HAWK News

Principal’s Corner

Wow! This is our final newsletter for the school year!! It has been so good to be back with you and your children, and I appreciate the privilege of being your principal. I hope your summer is restful and fun, and I’ll be excited to see everyone back next fall.

I want to leave you with an article on summer reading that I think you will enjoy. It has lots of ideas for you to keep your child learning and to help him/her be ready to start next year right on track!

Summer shouldn't mean taking a break from learning, especially when it comes to reading. Studies show that most students experience a loss of reading skills over the summer months, but children who continue to read actually gain skills. During the summer parents can help children sustain (and even bolster) reading skills, strengthen their vocabulary and reinforce the benefits of reading for enjoyment.

Remember that children need free time, away from structured academic learning, and the summer is the perfect time to relax and enjoy the pleasures of childhood. So summer reading should be fun. The following are a few tips to make summer reading enjoyable for your children:

Read aloud together with your child every day. Make it fun by reading outdoors -- on the front steps, patio, at the beach or park. Also, let your children read to you. For younger children, be sure to practice letter-sound correspondence, do lots of rhyming and clapping out syllables, and explore the relationships between oral language and print.

Set a good example! Keep lots of reading material around the house. Turn off the TV and have family reading time (including mom and dad).

Let kids choose what they want to read, and every so often, read the same book your child is reading and discuss it.

Buy books on tape or check them out at the library. This can be especially helpful for a child with a learning disability. Listen to these recordings in the car, or turn off the TV and have the family listen to them together at home.

As you go through the day -- cooking, gardening, grocery shopping, playing games -- utilize this time as an opportunity to engage in verbal word play, vocabulary building, recognizing new and familiar words or attaching meaning to words and sentences.

Take your children to the library regularly. Most libraries sponsor summer reading clubs with easy-to-reach goals for pre-school and school-age children. Check the library calendar for special summer reading activities and events. Libraries also provide age appropriate lists for summer reading.

Subscribe, in your child's name, to magazines like Sports Illustrated for Kids, Highlights for Children, or National Geographic World. Encourage older children to read the newspaper and current events magazines as a way of keeping up the reading habit over the summer and enhancing a growing vocabulary. Ask them what they think about what they've read, and listen to what they say.

Ease disappointment over summer separation from a favorite school friend by encouraging them to become pen pals. Present both children with postcards or envelopes that are already addressed and stamped. If both children have access to the Internet, e-mail or instant messaging are other options.

Trips can be a fun way to encourage reading. Ask your children to read traffic signs and billboards aloud. Show them how to read a map, and once you are on the road, let them take turns being the navigator.

Encourage children to keep a summer scrapbook. Tape in souvenirs of your family's summer activities -- picture postcards, ticket stubs, photos. Have your children write the captions and read them aloud as you look at the book together.

Adapted from "Summer Reading Tips for Parents" by the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities.

Have a great summer!!

August 11 – 1^st day for 2008-09 School Year

SUMMER HOURS

Our normal summer office hours will be Monday – Thursday from 8:00-4:00. We may be out of the office for training or vacation so you might want to call before you come by.

Counselor’s Corner

School Supplies and Food

If your children need help with school supplies for the fall, we have backpacks and some supplies donated each year. Please contact me and let me know that you would like me to reserve some of these supplies for your children. This may not be everything your child needs for their grade level, but it will be a lot of the basic things including a good backpack. Just let me know that you want to be included in this program.

Food

We have a group that might be able to help a few families with food over the summer. If you are interested, contact me.

If your family participated in the Backpack foods, Food for Families or other food program this year, please complete the survey at the bottom of this newsletter and return it as soon as possible. Many people work to make these food programs happen. We want to be sure that the food programs are helping our kids and their families and that you want them to continue. Write any ideas that you think would make the program work better and send it back to school in an envelope to me.

Thanks!

Inis McFarlin, School Counselor 472-4386 inism@wcs.edu

Have a safe, fun and restful summer!