Washington Union School

Welcome back! I hope that everyone had a restful break and enjoyed the time off with family.

4th Grade is working with CHOMP on a Nutrition that will last for the next 5 weeks. We are so grateful to have them here working with our students and our teachers. Please talk to them about what they are learning.

4th Grade will also be at-tending the San Juan Bautista Mission field trip on January 27th. Look for permission slips and infor-mation coming home in the next few weeks.

In mid-January, our teachers will be receiving professional development around using Google Aps for Education. We are looking forward to incorporating more technology into our daily classroom (and home-work!) use.

January will be the start of our Lyceum Spelling Bee. See page four for a list of dates. We will take care of

the first three competitions here at school and the final one will be on Saturday, February 27th at San Benan-cio.

We are getting ready for Jump Rope for Heart on February 12th. Please look for a letter coming home about how you can help par-ticipate and support us in this incredible effort that benefits students here at school and our community.

Please resolve in this new year to have your students in school unless they are sick. For the first four months of school Washington Un-ion had 288 missed days of school. For every day, we lose $55.55 in funding and so far this year have

lost $15,998.

We could have used this money for any number of things to support students: addi-tional instructional aide sup-port, a new Chrome Book cart (filled with Chrome Books), OR replacement Physical Edu-cation equipment (new bas-ketball pole covers, balls, nets, and mats). Every day your child is here makes a differ-

ence!

Please send them when you can. Thank you for your support as we start the second half of the year!

January

WH AT ’S H A P P E NI N G I N JA N UA RY AT O U R S C H O O L ?

2016

December Donations

Thank you to everyone who

donated in December! Our

five food barrels were

OVERFLOWING with food.

Our MPR’s back wall was

filled with toys and every

tag was used. It was won-

derful to see the out pouring

of donations. We are look-

ing forward to our upcoming

Pennies for Patients and

Jump Rope for Heart Com-

munity Service Projects.

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

Music Program 2

Library Corner 2

Computer Lab 2

WUEF 3

Parent’s Club 3

Art News 4

In Other News... 4

SLEEPY HOLLOW NEWS

C A N YO U H E L P ? ! ? !

January, February, and March are shaping up to be some VERY wet months. We are doing what we can to keep students busy at lunch and to ensure they continue to have active PE, but we could really use YOUR help! For our rainy day lunches we would love donations of old board games (without too

many little pieces, like Life for example), sets of cards, DVD’s, and parents who would be interested in run-ning a lunch time activity (like a game, an art lesson, or something else fun). For PE we could really use 30-50 yoga mats. If you have mats in good condition that you aren’t using anymore please

let us know! Please contact Mrs. Meyer if you can help. We would ALL really appre-ciate it (teachers, staff, AND your children)!!

Only absences that are excused will not count

against your child’s tru-ancy record. Please

make sure you under-stand which absences qualify as excused in

the state of California. Contact Mrs. Meyer if you’d like more infor-

mation on truancy.

Congratulations to all who partici-

pated in the 2015 Winter Con-

certs. Our 4th grade recorder stu-

dents and all of our SBMS Con-

cert Band, Choir, and Jazz En-

semble students did a fantastic

job!

4th graders will continue to use

their recorders and will need to

remember to bring those to mu-

sic class. We will also begin our

treble and bass clef note reading

unit where all students will learn

how to efficiently read notes on

the staff. We will also begin learn-

ing about music history, improvi-

sation, and drumming.

5th graders have just finished a

unit on the Baroque Period, its

characteristics, and the lives

of the composers who lived

during it. We will continue our

history segment by now ven-

turing into the Classical Pe-

riod.

All instrumental students

were given assignments to

practice over the break. The

two-week recess is a great

opportunity for students to

sharpen up on their skills

and to perform for family

members or gatherings. If

your child is no longer partici-

pating in instrument classes

please turn in the instrument

to Mr. Osarczuk. Thank you

and happy New Year!

This month in the lab we will

be making a travel brochure

using Google templates. The

students will each pull a state

or a country out of a jar. Then,

once they have made their

selection, they will research it

for tourism, what type of cur-

rency, and what one could ex-

pect to see while traveling

there (including the “must

Welcome back and Happy

New Year!!!

Thank you to everyone

who helped with the Hour

of Code! It was a great

experience for our stu-

dents and I could tell they

were very engaged and

had a lot of fun!

sees!”).

Next, we will be

making a fast

food nutrition

facts sheet using

excel. They will pick 3 fast food restaurants and

research the calories, amounts of fat, percentage

of other unhealthy ingredients. Should be a fun

interesting.

If you have any used ink cartridges please bring

them in to recycle.

