Greetings Fairmeadow Community,

Welcome to a new calendar year at Fairmeadow Elementary School! 2017 will be a significant year of academic, physical, social, and emotional growth for all of our children. I look forward to our ongoing partnership to ensure that your child reaches his or her fullest potential at school this year, and experiences joyful learning in our classrooms. Let's get going with this new year!

This year we will be launching a new Design Studio at Fairmeadow, a space where teachers can bring students to learn design thinking and engineering skills. We envision a space with an abundance of materials and tools, and a space that encourages creativity, modeling, and problem solving within science. Before our student designers can start their creations they'll need some building materials. Please start to set aside your interesting recycling and other building materials, and prepare to donate them to Fairmeadow. Specific donation dates and times will be identified and sent out in the eNews next week, stay tuned!

For the Fairmeadow Design Studio, we will be looking for the following materials that have been washed/cleaned, are label free, and are ready for constructing:

If you have other materials you would like to donate, please contact the Design Studio Planning Committee at fairmeadowdesign@googlegroups.com . Thank you for your contributions to this innovative space on our campus!

Please consider joining us for a Parent Education Event on Tuesday, January 10th at 6:30 pm in the Fairmeadow MP Room, led by Fairmeadow parent and Professor of Medicine at Stanford, Christopher Gardner. Deciphering Labels and Busting Myths: Healthy Eating Made Simple will demystify the language, habits, and strategies of healthy eating to help and inform nutrition choices for you and your family. I look forward to seeing you for this valuable evening discussion. Spanish translation and babysitting will be provided!

I would appreciate your assistance in helping our school remain safe for all students and community members in the time before and after school by reviewing a few simple school rules with your family. First, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, and wheels of any kind are not to be used on school grounds for 30 minutes before school and 30 minutes after school. The redtop area is for walking only and can become very slippery when wet; it is never an area where children or adults should run. The black, red, and green flags displayed by the main office provide guidance for where students can play on rainy days. Lastly, for drivers dropping off students in the main driveway please drive as far forward as you can in the driveway and drop off students in the right lane only. Thank you for your attention to these important safety precautions at our school.

This January we continue with an exciting winter Fairmeadow Tradition...our school Ice Skating Parties! The K-2 party will be on January 11th and the 3-5 party will be on January 18th. Both parties will run from 5:30-7:30 pm at the Winter Lodge in Palo Alto. I look forward to seeing you there!

 

I am thankful to be starting 2017 with each one of you at Fairmeadow, and I look forward to a productive year of learning and joy ahead!

Grant Althouse