
HES Family Newsletter
January 6, 2024

HES Family Newsletter - Jaunary 2025
Happy New Year!
Welcome to the Spring Semester at HES. Students and teachers are gearing up for a busy 2nd half of the 2024-2025 school year. There will be lots of learning and FUN! Please keep a lookout for upcoming Family Night events and other special activites hosted by HES. Our website and Facebook page always have lots of info and messages are sent out regularly through Parent Square. As always, contact your child's teacher or a member of the Leadership Team for questions.
Our Busy Classrooms 👷🏻‍♂️
Pre-Kindergarten by Kady Faris
We will be continuing our learning about helpers in our community and what they do as we wrap up our theme, Everyday Helpers. We will be focusing on mail carriers and firefighters. During our literacy time we will be learning the letters Ii and Gg. And we will be reviewing letters previously taught. We will also blend syllables into words, segment a syllable from a word, and recognize rhyming words. In writing, we will intentionally use marks, letters, or symbols to record language and share the meaning of our written work with others. In math, we will begin verbal word problems adding up to 5. In social studies, we will discuss the roles and responsibilities of community helpers. Students will begin to understand what it means to be a consumer. In science, we are learning all about life cycles.
Kindergarten by Blake Villarreal
1st Grade by Debora Abrego
2nd Grade by Holly Hand
We are so excited to start our new semester in second grade! We will begin our reading unit on Weather by learning cause and effect, studying text features, and making inferences. We will begin writing our second personal narrative with a focus on great capitalization, spelling, and punctuation, as well as author's craft and purpose. In math, we will continue module 5 with addition and subtraction within 1,000 with word problems and moving into foundations of multiplication, division, and area. Science will also be focusing on weather and the sky with an emphasis on the sun's light, heat, and objects in the sky. In social studies we will learn map skills and geography.
Parents: Thank you to those that are checking your child's take home folder daily. Phonics home practice will start again this month. Please be sure your child is practicing addition and subtraction as well as reading at least 15-20 minutes a night. Second grade will be planning a field trip... more information to come!
3rd Grade by Amber Lopez
Notes From Around Campus 🏫
Nurse News by Kate Versluis
As we are in flu and COVID season, please help your children follow these measures to help prevent the spread of illnesses both to themselves and others:
Remind your child to cover their coughs and sneezes—if they don’t have a tissue, they can use their elbow or cough inside their shirt collar rather than their hands.
Remind your child to wash their hands with soap and water often, or use hand sanitizer.
Remind your child to use a tissue to blow or wipe their runny noses instead of using their clothing or hands.
Keep your child home if he/she has a fever over 100 F. A child must be fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medicine before he/she can return to school.
When to Seek Medical Help
Most people get over respiratory illnesses such as the flu at home by getting plenty of bed rest, drinking lots of fluids, and taking pain relievers to reduce fever and ease body aches. Seek medical treatment when symptoms are severe and quickly worsen, bluish skin color, fever with a rash, or trouble breathing.
Let’s work together to keep our children healthy and safe!
Counselor's Corner by Shae Owens
Happy New Year!! We are continuing to Choose Love at HES! Choose Love at School emphasizes the simple, universal teachings of courage, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion in action. During the month of December, we continued to focus on the character pillar of Gratitude in our Choose Love Enrichment lessons as well as in our daily Choose Love time each morning. Students learned that gratitude is mindful thankfulness and the ability to be thankful even when things in life are challenging. Practicing gratitude makes us feel thankful and want to share that feeling with others. Students also practiced gratitude by learning to take “Gratitude Breaths” while thinking about the people and things for which they are thankful. Congratulations to the following students who were chosen as Choose Love Champions by their teachers! We are so proud of you!
