Estes Made the Local News

Our first grade students got a chance to be up close and personal with the morning crew at Channel 14 WFIE. The students had a great time asking questions and learning about being a reporter. We would like to thank the great people of WFIE for coming to our school!

Sleeping Problems?

Did you know that children aged 6 to 13 need at least 9 to 11 hours a sleep each night. If they are not getting that amount of sleep you might have experienced cranky children but that is the least of your problems. Did you know that children not receiving the recommended amount of sleep have higher chances of heart disease, type-2 diabetes and obesity? Did you also know that behavior problems and loss of focus can be contributed to being sleep deprived? There are many reasons that our children aren't getting the recommended amount of sleep, but it isn't too late to change their sleeping patterns.
Sleeping must be made a priority in your house. One way to help your child with his or her sleep pattern is to have a calming 20 minutes before going to bed. This means that the electronic devices need to be disconnected well before your children head to bed. Remember those bed time stories that our parents read to us before bed. Those kinds of activities will help recreate a family bond with your child and also prepare him or her for bed.

Sight Words and Happy Meals

The first round of sight words for Happy Meals happens this Friday. If your child has mastered the goal set by his or her teacher, he or she will receive a Happy Meal complete with a toy! We like to reward hard workers with special pay days! If your child has been slacking and not wanting to work on the sight words, don't worry because we do this once a month. Here is a pic of a sight word party from last year!

Bored? Not With This Board!

Our ELA students have a brand-new learning tool in Mrs. Holly's room. Check out the sensory board and all the brain stimulating things to touch and learn from and about!

Hula Hooping with Mr. Magill

Mrs. McCarty's class was participating in Mr. Magill's PE stations. Mrs. McCarty was impressed with Mr. Magill's Hula Hooping skills and the skills of the students in her class.

Smile!

Make sure to brush your teeth and comb your hair because picture day is this Tuesday!

Sorce and Harralson Blogs

If your child is in Mrs. Harralson's class or Mr. Sorce's class make sure to visit their class blogs.

Here's Your Tip

Did you know that the links on the side of this page are child friendly and will actually help with your child's education? Ask your child's teacher for the passwords and then let your child work at their own pace.
What to do when your child is reading and doesn't know a word? It is easy to just tell your child the word, but that doesn't really help your child.
The first strategy I would do is have your child skip the word and read the rest of the sentence. After the sentence has been read go back to that word and see if your child can figure it out now.
The next strategy I would use is chunking the word. Let your child break down the word and look for smaller words inside the word. Ex: pants p an ts- the little word an is inside the word pants.
How to handle homework that is given out at the beginning of the week and due on Friday. More and more teachers have been going to giving out a packet of homework on Monday that isn't due until the end of the week. Lots of children want to wait until Thursday night to do their homework and then soon realize they can't possibly get it all done. I would suggest you sit down with your children on Monday night and help your child come up with a pacing guide that will break down the homework nightly. If your children are doing their homework at a daycare, I would still sit down with them and look over the work.
It is good for your children to learn how to manage their time and work right now because this is a skill they will need as an adult. Plus, your child will be less stressed when they come up with a plan on how to tackle their homework. I am 40 and I am still doing this with my own work.
Everyone have a good week and keep pushing for excellence. Also, please remember you are only a failure if you give up. Go Bulldogs!

Fairy Tales Meet Bluegrass

Early Learning Academy has been learning nursery rhymes. Hey, Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the fiddle has been a popular one to learn. Mrs. Alley brought her “fiddle” and students learned more about what a fiddle is and how it sounds. They also had the opportunity to play it! Liliana Figueroa had fun making fiddle music.

Play dough, Fixing and Writing

Last week was a busy week in Mrs. Harralson's class! Her little ones were fixing things, cutting things, graphing, drawing and writing. Here is a little blurb about the pictures:

Fix-It Duck book – Tool Man Steve came in to show us his tools and explain what it means to “repair” something, one of our super words of the week (see picture attached), the children picked their favorite character in the book, we graphed our numbers, and they drew a favorite character with setting details added to them (picture attached)

Wrote birthday cards to a little girl in the hospital (see pictures attached)

Learning Through Play

Did you know that you can learn from playing? It looks like our ELA students are playing, but they are learning to solve problems together, communicate their needs to others, make new friends, and build motor skills. Also, take a look at how proud Alex is of sharing his creativity in the blocks center.

