Mary Lynch Newsletter

Tuesday, November 19th - Grandparent's Breakfast

Wednesday November 27 - November 29th - No school - Thanksgiving Break

Wednesday, December 11th - Picture Retakes

October has been an exciting month at Mary Lynch Elementary! We kicked off with a wonderful Family Night on October 8th, thanks to the Riverside Discovery Center for bringing engaging animals for our families to enjoy. Our younger students (Pre-K - 4th grade) learned valuable fire safety lessons on October 9th with the Kimball Volunteer Fire Department, and we’re grateful for their commitment to keeping our students informed.

Our Lions Club/PPHD vision, dental, and hearing screenings on October 14th were a success, ensuring our students’ health needs are being met. Kinder - 2nd grade students also began their High Ability Learner (HAL) programming with Mr. Nathan Rice on October 15th, 22nd, and 29th. We were thrilled to welcome picture book author and illustrator Bruce Arant on October 23rd, where students explored the world of writing and illustrating! See picture below.

Congratulations to all of our students recognized during the 1st Quarter Awards Ceremony on October 24th for their achievements in reading, math, improvement, and special subjects! It’s inspiring to see their hard work and dedication celebrated. We also awarded Student and Staff Members of the Month and were delighted to recognize their contributions and efforts.

Parent-Teacher Conferences on October 24th and 25th gave families the chance to connect with teachers to discuss student progress and achievements. Thank you to everyone who joined us, helping to strengthen the home-school partnership that is vital to student success.

Finally, we’ll wrap up October with our annual Halloween Parade on October 31st, with stops through the high school, Kimball County Manor, and Vista Villa. We look forward to celebrating together!

Thank you to our wonderful families, staff, and community partners for making October a fantastic month at Mary Lynch Elementary.

A special shout-out to Lucca Schweitzer, a Pre-K Legendary Longhorn! Lucca is incredibly kind to everyone and always makes sure his classmates feel included and supported. He approaches each task or project with full effort and a positive attitude that truly lifts the whole class. We’re lucky to have him!

We would like to give a shout out to Arlie Merryfield and Colter Christensen this month. These Kindergarten students are both very kind to their teachers and peers and are always willing to be a helper. They come to school every day with a positive attitude and are ready to learn! Keep up the great work! :)

In First Grade we have two amazing Legendary Longhorns, Kavya Chaudhari and Mackenzie Ingram. These two won students of the month and it is clear why. They are such kind and hard working students. They make coming to school every day enjoyable for their teachers and classmates.

In the Third Grade Gracie Barp is doing very well adjusting to her new school! We are so proud of her in math and reading. Gracie works hard and shows great respect to her teachers and classmates. Way to go Gracie.

We’ve wrapped up our exciting tree study and are now beginning a new unit all about balls! This month, we’ll explore questions like: Do all balls bounce and roll? What makes balls move? And, who uses balls?

The first quarter has been fantastic! We’ve enjoyed learning letters up to J and numbers up to 10, practicing segmenting words into syllables, and isolating beginning sounds in words.

Looking forward to another wonderful quarter!

We made it through 1st Quarter and appreciate all the parents who attended P/T Conferences! We have been learning all about part-part-whole as we begin to talk about the idea of addition in math! We have been reading about animal homes and will soon be reading about the seasons and how things change over time. We encourage parents to keep working with their child on their high-frequency words to help build the foundation for early reading! Be on the look out in November for our disguised turkeys! :)

The first quarter was great! First grade completed the most Longhorn Cards. We are amazingly proud of our First Graders! We have been learning a lot as well. In reading, we are continuing to learn about key literary elements. In math, we are working on adding to sums of 20. We will start to look at some nonfiction books and in math, we are going to be moving to subtraction strategies.

We sent out information on Thrillshare about Halloween expectations. Please bring an extra set of clothes so students can change. We do not want costumes getting ripped or stained before they go trick or treating!

Below are some pictures from Homecoming Week.

In second grade we have been adding 3 one digit numbers together and will soon be learning about double digit addition and subtraction. In reading we are learning how illustrations help us to comprehend the story we are reading. We are also learning about story structure with beginning, middle and ending of the story. Social studies we are learning about maps and in science we are conducting a bread and germ experiment. First quarter went quickly with Halloween coming up soon and Thanksgiving and Christmas right around the corner.

In Third Grade we are continuing to work on multiplication in math and will soon start division. While in reading we are working on text features. Please keep working on multiplication with your students at home.

We had a very good start to the first quarter! We are getting better at following expectations everyday and filling out our Longhorn Cards!

Ms. Dorrell's class has been lucky enough to learn a bit from a real fossil hunter, which brought a story to life for us. We have been reading a biography about Mary Anning, one of the very first women to find and study fossils. This text helped us find the main idea and details in a text and learn other important reading skills. One of Ms. Dorrell's former students grew up to hunt fossils for a living, and she has provided videos for us and answered our questions about actual fossil hunters today. Sara Skaggs from Wyoming Fossils was a huge help in bringing an ancient story to life for us! Thank you so much, Sara!

Fourth grade also took field trips to Flowerfield and enjoyed trips back to the more recent past. Our trips occurred on perfect fall days, where we enjoyed the old school house, museum, store, and a great picnic!

In Social Studies the 4th grade is reading about the Plains Indian Nations in Nebraska. While in science they are learning about eyes and how they work.

5th Grade is working on the Age of Exploration and Marco Polo goes to China. In science they have been learning about the three main states of matter, along with determining the differences between physical and chemical changes.

6th Grade is learning about the first battles of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. In science they are learning about the functions of the human body, in particular, the digestive system.

The Scholastic book fair was a tremendous success. Thanks to a very generous donation from FirsTier Bank, every Mary Lynch student was able to make a purchase of their choice at the book fair.

Our school hosted author/illustrator Bruce Arant for an afternoon. He worked with the students on using their "imagination muscles", being very descriptive with their writing, and sequencing stories.

In art we have explored how artists can use "line" to create imagery, next we will explore "shape". In the upper elementary we will be exploring artwork that was created to protect and then be creating a protective mask. Below are some colorful works by our kindergarten students, they explore ways to use "line" with crayons and then they discovered what happens when you paint over the crayons with watercolor paints.

Hello from the ELITE Afterschool Program!

For the month of November we will be doing all the fall crafts using leaves, turkeys, scarecrows, and more!! We are happy to have Mr. Rice back for the next few weeks. He is working with the 4th-6th grade group building rockets. This month we will be starting D&D club with the help of Mr. Mohr, and Mr. Steve. They will begin with the 4th-6th grade group and see how it goes. We will also begin the Nebraska Extension Marathon Kids program! This is a national running program designed to introduce kids to the joy of running. Our ELITE Leadership club will host a book club for the younger students during the month of November, reading a book together and doing some crafts.

With the busy holiday season quickly approaching, we will not have a Family Fun Night during the month of November or December. We will look forward to seeing our families again in January!

Thank you for letting us have fun with your kids!!

Ms Marcie, Ms Ashley, Ms Barbi, Ms Julie, Ms Wurdeman