Pre-K: Israel Gil, Natalie Christy, Sarah Martinez, Silas Elucario-Librado, Kaislee Marsh, Karla Chavez, and Adrian Arroyo Cruz
Kindergarten:Benjamin Boyle, Xayah Ramirez, Jonhy Acosta, Messiah Williams, and Braxton Fennell
First Grade: Roselin Trejo-Gonzalez, Keyla Librado Pena, Natalia Jimenez, Noah Littlejohn, Zaid Gonzalez, and Sihomora Vazquez
Second Grade: Brigitte Flores, Noe Memetla, Lennon Ballentine-Harris, Mia Vargas, Jovan Reyes, Andrew Love, and Enrique Diaz
Third Grade: Edwin Gonzalez Leon, Daleyza Mosca, Emilia Ramirez, Gabriel Echols Platas, Ignacio Galindo Cienfuegos, Leonardo Perez, Vivian Blaszinski, and Aadan Abreu
Choose Love Champions in PreK-1st grades took “Thank You” cards to our Hillsboro Police Department and Hillsboro Fire Department along with yummy treats made by some of our HES staff members. We wanted to show our gratitude to our first responders for helping our community every day and keeping us safe. Second and third grade Choose Love Champions volunteered to “ring the bell” for the Salvation Army at our Hillsboro WalMart. They helped collect donations for the annual Red Kettle fundraiser while spreading smiles and Holiday Cheer.
During the months of January and February, we will focus on the character pillar of Forgiveness in our Choose Love Enrichment classes as well as in our daily Choose Love time each morning. Students will learn that forgiveness means choosing to let go of anger or hurt feelings toward yourself or someone else, so that you can move forward. Below are some optional activities that students and families/ caregivers can use to practice Choose Love skills and concepts at home. If you choose, the following discussion starters and activities can be used with your children to extend their learning of Forgiveness beyond the classroom/ school.
“To me, forgiveness is……”
“I show forgiveness at school by….”
“I show forgiveness at home by…..”
"I show forgiveness in my community by……”
Shout Outs from The Specials Team
HES Technology Lab - Mrs. Price
During the month of January Kindergarten - Third grade will be working on their typing skills and challenges. Pre-K will continue working on the curriculum Three Cheers for Pre-k. .All grade levels will begin a unit on Computer Science and Computer History.
HES Music Class - Mrs. Abt
The second and third grade musicians will get ready for their performance at the end of February. PreK will learn how music is expressive and evokes emotions. Kindergarten students will continue their study of classroom and orchestral instruments. First grade music students will study rhythm and the different ways we can use our voice.
HES Library Center- Mrs. Wilson
We will discuss the difference between fiction and nonfiction and make sure students know where they can find interesting nonfiction books! We will also learn about Martin Luther King, Jr, Chinese New Year, and the Caldecott Award, a yearly award given to the illustrator of a distinguished children’s book.
PE @ HES - Coach Franklin
Second and third graders will start to focus on testing for the FittnessGram, which includes the pacer test, push up test, and curl up test. Pre-k through 1st grade will continue to work on fundamental movement patterns and start working on doing more complex activities that grade levels above them do!
HES Art - Ms. Oneill
Second grade students will be creating watercolor snowflake paintings using white crayons to make a resist; third graders will be finishing their rainbow corn watercolor paintings and origami butterflies; first graders will be creating small 3d clay sculptures and coil pots; Kinders will work on clay pressed hearts with a waffle texture which will be painted when dry; and PreKs will be making raked/feathered one of a kind papers using shaving cream, liquid watercolors and a pipe cleaner to make the rake. The one of a kind papers will be pasted onto construction paper to make a unique greeting card.
HES ESL - Particia Roberts
Students will continue with Summit K-12 tutorials throughout the month of Jan.
PE
Art
Painting new Designs
Music
What a joyous sound!
Things to Know in SPED from Sarah Sides
What a great first half of the year with the GATE students!
First, we started off our year by learning about endangered animals and ways to help them. Students created dioramas to show off their animals' habitat and ways to help keep their environment safe.
Next, They learned about the Oregon Trail by playing the computer game and even created their own journal where they were the pioneers on the trail.
Then, they became scientists and created an apparatus for an egg drop. They did a great job with creating these and even took their creations home at the end of the experiment.
The last project they worked on before Christmas break was a presentation about Holidays around the world. They learned about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Los Posados, Chinese New Year, Bodhi day, and St. Lucia Day. Then they created a presentation to share with their classmates and other teachers at HES and in the district.
Later in the Spring, they will get to become astronauts to learn about space and learn about important historical figures in the world and in Texas
1st Grade
3rd Grade
Egg Drop Trials
2nd Grade
Christmas Around the World