I wish all of our families a Happy New Year and we look forward to welcoming our students back to school as we begin the new calendar year!
Calendar Dates
January 7 - School Resumes
January 8 - PTO Meeting (5:30 p.m.)
January 10 - Trimester 2 Midterm
January 17 - Half Day Dismissal (11:30 a.m.)
January 20 - No School (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
January 21 - OES Board Meeting at Central School (6:00 p.m.)
PTO
We hope everyone had a wonderful break!
At our December meeting, we decided to cancel our carnival this year. We are going to take some time and revamp and make it better for next year. It wasn’t an easy decision but we know it will be worth the wait!
Planning for the Daddy/Daughter dance has been started and we’re hoping to make it a little more fun for the girls and their dads. Details will be sent home soon.
We are also throwing out ideas for a fun night for a mom and son night.. We haven’t finalized anything on that yet, but we thought maybe a game night would be fun! If anyone has any ideas, please reach out!
A reminder that our spirit wear link is still up. You can order anytime and pick up locally on the Southside or you can have it mailed to you.
Our next PTO meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 8th at 5:30 in the gym! Anyone is welcome to attend.
If you have any questions you can reach out to any of our board members or send us a message to the McKinley PTO Facebook page
Amanda Waddell- President
Darlene Hess- Vice President
Casey Clemens- Treasurer
Amy Anderson- Secretary
DON’T FORGET…
-Like our Facebook page McKinley School PTO
-Save your Handy Foods receipts and send them into school. We can redeem these for gift cards to use for school events
-Join Kroger Community Rewards if you haven’t already. Select McKinley school as your organization to support and you can help our school just by grocery shopping!
Champion of The Charter
Congratulations to our December Champion of the Charter students! All of our Champions are invited to attend the January board meeting to be recognized.
Kindergarten
Cora G., Tony A., Jadzia D.
1st Grade
Barrett B., Noah S., Bently T.
2nd Grade
Norah T., Jensen S., Elsie W.
3rd Grade
Audrina A., Kamari J., Cruz H.
4th Grade
Caitlyn W., Dax H., Sarah D.
Life Skills
Palmer G., Isabella B.
D/HH
Hartlee C.
Kindergarten
Our Kindergarten students have been learning so much this month. In Math, they have been solving holiday word problems. Students have been enjoying their exploration of shapes. It’s amazing how many shapes our students find in their learning environment.
The students are really making great connections in Reading. This is the time of the year when many students are starting to read. This brings a special kind of energy to our classrooms. It’s great to see students helping each other when joining together in our Daily 5 centers.
December is an exciting month in kindergarten. Everyone is extremely happy about the upcoming holiday. Students are enjoying making special projects and participating in special dress up days. Each day brings new thrills with activities, stories, and songs. It’s hard to believe that the end of 2024 is here.
-Kindergarten Team
1st Grade
Joy was abundant in 1st grade this month. We worked together to make a magical gingerbread hallway for the holiday season. Students practiced patterns, fractions, and other skills while making “candy” to add to the walls. We enjoyed many festive stories including several versions of the gingerbread boy and girl. We even chased the gingerbread through our own hallways. We did not find him but we did enjoy the treat left behind.
Under the direction of Mrs. Sanders students performed a wonderful holiday music program at Central and then again for all the students at McKinley that we all enjoyed very much.
It is hard to believe we are already headed into Christmas break and the second half of 1st grade!
-1st Grade Team
2nd Grade
December has been a busy, busy, busy month! It was filled with a lot of fun activities for our second graders. For our Friendship Friday activity this month, we made several ornaments. One of the ornaments went to Pleasant View Lutheran Home with a Christmas card to help brighten a resident’s holiday season. We were also busy practicing and performing our winter music program that Mrs. Sanders directed. We’ve wrapped up our unit on two - digit addition and look forward to learning three - digit addition when we return in January. After winter break, we will be starting to learn cursive handwriting. This is always an exciting time for our classes.
-2nd Grade Team
3rd Grade
It has been a fun month in 3rd grade! To celebrate our class reading goals, students applied for and adopted a reading buddy pet. We also read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and did fun reading activities with it. In addition, we celebrated our 100 starry party with a Grinch Party! In math, we finished our multiplication unit and students worked on a Crime Scene Investigation to figure out who stole Santa’s sleigh. We learned about Christmas around the world in Social Studies. It was a very festive and productive month!
-3rd Grade Team
4th Grade
December was a busy month for the 4th grade. We worked on writing a persuasive essay, and after the break, we will begin our compare and contrast essay. In social studies, we just finished learning about the Northeast Region. Our students took a test to identify the states and capitals of this region.
In math, we learned how to multiply two-digit numbers by 2, 3, and 4-digit numbers, and we will soon introduce division. For reading, we participated in many holiday activities that focused on reading skills. After the break, we will learn about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
We hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday and a happy New Year!
-4th Grade Team
D/HH
The elves have invaded our room this month. They have done some silly things but we have had fun. We have enjoyed participating in many holiday activities and practiced songs for our First and Second grade concert. It has been a great month.
-D/HH Team
Life Skills
Life Skills has had a great holiday season. We have had fun learning about snow, cold weather, and the importance of giving. We celebrated with our classmates by enjoying our holiday concerts, school sing-a-long, and class celebrations.
-Life Skills Team
Art
This year in Art at McKinley we have been very busy. All of our grades have worked hard all year long from learning how to trace and know our shapes (kindergarten) to working with perspective to create a 3D drawing (fourth grade). Here are some of the highlights for each of the grades. In kindergarten as mentioned above we worked with tracing, got better at coloring, painted with tempera and currently are wrapping up our rainbow snowman. Our first graders were introduced to the primary and secondary color schemes, worked with patterns, and learned about the famous artist Andy Warhol. Our current project is a Self-Portrait in colored pencil. The second grade worked hard making and using texture on metal, and are creating a picture based on the painting Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. Our third graders learned about the holiday Day of the Dead, created a painted color wheel, and are currently finishing a fun winter birch tree painting. And last but not least our fourth graders were hard at work learning about Cubism and Pablo Picasso, Zentangle design and are currently creating a 1-point perspective cityscape.
-Mr. Sanders