Mr. Sorce Has the Source For Learning

Check out what Mr. Sorce's students are doing! Click on the links below or copy and paste the links into your browser:

Plants:
http://mrsorceestes.blogspot.com/2015/08/pltw-plants.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MrSorce--estes+%28Mr.+Sorce--Estes%29

A blog post from Jordan:
http://mrsorceestes.blogspot.com/2015/08/blog-post.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MrSorce--estes+%28Mr.+Sorce--Estes%29

Learn about what makes you, you:
http://mrsorceestes.blogspot.com/2015/08/pltw-inheritance-boards.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MrSorce--estes+%28Mr.+Sorce--Estes%29

Learning in Layson's Room

Mrs. Layson taught Jaden and Gabriel about community helpers last week. Also, Mrs. Schneider and Jaden took a brain break to play Headbands.

The Defiant Child

Here is a great article to read if you are having trouble with raising a defiant child.
http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/is-it-me-life-lessons-from-failed-parenting/?utm_source=newsletter_082315&utm_medium=email&utm_content=topstory&utm_campaign=Emotional_Smarts&utm_term=5079196

Puppets Make Learning Fun

Mrs. Blevins class took on creativity time to make some puppets for a reading project. Take a look at their final product!

Welcome to the Estes Blog

My name is Mr. Williams and I run the Estes blog at Estes Elementary. I typically update the blog on Sunday night with stories that either happened in the past week or with events that will transpire in future weeks. I will also run stories with tips for parents and students. I have also been known to give out challenges for both our parents and students to complete.
 I believe that we have one of the best schools in Owensboro and my goal is to make sure that the world knows about the great things happening at Estes. Please make sure to scroll down and read all the stories of the week. Make sure to click on the older posts to read all of our posts. Welcome to the blog and welcome to Estes!

A Celebration of Life

This past Thursday the Estes community celebrated the life of Hunter Jackson. We lost a precious little student at Estes, but Heaven gained an Angel. It never ceases to amaze me the love that comes from the parents, staff and the students at Estes. It gave me goosebumps Thursday seeing all the blue coming into our school. I had parents walking past me either wearing blue or UK gear and saying that they love how we rally around our students. Estes is a special place to work and learn! I know Hunter is looking down and smiling because he converted some of you all to Wildcat fans for one day, but that isn’t the point. If he had liked clowns or unicorns we would have had a building of clowns and unicorns because that is who we are. We are Estes!
Hunter in now in a better place looking down on his family and his Estes family. He can now run with other angels without fear of his heart giving out. He is probably shooting hoops with some Wildcat legends as I type this.
Hunter might be gone in the physical form, but he will always live on in our hearts! I will leave you with my famous three words that I tell all the students at Estes- I LOVE YOU!

Egg Drop Soup?

Mrs. Lancaster, Mrs. Huskisson and Ms. Vincent challenged their students to design a device that would protect an egg from a fall from the roof of Estes. Here we have some pics of the design process and the egg fall.

Pete the Cat at Estes

If you visited Estes during the first week of school you might have seen some little paw prints on the floor. Don't worry we didn't have juvenile deliquent cats break into the school and run the hallways with paint on their paws. No, we had a special visitor named Pete the Cat come visit Estes. Our Kindergarten students went looking for Pete and read all about him. In the pictures above and to the side you will see Mrs. Manqueros class making their very own Pete the Cat.

In the picture below Mrs. Harralson's class learned how to lace shoes and colored their string with Science droppers.

Way to Go, Khilan

Khilan in Mrs. McKenzie's room was flexing some brain power when I was observing her class. Khilan is just one of many students at Estes who are flexing their brain muscles to help our school become the best in the state!

Blogs at Estes

We have a few teachers at Estes that are keeping parents informed of what is happening in their classrooms. Mr. Sorce and Mrs. Harralson are two of the teachers using blogs and you can follow them by clicking on the links below.

http://mrsorceestes.blogspot.com

http://faithharralson.wix.com/estes  password to enter is: mrsharralson

Back to School Luau

Thank you to everyone who came out to our back to school Luau. Thank you to Mrs. Williams and her parents for donating the delicious hot dogs for our Luau. We hope everyone had a great time and we look forward to having more family fun throughout the year.