Mission: The learning community of West Homer Elementary inspires and supports all students to be lifelong learners with the courage and confidence to make positive contributions to the world.

Vision: The mission of West Homer Elementary School is to build strong connections among community, families, staff, and students in a safe, healthy, nurturing environment that challenges each student.

Superintendent Holland visited West Homer Elementary last week, and I was so proud of how our students interacted with him sharing their thoughts on the school and some of the important content and skills they are learning. Here is a picture of Kylan explaining some of the new math strategies he has learned and giving Mr. Holland some quiz questions to practice.

These next 3 weeks are a busy time filled with our winter assessments (math, reading and language arts), winter concerts, a chess tournament, end of semester assembly and quarterly individual and schoolwide goals.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Eric Waltenbaugh, Principal

Charity is a Homer High School graduate who joins us as a paraprofessional in our Special Education Department! She is not new to the building as she has been working with South Peninsula Behavior Health as a Direct Service Provider for two years serving students at West Homer. Welcome!

Anna joins our team as a half time Interventionist teacher and will be supporting students in reading and math instruction. She has experience teaching elementary school in Virginia, Mexico, and Belize. Welcome!

Needs no introduction - Welcome back to West Homer as our Head Secretary Joni! Happy to have you rejoin us!

We are excited to announce that our holiday music programs will be produced and performed here at West Homer Elementary this year! There will be a 3rd and 4th grade musical, “Polar Express,” on Wednesday, December 18th at 1:30 pm in the gym. The 5th and 6th graders will perform their concert, “Christmas Mallet Madness,” on Thursday, December 19th at 1:30 in the gym. Parents should arrive at 1:15. We will start promptly at 1:30.

3rd and 4th grade students should wear either Christmas PJs or festive Christmas/Winter themed colors; red, green, blue, white, silver, gold etc. 5th and 6th grade students show dress in festive Christmas colors as well.

As the programs will be at our school, we have the opportunity to really decorate and make it beautiful. I am looking for donations of strings of white lights. If you have any laying around that are working or you want to pick up a box and drop them off at the school, that would be much appreciated.

Hope to see you all there!

Mrs. Moore

The Student Council added a twist to this quarter's reading goal! To earn the school wide reward (currently they are getting feedback from the student body on what it will be), every student must read at least 1 book. They also added a grade level challenge and will give a reward to the grade level that has read the most. Here are the current standings:

1st place: 5th grade = 3,309,234 words

2nd place: 3rd grade = 3, 265,845 words

3rd place: 6th grade = 2,822,876 words

4th place: 4th grade = 2,683,265 words

We are a little over halfway to our reading goal for this quarter. For these final weeks, we encourage you to read with your children at home and encourage them to read on their own. Then they can take a reading counts quiz at school or give a book talk to Ms. Kristy so we can reach our goal of 15,000,000 words!

• December 3 - Basketball A-team game against McNeil Canyon @ 3:30pm in the gym
• December 3 - PTO Meeting @ 4:30 in the Library
• December 11 - Fire Drill
• December 13 - Early Release @ 1:20pm
• Chess tournament @ WHE 1:30pm
• December 17 - Rehearsal for 3rd & 4th grades @ 8:30am
• December 17 - Rehearsal for 5th & 6th grades @ 1:00pm
• December 18 - Winter Concert🎄 for 3rd & 4th @ 1:30pm in the gym
• December 19 - Winter Concert🎄 for 5th & 6th @ 1:30pm in the gym
• December 20 - End of Quarter Assembly @ 1:55pm in the gym
• December 20 - Chess Ends
• December 20 - Japanese Club Ends
• December 23-January 6 - Winter Break (No School)

The PTO is bringing back the Penny Wars as a fundraiser to get a yearbook to every student at West Homer. If you are able, send in your change, or even larger amounts of money in with you to put in the jars in the front. We could also use some parent helpers after school to count the change.

Sign up here to volunteer or just show up on the days we are counting.

Make sure you come in and check out all the amazing art being done in our school. Mrs. Corbell's class made some super cute snowmen visible in the 3/4 hallway and Mrs. Brewer's class created a giant tree along with leaf prints in the 5/6 hallway! Mrs. Hanks' 5th grade illusions will draw you in and Mrs. Waltenbaugh's interactive flashlight art based on the book Flashlight by Izzy Boyd and her student's exploration of our trail system.

Winter testing Window: December 2nd – 13th

• Your child will be taking our winter MAP test in the first 2 weeks of December. This is an important mid-year assessment to see student growth in Reading, Writing and Math so far this year. Please make sure you child is well rested so we can get an accurate measure of their progress so far this year.

Hopefully, by now you are connected to the school and your child's classroom via Remind. If you are not receiving messages or having any issues, please drop in to the office and we can help.

Family trips are important life events and don’t happen often. When your family chooses to be away from school, our goal is to support you and your child in keeping up with their academics so they don’t fall behind when they return. Our teachers are happy to put together meaningful activities to help them keep up with their learning. We ask that you follow our procedure well in advance (a week is good) so we can be well prepared.

• 5 -9 days – pre-arranged absence form completed
• 10 + days – pre- arranged absence form completed and meet with principal

• Chess M/F 3:00 - 4:00pm (ENDS December 20th)
• Japanese Club Fridays 3:00 - 4:00pm (ENDS December 20th)
• Basketball 5/6 grade only M/W/F 3:00-4:00pm (ENDS December 4th)
• Basketball 3/4 grade only T/Th 3:00-4:00pm (ENDED November 26th)

Skiing – Permission forms will go out on December 9th. Gear fitting January 8th and 10th. Skiing starts Monday, January 13th and will run Mondays and Wednesdays. Last day will be Wednesday, February 26th.

