Delta Center Elementary Weekly Newsletter

                                               Friday, November 10th, 2023

Upcoming Dates

Nov. 10  Half Day / Release at 12:10 /  Conferences 1:00 - 4:00 

Nov. 15   PTO Meeting  7:00 pm

Nov. 17   Half Day /  Release time 12:10 pm

Nov. 20-24   No Students - Thanksgiving Break

Nov. 27   Classes Resume

Dec. 22-Jan. 5   No Students - Winter Break

Jan. 8    Classes Resume

Jan. 15   No Students - MLK Day

Jan. 17   PTO Meeting  7:00 pm

Feb. 7   PTO Meeting. 7:00 pm

Feb. 14   Student Count Day

Feb. 16   Half Day / Release at 12:10 pm

Feb. 19   No Students - Presidents' Day

 

 

School Hours

9:00 am -

3:55 pm

 

Please do not

drop off before

8:40 am

 

Pick up no later

than 4:05 pm

 

Thank you! 

 

From Our Principal

I want to thank all of our Delta Center families who were able to participate in our fall conferences. We are grateful to have this time to partner together and talk about grade-level academic milestones and overall growth. Our teachers work diligently to create a collaborative and positive classroom culture for students to feel safe and take risks to accelerate their learning. Building strong bonds with families, working together as one team, and having your continued support and involvement are crucial to your child's education. We value our relationship with you, thank you! If you were not able to make a conference work this week, teachers will attempt to touch base via a phone conference. 

We appreciate having time to share our new standards-based grading and proficiency scales with you. A proficiency scale is a way to communicate what a student knows and does not know about the essential learning, and it is meant to guide instruction in the classroom and provide you and your child with real-time information about what they know now and what still needs to be learned. Please understand our Essential learnings are to be learned by the end-of-year. If your child is at a 1 or a 2, at this point in the year, that can be okay, and even expected. For a quick video of Dr. Barnes explaining the proficiency scale, please click HERE. Essential learnings are the topics that we expect students to master by the end of the year. To view all of the essential learnings for your child’s grade level, please visit our academic services page HERE. 

I would also like to thank our amazing PTO and Riverview Church for providing our teachers with delicious dinners, breakfast, snacks, and lunch throughout this important week.

This is a friendly reminder to not bring your household dogs to the school during arrival or dismissal. We have seen aggressive dogs recently and want to keep our students safe. Our facility dog Abu, although extremely well trained, is still a dog and may react to the other dogs. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Friday, November 17th is a HALF DAY with dismissal at 12:10. 

 

As always, if you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Teresa Dyer

 

More School News

Makerspace needs your help!

We are looking for parent volunteers to help run
makerspace on Monday’s during lunch recess!

Here is the link to sign up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/9040B49A4AA2CAAF49-44694387-makerspace 

Birthday Treats

Our classes do not have students bring in birthday treats.  We have a number of food related allergies across the building so that is a practice we have not done for quite a number of years now.  If your child wants to bring something for the class, it can be non-edible items like bookmarks, pencils, etc. Thank you for helping to keep our students safe.

Do you have any extra Halloween costumes at your home? If so, we could use them here at Delta Center!  We would appreciate donations of gently-used costumes your child no longer needs.  This may include character costumes, animals, or even sports jerseys.  You can send this costume donation to school with your child or deliver it to your child's teacher at conferences.  Your thoughtfulness is appreciated! Thank you!  

 

With the winter months coming, it is always helpful when student's have a change of clothes. Please send the extra clothes in a clear ziplock bag with your student's full name on the front.  

Thank you for all you do! 

PE Amazon Wish List: 

PE At Delta Center is a WONDERFUL place to be and I am so proud of our school and students! I love getting to know all of the students and learning with them  to be physically fit and have fun too!  Being new to Delta Center (and the PE position), I am finding that we have many equipment needs -  old equipment is falling apart and new equipment for new experiences is necessary! Please view THIS PE AMAZON WISHLIST to see the things we are hoping to add to our gym.  Thank you so much for your donation, it will be GREATLY appreciated!

Donations Request:

1. DONATION REQUEST - ATHLETIC SHOES 

Clean, gently used OR New child-sized shoes for students who do not have appropriate shoes for gym class are greatly appreciated!

2. DONATION REQUEST - PLASTIC 20-25 ounce SIZE, CLEAN, COFFEE CONTAINERS

 

Dear Delta Center Families,

I wanted to send along my sincere thanks for the purchases that have been made from my Amazon Wish List for PE at DC! How amazingly kind and generous! I am so thankful and look forward to using the new equipment with our students! We will have so much fun  I am proud to be a part of such a kind and thoughtful school family, thank you again!

Sincerely,

Lynley Watters

Greetings and Salutations!

Exciting things are happening! There's art in the halls, new projects in the works, conferences are in two weeks (be sure to stop in, see the art, and say "Hello!"), aaannnddd...

The annual Original Works fundraiser program is ready to officially begin! This unique opportunity allows you to create beautiful keepsake items featuring your child's amazing masterpieces! 

