Grand Prairie December Newsletter

Happy Holidays to all our Grand Prairie families! We are excited to bring back our Warm Winter Giving Tree. Starting December 1st, if you would like to donate new hats, scarves, or mittens to be placed on our tree please send them with your young learner. All items will be donated to a local agency for families in need of warm winter apparel. Also, during December, we invite all students and staff to celebrate the pillar of caring by wearing their best festive wear on Thursdays.

Our staff is excited to make the most of our 3 weeks together in December. Kindergarten will be headed to Moraine Valley Community College on Tuesday, December 10th to see Elephant and Piggy. We can hear the giggles already! On December 13th we are excited to welcome Hickory Creek Middle School for their annual Choral Holiday Tour! We cannot wait to hear all their festive songs as they perform for our entire school! And finally, our first graders will also be going to see a play on Monday, December 16th at the Beverly Arts Center. They will see Mrs. Clause – Holidays Around the World.

We know that there are so many amazing ways that families celebrate during this holiday season. Our teachers are excited to celebrate Holidays around the world with all our K-2 students December 9-20. Students will have the opportunity to learn about Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Eid, Las Posadas, Saint Lucia, the Chinese New Year, and Christmas (in Italy, Australia, and the US). Teachers will reach out with specific information pertaining to your child’s classroom/grade level.

Our last day of school before winter break will be Friday, December 20th. While our AM and PM preschool friends will be making Gingerbread Houses with their families from 9:00am –10:00am, our K-2 students will attend a whole school sing-along led by Mrs. Turnbough to get us in the festive mood. K-2 classroom parties will be held from 12:35pm-1:25pm. If you prefer your child not to participate in the winter party, please contact your child’s teacher. An alternate location and activity will be provided.

And finally, a friendly reminder that Grand Prairie dismisses 1 hour early on Friday, December 20th... Our car rider riders will walk at approximately 1:40pm to allow families ample time to pick up their young learners before sending our buses at 1:50pm. We wish everyone a safe and happy winter break and look forward to students returning to school on Tuesday, January 7th.

We’re gearing up for an exciting December in second grade! This month, we’ll be celebrating Holidays Around the World, exploring different cultures and the various ways people celebrate across the globe. Along the way, we’ll discover many similarities in our traditions that unite us all.

In writing, our second graders will dive back into the narrative writing unit, focusing on crafting engaging stories using inner dialogue, experimenting with different ways to begin and end stories, and sharpening their editing skills. In math, we’ll continue our work in Module 4, mastering addition and subtraction within 1,000, and solving word problems up to 100. For reading, we’ll focus on how illustrations enhance our understanding of a story—helping us learn more about characters, settings, and the plot.

We’re looking forward to a fun and enriching December! Wishing you and your family a joyful holiday season and a Happy New Year!

During the month of November, first grade readers have been hard at work learning how to ask and answer questions as they read a fiction story. Students learned that the words “who, what, why, when, where, and how” are words we can use to form a question. Readers can ask questions about the characters, setting, and events in the story. They can think about what they are wondering before, during, and after reading. During the Month of December, readers will continue to ask and answer questions while reading, this time with nonfiction texts. We love listening to Jack Hartmann as he helps us learn how to be good readers!

Students will hear books about many different holidays that are celebrated around the world. First graders will explore Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and more. We are now in Module 2 in math, and our mathematicians are learning about the make ten strategy to solve addition problems to 20. Once they learn the make ten strategy, they will then learn how to take from ten when subtracting. Field trips are always exciting and we are looking forward to our first grade field trip to the Beverly Arts Center to see the holiday musical Mrs. Claus! We are entering a very exciting time of year!

Grand Prairie Kindergartners are working hard all day long. We can’t believe we already celebrated out 50th day of school… time’s flying!

In our current reading unit, the kindergartners are busy working on noticing the feeling of characters by checking the pictures and words, using their storyteller voice, and rereading! These are just a few of the reading skills we are focusing on in this unit. While the students are reading, they are stopping to think about what the character was doing in the story to figure out how they were feeling. When we are using our storyteller voice, we are practicing our reading in a way that matches the voice of what the character might be feeling. As we do this during our mini-lessons the students then carry this skill into their own reading! One of the most important things that we practice again and again is re-reading when we don’t understand or don’t know a word. Getting the students to be able to do this independently is going to make them better readers! We are always practicing this during guided reading groups.

During math, the students are busy learning about measurement, weight, area, and understanding “more than”, “fewer than”, and “the same as”. During this math module, the students are doing MANY hands-on activities. We are busy completing our application problems to apply what we have learned so far in the lesson and then continuing that into the problem set. The students are busy using balance scales to measure weight of a variety of classroom objects. We are balancing objects by using cubes and plastic pennies. Students were using beans to cover the area of different shapes to see how many beans it would take. While we are learning about “more than”, “fewer than”, and “the same as”, we are using rulers to connect objects 1:1 to have a visual to see if there is the same number of objects or more/less.

In this writing unit, we are focusing on writing stories for readers. Some important skills we have covered is using our sight word wall to spell words quickly, a vowel chart to sound out the middle of words and writing catchy story beginnings. Our kindergarten writers have loved sharing their stories with each other. They are showing so much pride in their work and new story creations. We will be adding cover pages to complete our stories, the students can’t wait to do that!

