Our Stonybrook Blog

Destination ImagiNation’s (DI’s) Instant Challenge Night is on the evening of Friday, January 27th, at 6:30 at Stonybrook School.  For those of you who don’t know what DI is, it is an outstanding program that puts a premium on critical thinking and teamwork skills.  Given a challenge and a set of materials, students work together to solve a problem.  The solutions are always creative, and often surpass what we even might expect. 

To learn more about DI, you can visit the Destination ImagiNation website, or you can join us for the event.  It promises to be a great evening!

The week of January 16th is bookended by some noteworthy events:

Monday, January 16th-School is closed for students.  Teachers will be here working on various professional development activities.  I wish our students an enjoyable three-day weekend!

Friday, January 20th-KEHSA brings our students “Author Day.”  We will be welcoming author Tom Birdseye, who will be speaking to our students at assemblies on Friday.  This will be a great experience for our students, and we are grateful to KEHSA for providing it!

I hope that your New Year is off to a great start, and that you are well on your way to accomplishing whatever resolutions you have set out for yourself.  If you are still searching for a goal for this year, I’d like to suggest one:  consider having your child teach you one thing that he or she learned in school each day.  This is a great way to stay updated about what your child is doing in school, and can also lead to some excellent conversations.  You may even learn something new!

This time of year, many of us make New Year’s resolutions.  It’s a great time to think about what we want want to achieve, and how we can get there. 

The beauty of a time like this is that the story of 2012 has yet to be written, meaning that there is virtually limitless potential to what we can accomplish.  We sometimes overlook our own power to influence our world, focusing instead on factors that we don’t control.  As you look toward next year, choose a goal that really matters to you, and think about what you can do to make it a reality.  I hope that when you reflect back a year from now, you find 2012 to have been your best year yet!

Congratulations to all of our band and choir students who participated in yesterday’s winter concerts.  Both shows were very well done, which is a credit to the hard work and dedication of our students, the support of the parents, and the guidance and instruction from our band and choir directors. 

It was also wonderful to see so many friends, neighbors, and family members join us.  As I said at the show, the opportunity to perform is very rewarding for our students, and your presence made it a very special event.  We hope you enjoyed the show!

Our Winter Concert takes place on Thursday evening, December 15th, at 6:30 PM.  Our band and choir students have been preparing diligently for what promises to be an outstanding show!  We hope you can join us.

It’s hard to believe that it’s December already!  This is just a reminder that the KEHSA Holiday Shoppe is taking place next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (December 5-7).  This is something that the students very much look forward to, and we thank KEHSA for providing it.

I hope the Thanksgiving holiday finds you all in the company of family and friends, and that it allows time to enjoy all that there is to be thankful for.

To provide a little holiday-themed entertainment, I present the winners of the Student Council’s turkey decorating contest:

3G

4Me

5W

Special thanks to all of our homerooms for their very creative designs, and to the Student Council for making this possible.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone!

Next week, we have the following events taking place:

Tuesday, 11/22-fire prevention assemblies:  This is a great topic of discussion.  Hopefully, your child will come home and want to teach you about how to stay safe.

Wednesday, 11/23-early dismissal

Thursday, 11/24-Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you all enjoy a wonderful holiday with family and friends.

The book fair was a big success!  It took a great deal of planning, preparation, and facilitation to make this available to our students, and all of us greatly appreciate the help of all of the parents who made it happen.  Thank you!

I also want to thank all of the parents who donated books on the wish lists so generously.  The wish lists were a new feature this year in which teachers could indicate titles that they would like to make available to students, and many parents purchased these books so that they could be added to classroom libraries.  This was an incredibly generous and supportive gesture.  Again, thank you!