Japanese will resume on Friday January 24 through May 9

Chess Club will resume for 3rd quarter only. Dates TBD.

Math Club : be on the lookout for more information on this NEW club!

We will also have Zumba® Kids coming in the 3rd quarter. It’s not just an awesome workout, it’s like a party! Zumba® Kids classes feature kid-friendly routines based on original Zumba® choreography. We break down the steps, add games, activities and cultural exploration elements into the class structure. Be on the lookout for more information on what day(s) that will run.

We would like to say thank you to all of you who have been supporting our Alaska Japanese Club Homer in many ways. Alaska Japanese Club Homer started from a scratch with your donations to be successful for Japanese Taiko drums’ and pottery projects.

Alaska Japanese Club Homer was established in 2022 when after school programs were reopened after Covid-19 Pandemic had settled down. Before the pandemic, a former mayor, Ken Castner, asked me as a liaison and an interpreter to help sister city project rebuild their relationship with our sister city, Teshio, Hokkaido in Japan. Alaska Japanese Club Homer reconnected to our sister city with eleven online class sessions between students from West Homer Elementary School and Homer High School and students from Teshio Junior High School and Taishi High School in Hyogo in Japan. Students in Alaska Japanese Club did exchange cards’ activities with those students in Teshio Junior High School, Hokkaido and high schools in Hyogo in Japan as well. During the pandemic, the Consular Office of Japan in Anchorage had started to launch the Japan-Alaska Sister City Forum to promote and develop each sister city in Alaska and Japan. They had already held different online forums through the past years. One event was the Youth Online Forums with students who were from 9th grades to college in Alaska and Japan and Japan- Alaska Sister City-Town Pride Festa in January, 2023. A good and surprising news is that the first place was a video about the Haiku club activities from Ryo Ueda who is a current host family for Cathy Stingley’s group in Teshio. The third place was the art project from our Alaska Japanese Club Homer, which is called “Connections between Teshio in Hokkaido and Taishi in Hyogo in Japan and City of Homer in Alaska, United States.” Speaking with the connections, in Japanese Class, we made 70 chopstick holders led by Sarah Sims who is a local, amazing pottery artist for our gifts to Teshio to show our appreciations of our great relationship. Teshio mailed 50 homemade chopstick wrappers to Alaska Japanese Club Homer for our fundraising activities toward student ambassadors’ program.

Alaska Japanese Club has three divisions such as Japanese language, art and music programs including after school programs at Paul Banks and West Homer, as well as private and group lessons in person and online from kindergarten through adults in Homer area, Kenai and Girdwood, Taiko drumming lessons’ programs and student ambassadors’ program. This student ambassadors’ program is only for 5th grade through 8th grades who have been taking Japanese classes in the afterschool program at least two years, Japanese private or group lessons in Alaska Japanese Club Homer. This first international, educational trip to Japan is taking place the end of May through June for two weeks. This youth student ambassadors’ trip to Japan will be operated every other year. Some of the student ambassadors’ who are in this program will share their presentations hosted by Kachemak Bay Rotary Club on Thursday, January 2, 2025 at noon at Best Western Bidarka Hotel. They will present Teshio, Hokkaido and four other cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima where the student ambassadors will be learning regional cultures in Japan through this program.

Alaska Japanese Club Homer encourages especially new generations to become global citizens as a part of an emerging sustainable world community and whose actions support the values and practices of the community.

We appreciate that our community has been supporting Alaska Japanese Club Homer: especially, Homer Public Library which provides our club with the conference room every Saturday morning for our cultural studies, planning meetings and Japanese group lessons as well as on Saturday afternoon at Homer United Methodist Church for Taiko drumming lessons. Another big thank you to the Homer Foundation as our fiscal sponsor. We appreciate your monetary donations, non-monetary donations such as photos, pictures, handmade crafts, quilting arts or items representative of Homer as gifts to our sister city, Teshio.

We are very excited to give our presentation at Best Westen Bidarka Hotel at noon on Thursday, January 2, 2025 hosted by Kachemak Bay Rotary Club. We are hoping that you will come to see our presentations.

We appreciate your support.

Many blessings to you all through holiday seasons.

Megumi Beams

Sister City Liaison/ Interpreter

Japanese International Exchange Coordinator/ Instructor

Alaska Japanese Club Director

Even if you don't think you qualify, still apply as it may result in federal dollars for our school.

West Homer PTO is for everyone!

You are invited to join us in being part of the PTO. We spend the year building community here at West by celebrating staff and students, fundraising, and hosting community events. All these activities remind us how much we can invest in our schools and the people who make West Homer a place to learn and building connections. Some of the things the PTO is involved with is The Penny Wars, Lunch and Play with Caregivers, Community Coffee once a quarter, the Talent Show, Staff Appreciation, End of Year BBQ, and much more!

We've been lucky to have several staff attend our PTO meetings so far this year. Please join us if you can! The PTO benefits greatly from the ideas and perspectives of staff. We will be meeting the first Tuesday of the month at 4:30 pm in the library. There will also be a Zoom option. The next meeting will be Dec 3rd.

Please reach out any time with ideas/feedback/questions.

Thanks,

Ahnie Litecky

For more information email us at: ptowesthomer@gmail.com