Page 2

L I B R A RY C O R N E R . . .

MU SI C PROG RAM . . .

C O M P U T E R L A B N E W S . . .

be tracking MINUTES READ in-

stead of pages read. I think this

will level the playing field in two

ways. First of all, not everyone

reads pages at the same rate.

Secondly, results cannot be in-

flated by reading a bunch of

graphic novels. Class awards

and individual recognitions will

be calculated in this new way!

Lastly, along with being the Li-

brary Aide I am also keeper of

the super point prize basket, and

we are running a bit low. If you

would like to donate any items to

be used for prizes (small toys,

note pads, hats, etc.) we will all

appreciate it. Ask your kids what

they like to find in the prize bas-

ket—they know best! Thank

you!!!

—Michelle Zimmerman

This Fall we spent time learning

about the fiction section of our

library and explored different fic-

tion genres. During the month of

January we will be turning our

attention to the non-fiction section

of our room and learning about

the Dewey Decimal System.

As you probably noticed, I made

some changes in our monthly

reading logs. From now on we will

January

Sleepy Hol low News

WUEF wishes each and

every district family and

district staff member a

very Happy New Year! We

hope you all enjoyed your

Holiday Season!!!

Another year has passed

and another successful

See’s Fundraiser! Thank

you for all your support

with the candy sales and

we will be publishing the

final numbers next

month!

Upcoming Events:

*32nd Annual Dinner

Dance Fundraiser – Mark

it on your calendar, the

date has been set!

Saturday, February 20th,

2016… Corral de Tierra

Country Club. Attend and

Spend!!!

**It’s going to be a Marti

Gras theme…Come

dressed casual or glam it

up with festive attire…

The invitations will be go-

ing out soon. Look for

your invite in your child’s

folder.

**The Auction Committee

is hard at work now!! If

you would like to donate

and item, a gift certificate

or know someone who

would, please contact:

Jenny McAfee @

209.769.2879 or

Jennifer McVay @

831.595.4533

Auction donation forms will

also be available in all

three school offices.

School counseling is available to all students at WUSD and is not a substitute to therapy. Top-ics covered may include things such as improving self-understanding and self-confidence, motivation, decision-making, goal-setting, problem solving, interpersonal relation-ships, communication skills, respect for others and more. Our school counseling program offers individual coun-seling, group counseling, and classroom guidance les-sons. Counseling meetings are brief and occur during the

School counseling services are now offered at Washington Union! We are happy to welcome our new staff per-son, Katy Linforth, who is a licensed school counselor that is on campus every Wednesday to help us in sup-porting student success. School coun-seling is a program designed for a pro-fessional school counselor to give sup-port, offer encouragement, and teach skills in the areas of personal/social development, academic achievement, and college/career readiness. School counseling is intended to promote healthy youth development so that stu-dents can concentrate on learning and feel good about coming to school.

school day at times most convenient in re-specting the students’ academic sched-ule. Students can request an appointment by asking the teacher or by putting a note in the counselor’s mailbox in the school office. Parents can request an appointment in per-son, by telephone, e-mail, or letter. An in-formed consent form signed by a parent/legal guardian is required for students to receive extended or ongoing counseling services. Please feel free to contact Ms. Katy should you have a concern about your child’s well-being or to share any information that you feel would be helpful in supporting him/her. 831-222-0024 or by email at KLin-forth@Washingtonusd.org

Page 3

WUEF UPDATE

M E E T M S . K A T Y !

By now each family should have one of

the WUSD Directories! We hope that

you are enjoying it and are finding the

directory useful. Kindly send any nec-

essary changes for next year’s direc-

tory to wusdparentsclub@gmail.com.

And we greatly appreciate your under-

standing!

Remember….the 2016-2017 school

year is right around the corner and

Parents’ Club is already working to

make it great! Parents’ Club is a terri

fic way to be a part of your Childs

school life and we will have several

places to help in the upcoming year.

Please consider attending the remain-

ing Parents’ Club meetings on our NEW

day, the second THURSDAY of each

month, at 6:00 at San Benancio in

room 10. Next meeting is Thursday

Jan. 14th. All Our Best In 2016!

Happy New Year from Par-

ents’ Club!

As we all move on to the last

half of the school year, Par-

ents’ Club will be focusing on

Open House Dinners and

several WUSD “Appreciation”

events/ luncheons. Please

keep a look out through Par-

ents’ Club Eblasts and our

Parents’ Club Facebook page

to learn how you can help

show how much we appreci-

ate our wonderful staff!

P A R E N T ’ S C L U B U P DA T E

Please feel free to contact me

with any questions about our

fundraisers or if you would like

to volunteer!

lisamilburn1@att.net

Like us on Facebook. Go to

Washington Union Educational

Foundation. We will keep you

updated on Facebook!

