Dear EVCS students,

First, let’s all officially welcome Terry back to school!    

What a great time we had at the Multicultural Share on Friday night!   The delicious food representing so many of our families’ cultures and traditions shared with our whole community, and the excellent performances make it one of my favorite EVCS events year after year.  Thanks again to everyone who brought food to share, to the brave kids who shared their talents, and to all of you who were such an encouraging and supportive audience. I thought this year’s was one of the best one we have had in a long time.

This Friday is the Notes in Motion Poetry Carnival!  At 5pm families can sign in and grab some dinner in the cafeteria.  Then from 5:30 until 7:00 the fun begins. We’ll be dancing and moving along with the Amanda Selwyn Dance Company, to the poetry of well-known poets as well as our EVCS Poetry contest winners!  So many of our classes have been reading and writing poetry over the last month, and this Friday we’ll be celebrating poetry together through dance. I hope you can join us!

One final announcement. We have been noticing that the newly plants bushes and shrubs in the schoolyard along the fence have been getting really damaged, with lots of broken branches.  PLEASE be careful not step on those bushes or break the branches off. Let’s take care of our school environment!

Thanks as always to the SWMM House Band, and thanks to everyone who sang loud and proud this morning.   

Have a great day and a great week.

Love,

Bradley  

Dear EVCS students,

Our core value is Joy of Learning – and one of the places that we see this core value on display regularly is in chess class with Stephanie and Yuri.  

We love chess because it’s not only fun, but it helps us exercise our brains in really important ways.  When we play chess we have to start with a plan for how we are going to move the pieces, but then depending on how our opponent moves we need to update our plan throughout the game.  This is complex problem solving, because the information is constantly changing.

Chess is also really great practice with persistence, because we need to stay focused throughout the game, sometimes for a long time.  And it’s a great way to practice good sportsmanship. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t! As long as you tried your best and had fun you can feel proud.  

We just finished our second ever EVCS chess tournament, and I am happy to say that almost twice as many kids participated this year than last year!  We were so impressed with the intelligence, sportsmanship, and heart our kids demonstrated throughout the tournament.  And now to tell us more about the tournament and officially announce the results is our PE teacher and chess tournament organizer, Coach Eric.

Congratulations again to all the chess tournament participants.  Thanks to the 3rd grade for hosting SWMM today, thanks as always to the SWMM House Band, and thanks to everyone who sang loud and proud this morning.   

Have a great day and a great week.

Love,

Bradley  

Dear EVCS students,

Let’s put our hands together for everyone who participated in the jump rope demonstration this morning!  Jumping rope is a great way to exercise and take care of your body. It’s also very important that we eat healthy food and start the day with a good breakfast.  We always have breakfast available for all of our students in the cafeteria in the morning. If you do want to have breakfast at school we ask that you try to arrive early enough that you can finish before 8:30 when our classes go upstairs.  We have noticed that a lot of our students have been bringing breakfast trays up with them in the morning, which can be distracting and also messy in the classrooms. Let’s try to do better at finishing breakfast before 8:30 in the cafeteria.  

I’m happy to announce that we will be holding a raffle again this year to become Principal for the Day!  Whoever wins the raffle will have special privileges and responsibilities on one day, including sitting in with the SWMM House Band and reading the morning message, creating one special rule for the day, and going out to a special lunch with me.  The Principal for the Day and l will also visit every classroom and read your favorite book to the Pre-K and Kindergarten classes. Tickets are $5 and will be on sale in the schoolyard every day this week at arrival and dismissal. The raffle drawing will be at the spring gala on Saturday night.  

Finally, the Multicultural Share will be on Friday, May 3.  If you want to sign up to perform you must submit a request online before next Friday, April 12.

Big thanks to all of our students and staff who jumped rope this morning!  Thanks as always to the SWMM house band, and thanks to everyone who came this morning and sang loud and proud!

Have a great day and a great week.

Love,

Bradley