Originally delivered on 3/12/2025 4:21 pm

SUBJECT: SCES PTA Post March 12, 2025

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March 12 - March 31, 2025



Important Upcoming Dates
March 14International Pi Day Celebration
March 17-25Read-A-Thon 
March 17-21Reading Spirit Week
March 31No School
April 1PTA Meeting - In person + Zoom
April 4 World Culture Day
April 26Outdoor Classroom Workday
Next PTA Meeting, April 1 at 7pm - In Person & Virtual

Please join us for the next PTA meeting on Tuesday, April 1st (no joke!) at 7pm. It will take place at SCES in the Media Center. There will also be a zoom link.

GEOBOWL 2025 was a great success!

This year the GeoBowl competition focused on Asia!! The GeoBowl is a geography team competition for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Students are assigned to teams and work together to prepare for the competition. The big day took place on March 7th and students did not miss a beat! 

Congrats to all GeoBowl participants! The signs were wonderful, the deliberation intense, and the sportsmanship remarkable. 

A big thank you to organizers Vero Elizalde, Mike McCartt and Jeremy Kanthor for pulling off a super fun and educational event!

Poetry Night - What a delight!

On February 25th, the PTA hosted a poetry night at SCES for students and families to enjoy an evening of poetry, spoken word, and a
performance celebrating poets across the pan African diaspora. The event was a beautiful evening with lots of celebration, creativity and learning!

Thanks to Gladys Chi and special guests Althea Grey-McKenzie from The White House Studios for Performing Arts, and our very own Dawn Naser and students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts for making this a wonderful event for SCES!


Pi Day this Friday 3/14!

The SCES Staff Appreciation Committee is coordinating a Pi Day celebration of pies for our amazing staff! On Pi Day (Friday, 3/14), families are encouraged to bring pies (both sweet and savory pies are welcome) for staff to enjoy! The buffet of pies will be set up in the Staff Lounge. 

Ms. Schwartz plans to accept pies from parents during drop off in front of the school, or you could also bring your pie warm midday (staff lunch runs from around 10:45 am until 2 pm, to coincide with student lunches). 

You can also sign up to help with set up, midday, or clean up, or to bring plates, forks or napkins.

Feel free to reach out to me (Ashley Briefel) at ashley.ann.briefel@gmail.com if you have questions. Thanks for considering!

SCES Read-A-Thon starts March 17th!

READ A THON Packet - English

LECTURE A THON - Français

MARATÓN DE LECTURA - Español

Get excited for the March 17th-21st Read-a-thon to benefit the Sligo Creek Educational Foundation and the Outdoor Classroom! Packets will come home on Friday, March 14th--then the reading can begin! The theme this year will be "Reading is a Treasure". The week of the 17th will be a spirit week at Sligo Creek full of fun and daily dressing up.

Celebrate reading and help raise funds for the Sligo Creek Education Foundation to support so many great activities at SCES including Outdoor Classroom learning, newspaper club, and much more! 

Talk to family and friends and ask for pledges to read – either flat pledges or per minute. Then, use the reading log to keep track of the minutes you read each day (and yes, you can get credit for the required daily reading your teachers assign). We ask parents/caregivers to help the students keep track of the minutes read and sign off on their reading logs.

No donations are necessary for your child to participate in the read-a-thon. If you'd like to donate today, follow this link; donations of any size are welcome!

To be eligible for the prizes:

Return the Student Report with your pledge money by Wednesday, March 26th

All types of reading materials are accepted (e.g. magazines, newspapers, books, etc.) and children who aren’t able to read independently may be read to and those minutes count. Our primary goal is to develop better readers all around, and to strengthen the love of reading in all our students. Thank you for your support and HAPPY READING!

If you have any questions, please contact Alyssa at president@sligocreekef.org or Stacy Miller at Stacy_K_Miller@mcpsmd.org. 

Prizes!

Along with the “joy of reading” the following prizes will also be awarded:

Minutes Read Prize: Reader’s Basket: Book reading light, bookstore & Moorenko’s ice cream gift cards

Names of students who read 500 minutes or more will be entered into a drawing.

Money Raised Prize: Reader’s Basket: Book reading light, bookstore & Moorenko’s ice cream gift cards

Names of students who bring in $60 or more will be entered into a drawing.

Highest Individual Minutes Read for Each Grade:

Books donated from People’s Books and Bonjour Books!

All students who participate in the Read-a-thon will be invited to a popsicle party on March 28th in the Outdoor Classroom! 

Reading Celebration Spirit Week

Join SCES in Spirit Week to celebrate reading from March 17 to 21!

