SKCEE NEWLETTER – APRIL 2025

Posted April 8, 2025

LEADER LETTER

Dear SKCEE Families,
Happy April! We hope you all had a wonderful spring break. It was joyful to welcome our students and families back this week, and we are excited for all the fun that spring brings at SKCEE. Next week the festivities begin with the Scholastic Book Fair, Literacy Spirit Week, and Literacy Night. This aligns with the NAEYC Week of the Young Child, which you can learn about here. Thank you to our amazing PTA who set up the book fair today! Check it out next week.
We understand that our professional learning days can create a hardship for working families, and want you to know how important those days are to the quality learning and care we provide our children. We are a large and mighty staff at SKCEE, with over 65 full and part-time staff, and the district and SKCEE specific PD days are the only time we can all come together to connect, plan, and learn together. We use this time to dive into TS Gold and DIBELs student data, collaboratively lesson plan and prepare provocations and spaces for learning, complete licensing requirements and trainings, do Reggio inspired learning and implementation, work on NAEYC Accreditation, and so much more. We have tried to collaborate with Cory Elementary to coordinate our days, but the needs and priorities in an early education center are so different from first through fifth grade schools, as we use different curriculum and assessments and have different requirements. We will continue to collaborate with Discovery Link to provide day camps when possible, and communicate in advance so there are no surprise days. Please remember to follow skceefamilies on Instagram, bookmark our SKCEE webpage, and read all communications we send home and post throughout the school. We will know before June what our SKCEE specific PD days are, so also be sure to grab a copy of our calendar for the 25-26 school year, knowing it differs from DPS at times.
Thank you to all the families who have cared for David and Patrick, our guinea pigs, during the school year. We have 9 more weekends to fill for their care through the end of May. See Shelley or Staci to express interest and sign up.
Speaking of animals, as the weather gets nicer and some of you are bringing your dogs along for drop off and pick up, we want to let you know that dogs are not allowed in the building. We got clarity from the Colorado Department of Public Health, and in order to allow dogs in school buildings, there is a long list of rules we have to abide by including having copies of updated vaccinations on file for any dog that enters the building, which we don’t have the capacity to manage. Moving forward, please consider leaving your dogs at home, or in the car if the weather is appropriate, or outside, leashed. Ms. Staci and I are also happy to hold your dogs at the door while you run to sign out your children. Thank you for understanding and supporting us to align to state, city, and district policies for dogs at school.
See you at the Book Fair and Literacy Night!

With Love,
Principal Shelley Boberschmidt

INFORMATION, UPDATES, AND ACTION

ECE Update: We are finishing up our Music Making unit and our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle unit, and are excited to end the year learning about Insects, Gardening, and Water. We will be doing a soil and seed drive, so please bring a bag of soil and some seeds to the front lobby if you are able starting next week. We loved hosting the South High School Band before break. The band members visited all of the classrooms to teach our students about instruments and music.

Kindergarten Update: In kindergarten we are starting our Taking Care of the Earth Unit, and we are excited for our Aquarium field trip. In math we are adding and subtracting within 20 and comparing elements using words like lighter, heavier, taller, shorter, hotter, and colder. In literacy we are continuing digraphs and other tricky spelling such as ch, th, bl, oo, ng, qu, ee, ar, ow and double letter teams. We’ve also been exploring Loose Parts through storytelling and recess activities. We hope to have some of you starting to join us at recess in the coming weeks! Look for the sign up from your kindergarten teacher.

PE Update: In April, we are playing lots of spring-themed games including Beetle Tag, Picking Flowers, and moving like different animals. I’ll be spending a lot of time reassessing locomotor and balancing skills as well. As the year begins to come to a close, there are 2 exciting PE events to put on your calendar!

Wednesday, May 7th is National Bike and Roll to School Day. Grab your bike or scooter (and helmet!) and join us on your wheels.

Friday, May 16th is Field Day (weather permitting). Class schedules and specific classroom plans will come soon. There will be some volunteer opportunities as well.

We are selling yellow SKCEE Physical Education T-shirts. These would be great to wear on your bike or at Field Day! Shirts are $15, and proceeds go towards purchasing new and improved gym equipment. Click HERE to buy yours today, or purchase before school April 28-May1.

Art Scoop: Oh glorious spring! I hope that you are finding time to be outside as nature wakes up and starts new cycles. In the art room, we will be celebrating spring in our creations. Likeable recyclables will be available for creating as we think about caring for the earth.

Last month, preschoolers connected science and art in creations and conversations. Ask your child about rainbow making! Kindergarten collaboratively made (or will make) signs for our school community. Planning and working together on the same paper is an impressive feat for 5 and 6 year olds! Check out our art in the halls when you are in the building. Kindly, Cookie

SKCEE PTA

We are gearing up for an exciting April and May, packed with fun events and ways to get involved! The Scholastic Book Fair is open in person from April 7-10 and online through April 17—shop your favorite books and support our school! We still need volunteers to make the Book Fair a success! Sign up for a shift and be part of the fun (check out the newsletter linked below in order to do so). Mark your calendar for our PTA meeting on April 17, where free childcare makes it easy to join. Don’t miss our delicious dine-out fundraiser at Dough Counter (April 14-15) or break a sweat for a cause at Barry’s Bootcamp on April 23. Help us wrap up the year’s final Stock the Lounge on April 16 by donating snacks and drinks. And looking ahead, we’re celebrating Educator Appreciation Week (May 5-9), National Bike & Roll to School Day on May 7 followed by SKCEE’s awesome Spring Fling on May 15!