The WUEF Board Meeting will

be held on January 19th @

6:00p.m., Toro MPR room.

Please feel free to attend.

340 Corral de Tierra Road

Salinas, CA 93908

Washington Union School

a new painting unit this year called “ Watercolor Land-scape”. Students learn to layer size, space and atmos-pheric perspective to create the illusion of a landscape. They will use size and place-ment of objects to create per-spective and unity. Students are encouraged to mix creative colors and try new watercolor techniques. They learn about the transparent properties of watercolor and how they can be used to create the irides-cence and blended color tran-sitions observed in nature.

Grade 5 - Students further explore the possibilities of watercolor with “Watercolor Trees”. They observe photo-graphs of trees to create two different paintings - an imagi-nary birch forest and a cluster of tropical palm trees. The techniques they learn include masking, layered washes, wet-into-wet painting, colors mixed on the brush, and tex-tures made with a sponge. They discover the effects of

Hope all of you had wonderful holidays. In January, the Art Docent program begins the New Year with giving lessons in painting. Painting is the practice of applying color to a surface such as paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or con-crete. However, when used in an artistic sense, the term “painting” means the use of color in combination with drawing and composition. Children’s paintings are closely linked with art appre-ciation. A child who is ex-posed to painting is more apt to produce expressive work itself.

January is Painting Month

Throughout the grades, we will expose our students to several brush techniques, dif-ferent paints - watercolor and tempura, and focusing on them learning color and paint-ing terms.

Grade 4 – We are introducing

transparent layers, color mixing, and varied brush strokes, which create two very different but richly colored and textured paintings.

Picture of the Month

In January, the Picture of the Month selections are from the Post Impres-sionist artists Van Gogh and Gauguin who started painting with the Im-pressionists in Paris, but developed stronger colors and more personal styles. The experiments of the Post Impressionist painters developed into many art movements that form the basis of Modern Art in the 20th Century.

Linda Jang

Art Docent Coordinator

ART DO C EN T NEW S FO R JA N UARY . . .

Phone: 831-484-1331

Fax: 831-484-5736

E-mail: wmeyer@washingtonusd.org

We’re on the Web! www.washingtonusd.org

M A R K YO U R C A L E N DA R . . .

Lyceum Spelling Bee

This year we will again take part in the Lyceum Spelling

Bee. Please mark a few important dates on your

calendar:

January 21—Spelling Lists will be distributed to stu-

dents

January 28—Competition #1: Written Spelling Test

in class

February 4—Competition #2: Written Spelling Test

for top 50 students

February 10—Competition #3: Final School Spelling Competition in the MPR

for top 25 students

February 27—Competition #4: Final Spelling Compe-

tition at San Benancio Middle School

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR PARENT VOLUN-TEERS FOR SCORING TESTS AND TO OUR

TEACHERS AND BOARD MEMBERS WHO WILL BE AT-

TENDING COMPETI-TION #3!

JANUARY EVENTS

13—Bucket Fillers for Life!

14—School Site Council

18—MLK Holiday (No School)

20—Collaboration Day

27—4th Grade San Juan Bautista

28—Spelling Bee Competition #1

29—Awards Assembly/Jump Rope for Heart Kick Off

FEBRUARY EVENTS

3—Collaboration Day

4—Spelling Bee Competition #2

10—Spelling Bee Competition #3

11—Character Counts Assembly

12—Jump Rope for Heart

17—4th Grade Biography Parade; Collaboration Day

18—School Site Council

20—WUEF Dinner Dance

22—Mission Building Day

24—Awards Assembly

MARCH EVENTS

2—Collaboration Day

4—End of 2nd Trimester

7—Ariel Theater Trip

7 to 25—Pennies for Patients

9—Minimum Day

16—Collaboration Day; Spring Pictures

17—Parent Conferences; School Site Council

18—Parent Conferences; Report Cards go home

21 to 28—Spring Break

30—Awards Assembly

APRIL EVENTS

6—Collaboration Day

11 to 22—5th Grade Science Testing Window

18—CAASPP Testing Begins (Schedule of Testing TBD)

20—Collaboration Day

21—School Site Council

MAY EVENTS

4—Collaboration Day; Stra-tegic Planning

5 to 6—Gold Rush Trip

6—5th Grade Colonial Day

17—Open House

18—Collaboration Day

19—School Site Council

25—Awards Assembly

30—Holiday

JUNE EVENTS

3—Keller’s Class Play; Mini-mum Day

7—Talent Show

9—Last Day of School (Report Cards go Home)