "Screens Off/Minds On" workshop. The Book fair will be open for the evening as well. Reservations are needed so we can know how much pizza to order. We hope to see you there!

Notes from Nurse Melley

FLU FACTS

To protect against the flu, the first and most important thing you can do is get a flu vaccine for yourself and your child. Flu viruses spread mainly by droplets from a person's sneeze or cough. Below are some signs and symptoms to be aware of.

Theme Night and Ice Cream Social

Tomorrow Night is the BIG  night!  We are looking forward to welcoming all families to the BCHMCPS  Theme Night and Ice Cream Social! The fun will start at 6:00 and go right through to 7:30. So much fun in one night! 
A big part of tomorrow is the PTO ice cream social and the PTO needs your help with this. 

The PTO needs parent helpers to scoop the ice cream from 6pm to 7pm. Even if you  can only do it for 15 minutes that is just fine, please help out by coming to the cafeteria with your willing hands and volunteering spirit!. The PTO appreciates all the help they can get!

Some of the other fun activities:

•  Visit the work done for each grade level's theme!
• People in Our Neighborhood- Kindergarten
• Animal Adaptation- Grade 1
• MSPCA Partnership - Respect and Support for Animals- Grade 2
• Animal Traits and the Environment- Grade 3
• What Makes a Global Community-English Language Learners-

• Raffles! The Garden Committee and the PTO will be holding raffle during Theme Night with some exciting prizes, including prizes from Cape Air, Trader Joe's and Pain D'Avignon. Thanks to the many sponsors who support our school. Please support these businesses who support our school.
•  The Garden Committee and PTO are collecting canned goods, Please consider bringing a canned good item for the Food Drive to support those in need.
• Scavenger Hunt 

Don't forget that the All School Community meeting is tomorrow, 

Thursday November 8th at 9:30 at the HYCC.

Your opinion is so important to us. We want to know what you think of your child’s and your family’s school experience. Please take a few minutes during Theme Night to help us by filling out a survey that will be available to families in the front lobby. This survey is anonymous.

There are three areas in the survey:

·      School Climate

·      School Fit

·      Barriers to Engagement

The survey should take no more than 5 minutes to complete and will help us to know more about how to support your child and family.  All families who return the survey during Theme Night will have their name entered into a raffle to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate! Just return the survey in the front lobby and put your name and telephone number on a card that will be put in a bowl. The winner will be notified later this evening!

Thank you!

 

December 11th- Chipotle Garden Fundraiser on December 11th. Get your sit down or take out dinner and support the BCHMCPS Garden at no extra cost to you. Chipotle will donate a third of the proceeds to the Garden Committee. So get your appetite on and get down to Chipotle on December 11th. A flier will be going home in the next few weeks about this fundraiser.

December 12th we are holding a wonderful and informative family event called  "Minds On/ Screens Off Night". This evening is for the whole family and more information will be coming out closer to the date. As you think about this important topic of the amount and types of screen time children are exposed to, a link to a New York Times article that gives some further thought on this topic is below. Just copy the link into your browser.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR2Fw74jvwNU1z7b7iR2WSrUeAvaEaC-Oq8lVVkW3GqVyOSIC5jqoTyociU