We are exploring pushes/ pulls in physical science! We will investigate to compare different strengths of pushes and pulls on an object. Students will begin to understand cause and effect.

We are ready to take on the second half of the school year. Keep up the great work, kindergarten!

In both the Early Childhood and Project Begin classrooms, a lot of new skills are being taught. Students at this level are becoming more and more independent all the time! The staff here at Grand Prairie is working to use the right amount of individual support for the littlest of Grand Prairie Tigers. Some students need more than others to become successful in learning a skill. Hand-over-hand physical support is the highest level of support the staff can provide to a child. Sometimes students at the preschool level need this to be successful. However, as children begin to show some skill knowledge, the staff begins to provide prompts that are less and less intrusive. It is the goal of our teachers, paraprofessionals, and related service providers to give the least amount of prompting. The staff here at Grand Prairie try to provide enough support to help the child be successful and learn the skill.

Notes From The Nurses’ Office

We will start Vision and Hearing Screenings at Grand Prairie in January. Mandated by the state of Illinois, the following children will be screened:

• All Pre-school students will be screened for both vision and hearing.
• All kindergarten students who have not turned in an eye exam will be screened for vision and all students will be screened for hearing.
• All 1st graders will be screened for hearing
• All 2nd graders will be screened for vision and hearing
• All students with an IEP will be screened for both vision and hearing
• All teacher and parent referrals will also be screened.

If you do not want your child screened for hearing and/or vision, please contact the school nurses at mginn@fsd157c.org or kcogan@fsd157c.org

The encore section of our November newsletter wrote itself with all of the amazing things that have happened! On Monday November 11th, Mrs. Turnbough led our second-grade students through what was a truly awe-inspiring performance in front of our esteemed veterans and their guests. This performance is highly attended, and the students always look forward to this every single year!

On Thursday November 14th, all students participated in the annual “Stack It Up” event during PE. This annual event aims at getting students to participate in cup stacking which focuses on crossbody patterns and fine locomotor manipulations. Students were able to go through a series of stations where they could compete against each other in various cup stack patterns and also practice their timing to see how quick they can be!

Thank you for beginning or continuing to partner with the Grand Prairie staff in implementing the concepts of the ZONES of REGULATION curriculum at home. Last month, we gave a quick overview of the different color zones (blue, green, yellow, and red) and the emotions that are in each zone.

This month we want to focus on the YELLOW ZONE and some language and strategies that might be helpful at home to help your student identify how they are feeling and then get back to the GREEN ZONE (happy, calm, and ready to listen/learn). In the Zones of Regulation Curriculum, the yellow zone represents emotions that are elevated above the GREEN ZONE but are still under control. At Grand Prairie, the YELLOW ZONE can be a fun place to be as students because EXCITED about special activities, SILLY at recess, or NERVOUS about cup stacking in gym class. Other emotions in the YELLOW ZONE include.... SCARED, FRUSTERATED, WORRIED, and EMBARRASSED. Strategies that can be helpful for the YELLOW ZONE are taking deep breaths, going for a walk, getting a drink of water, doing yoga stretches, talking to an adult, taking a break, counting to 10, or using a fidget. Trying different strategies is important to determine which strategies help your child’s body to calm down. All strategies may not work, and that is okay! You can make this a fun activity by playing charades to have your child guess different strategies or pretending to be in the YELLOW ZONE and allowing your child to suggest strategies for you! Remember, it is expected that everyone is in the YELLOW ZONE during some part of their day! The important part is to help your child recognize how they are feeling and choose strategies that will help them stay safe, be a good friend and be an awesome learner! Below is the link for additional resources and visuals that can be utilized within your home on the Zones of Regulation website!

Resources | The Zones of Regulation

The Frankfort Public Library is having a Monarch Book Challenge too!

Participate in a 2025 youth reading challenge this school year!

Monarch Award Challenge: For K-2nd graders. Read all 20 books on the list by the end of the school year and win a prize!

For more information on the Frankfort Public Library’s Reading Challenge, please visit: Reading Challenges | Frankfort Public Library District (frankfortlibrary.org)

We know sometimes your child needs to stay home.
Please make sure you reach out to the main office at 815-469-3366
to let us know when/if your child will be at school that day.
If you are calling after hours, please leave a voice mail with
your students first and last name, their teachers name and the reason for absence.

As the weather begins to change to a more fall/winter feel, and we have colder temperatures; we are doing our best to encourage students to wear their coats outdoors for outdoor recess and dismissal.

Please be aware that students will go outside until the real feel temperature (including wind chill) drops below 20*.

SAVE THE DATES. . . . .

• December 5th - Chorus Booster Hot Lunch
• December 10th - Kindergarten Field Trip to see Elephant & Piggy
• December 12th - Band boosters Hot Lunch
• December 16th - First Grade Field Trip to see Ms. Clause - Holidays Around the World
• December 19th - Athletic Boosters Hot Lunch
• December 20th - Winter Parties, Dismissal @1:50PM
• December 23rd - January 6th - NO SCHOOL.