Monday 3/17: Wear green or rainbows as we embark on our search for reading treasure!

Tuesday 3/18: Let’s go treasure hunting! Dress as a pirate, fairy, leprechaun, or favorite magical creature!

Wednesday 3/19: Wear your PJs to school to “cozy up and read!” You can arrive early to read with a friend in the media center from 8:50 - 9:20 before school starts!

Thursday 3/20: Dress as your favorite book character! You can also add your favorite book to our Reading Rainbow school mural as you arrive.

Friday 3/21: School Spirit Day - Wear your Sligo Creek shirt! We will also partner up older/younger students for reading buddies today!

Get Ready for World Culture Day - April 4th!

Sligo Creek Elementary School will celebrate World Culture Day on Friday, April 4. The event is held at SCES during school hours. We are looking for parent volunteers to be presenters and share music, dance, language, images, costumes, food and other cool things about their country and culture. 

We also need parents to help us run the event. The PTA is looking for photographers, parents to pick up food, help decorating, and helpers to sit with the kids during the event. For more information and to sign up to volunteer check out the Sign-Up Genius!

Here is the schedule by grade for the day: 

- 9:35-11:00 1st Grade and Kindergarten (Session 1)

-11:00-1:00 2nd and 3rd Grade (Session 2)

-1:00-3:35 5th and 4th Grade (Session 3)


Still plenty of slots to volunteer and present! See the following flyer for more details and FAQs.
Outdoor Classroom Workday coming up!

The Outdoor Classroom team is excited to announce an upcoming outdoor classroom workday on Saturday, April 26th at 9am! This will be a great opportunity for all SCES families, (kids welcome) to get involved in improving our outdoor space.

Middle School students may earn SSL hours (must be accompanied by an adult/caregiver).

There will be a professional videography team on site; videos and photos may be used in school and community publications.

Here’s a bit about the work we’ll be doing:

  • Installing plants and paths to enhance the outdoor classroom
  • Improving stormwater runoff by treating it close to the source
  • Creating more habitat for native pollinators
  • Enhancing the aesthetics of a currently degraded section of the outdoor classroom
  • The work will mainly involve planting hundreds of small plants, and we’ll be using hardwood mulch for the paths, so expect some spreading of mulch as well.

We hope you can join us – it will be a great day of community work and making the outdoor classroom even better for our students.

Please RSVP here. 

Thank you,
The Outdoor Classroom Team

Stock the staff lounge!

Show your appreciation for our wonderful SCES staff!

Thanks to many of you we were able to stock the staff lounge for the past two weeks!

In particular, we are in need of snacks such as chips, cookies and granola bars.

The easiest way to contribute snacks or coffee is to order off our amazon wish list they’ll be shipped directly to my house. 

If you don’t want to go the Amazon route, just reach out to me directly (amanda.mitchum@gmail.com) and we can figure out a time and place for you to drop off snacks.

Thank you again to everyone who contributed—let’s keep showing our staff how much they mean to us!

Amanda Hill + Ashley Briefel
Co-chairs of the Staff Appreciation Committee

Order your SCES Yearbook before it's too late!
  • Now is the time to order your child’s yearbook for the 2024-25 school year! 
  • Capture los recuerdos escolares de este año. ¡ordenando tu anuario hoy!
    Make your order here: https://shop.yearbookmarket.com/sligocreekelementary. Orders accepted through April 18th.

    All 5th graders will receive a complementary yearbook courtesy of the PTA – yearbook donations are appreciated to offset this cost and can also be ordered at the link below.
    We are also looking for photos to include of Sligo Creek Elementary events and activities. If you have photos to share, please use this link to upload (they are only visible by the yearbook coordinator). Yearbook Photo Submission: https://bookbuilder.pixami.com/SligoCreekEl/home3/PhotoPost.jsp?ID=ISFLSSW6M4G3
SCES New Enrollment News - 1st grade

If you know anyone who plans to enroll a current kindergartener from another school or private nursery/kindergarten program into 1st grade at SCES, please encourage them to enroll now! 

Rising 1st grade and rising Kindergarten are at low enrollment at SCES. Right now with our current enrollment we will be losing teachers in both grades! 1st grade academy next year would be merged into 2 classrooms. We want to ensure that we can keep our three teachers for the academy classes, but to do so, the school needs to know the number of students enrolled. The sooner a child enrolls, the better it is for planning.
If you or a family you know is planning on attending SCES in either of those grades next year please please go ahead and register now and don’t wait for summer.  

Thank you!

SCES PTA SOCIAL MEDIA
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