Your student's art can be put on anything from notebooks to t-shirts; ornaments to magnets, ceramic tiles or placed in a fancy frame. This year it gets even better! They've added three new exciting items to the online catalog:

Ordering will be done all online (unless your student's art missed the scanning date, then it will be manual).

Be on the lookout for informational letters going home this week and make sure to keep the following dates in mind. 

Dates to Remember:

Custom Letters To Be Sent Home for ALL students: Friday, November 3rd/6th (dependent on arrival of letters)

DEADLINE for ONLINE ordering: Wednesday, November 15th. 

Window for LATE ordering (online/manual): November 16th-December 8th (items may not arrive until after the winter holiday).

Orders are set for ARRIVAL (online/manual): Thursday, December 7th (pick up date to be determined).

BONUS: Do you have a DC alum who misses creating keepsake art? A future DC artist who wants to be a part of the fun? Let me know! I can provide paper, steps, and criteria to follow, and they too can participate as part of the manual ordering process  !

If you have any questions, feel free to email me: belldeann@glcomets.net. Don't forget to check out our Delta Center art room facebook page (Mrs. BellDean's DC Art Room) for important updates and amazing art!

As always, thank you for your continued support in our students and our school!

Are You Shopping For A Ukulele?!

I have had a few people contact me asking about ukuleles for the upcoming holidays.  Yes, there are a million choices, and it is very overwhelming!  I can tell you that you will for sure want a soprano uke (not concert, tenor, or baritone size).  When purchasing for a child, there are really three things you will want to focus on:  durability, brand, and price.

Do you have younger children who might get their hands on it?  Do you think you may take it with you on trips?  How much would your child take care of their instrument?  Will it potentially be left outside?  If you tend to really relate to these questions, I would recommend a plastic soprano ukulele.  They are more durable than the wood, tend to stay in tune a bit better when faced with the outdoors, and if it happens to be left outside, it will probably withstand the elements.  However, if you do not think those questions really apply, then definitely go with a wood one; they sound better because the sound is able to resonate in much nicer ways, and if it is not spending a lot of time outside, it will stay in tune well (once the strings have stretched).

As for brand, Kala is really king.  I own four Kala ukes, and have yet to be disappointed.  Companies such as Fender and Ibanez (known for guitars) produce models, but they tend to be more expensive (and I think you are really paying for the brand name).  There are other cheaper ones you could get (such as from Walmart or other locations), but in my experience they tend to go out of tune quickly because the pegs or overall design is poorly made.

Now for price.  The Kala Waterman (plastic) tends to be fairly cheap and comes in a ton of colors (including see-thru and glow-in-the-dark).  If you go with this one, I would advise to stay away from the ones with lighter colored necks (like the translucent clear) because the strings are harder to see.  Our DC students are playing on this plastic model at school.  These cost around $40.

The Kala Ukadelic is a basic model that (I believe) is wood or fabricated wood-like material.  I do not own one of these, but they would be a fairly basic alternative to the plastic model.  These run around $30-$50 depending on where you can find one.  Another option is this Kala Makala, which is slightly nicer.  This one is usually around $50, and I own this model (LOVE it).

May I also suggest a tuner?  We will be learning how to use these tuners in January.  A Ukulele Clip-On Tuner around $12 will save your ears a lot of hassle.  You can view a YouTube video of how to use this HERE.

Let me know if I can help you or clarify in any other way.  Also, the links here are from West Music, which is usually the company I go through for most of my elementary music supplies, but you can get Kala brand a lot of other places, including Amazon.  If you find something and want to send me a link to check it out, I am happy to as well.  Reach out with questions!

Mrs. Lore-    lorea@glcomets.net

We did it! Our book fair was a success! Our students had a lot of fun
previewing the fair this week. It is always such a joy to see the look of
excitement on their faces. Thank you so much for shopping at the fair 
The rewards that our school earned will help to get fun and engaging books
into your kiddos hands in the coming weeks.

They LOVE to see new books in the library!

The online fair is running through Nov 16 th for any last minute shopping:
https://bookfairs.scholastic.com/bf/deltacenterelementaryschool2
Thank you again to all of my book fair volunteers who helped run the cash
register. It is a HUGE help and I appreciate it so much!
Have a great weekend!
-Mrs. Gee

SteamFest 2023 will take place at Lansing Community College in the Arts and Sciences Building on November 11th from 9-12:30PM. Almost every room in the building will have a STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art or Math) themed activity geared towards K-6th grade students and their families.  This event is free and open to the public.  If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here: https://www.lcc.edu/calendar/event-details/9f833c32-a997-4615-8724-7a6f624264c8   

If you are interested in volunteering to help out with this event, we need LCC students to help our LCC faculty supervise the rooms!  As a volunteer, you'll arrive at 8:30 where we'll give you a SteamFest T-shirt and you can grab some breakfast.  Then you'll help out in your room from 9-12:30. At 12:30, we'll clean up and head over to Gannon for a pizza lunch.

If you would like to volunteer, please sign up here:  https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0C45A9AA2DA3FE3-45111317-steamfest