Ithaca South Elementary

Each day, students earn "Junior Jacket tickets" for being caught showing good behavior. Every Friday, one Junior Jacket from every classroom is chosen as a winner. Students are proud and excited to be chosen! #empoweringexcellence

While learning about the needs of living things, kindergarteners worked collaboratively to create buildings that would provide humans with all that they need. Houses, grocery stores, water towers, and so much more quickly filled our town!

We are proud to announce our October Students of the Month! Great work, Junior Jackets!

Congratulations to our yearbook cover contest winners! Bennett won the back cover and Emmit won the front cover! Thank you to all our second graders for working hard and using their creativity to create so many amazing entries!

Picture Retakes are Wednesday, November 6th. Please order online at mylifetouch.com and enter the Picture Day ID: EVTQPHBTH. If you previously had photos taken and would like a retake, please return the photographs along with a reason for needing the photos retaken. Thank you!

We got to participate in a very special "send off" this past Friday! Our Ithaca High School Boy's & Girl's Cross Country Teams both won their regional championship qualifying them for the state championship at MIS Speedway! A special congratulations to Coach Stephen Merchant & Daryl Dawe. Thank you to our own Mr. Josh Rayburn for teaching our South Elementary students how to do "the wave!" After competing on Saturday both teams placed in the top five in our state. We are SO proud of all of you! 💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

Happy Halloween from these fantastic kindergarten kiddos! We had a parade, a classroom party, and so much fun! Thank you to our parent helpers and everyone who cheered kids on at our costume parade! 🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃👻🎃

Help for the Holidays: If your family would like to request help during the holiday season, please fill-out the green colored paperwork that was sent home last week or call the office and we will be sure to send the paperwork home to you.

After watching all sorts of creatures dance in the story The Halloween Hustle, second graders created their own Halloween dance partners in STEAM!

Mrs. Gulick's 2nd grade students utilized the character strength of creativity to collaboratively create a picture with a partner without verbal communication, alternating turns to contribute to the artwork. Great work, 2nd grade!✏️

Please take our South Elementary Parent Survey: https://forms.gle/8eHN3F6ubnoBbDDg7

Thank you to our wonderful bus drivers from our Ithaca Public Schools Transportation Department! We learned about bus safety going to school, coming home from school, and on field trips. We also discussed what to do at a railroad crossing. Each student received a bus safety coloring book to take home and review with their family! Thank you Ithaca Transportation!! 💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

We had so much fun completing a math lesson about pumpkins! We estimated how many seeds we thought the pumpkin held inside. Once all students wrote down their estimates, we cut open the pumpkin. Each student got to remove one scoop of seeds and pulp, and pull out the seeds. It was messy & fun! Our Ithaca High School helper, Miss Izabelle Lalone counted the seeds for us. There were 396 seeds! A few students had good guesses, but our Jack guessed 300, the closest of everyone! Jack got to take the pumpkin home. I am currently baking the pumpkin seeds so we can eat them tomorrow! Pumpkin math is so much fun!

Donuts with Grownups was a huge success!! Thank you to everyone who was able to join your Junior Jacket for breakfast this morning. We saw many smiling faces. It was a wonderful way to start our Tuesday!

We had a great day at our schools woods on Wednesday! Thanks to support from Pheasants Forever our students had opportunities to examine pictures from our trail cams, feel real animal pelts and use binoculars! They also investigated all sorts of items with our microscopes donated by the Lincoln family! We are so fortunate to have such support for our outdoor education area!

Thank you Erica Grover for teaching a nutrition lesson in our kindergarten classroom today. Our students loved learning about proper hand washing & healthy foods! Mrs Grover's healthy snack recipe this month was: *Mini bagels (Both regular & glutton -free! *Whipped cream cheese on each slice. *Diced red, orange, yellow, and green peppers sprinkled on top of cream cheese. Thank you to Grant Grover for growing the green peppers! 💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

Thank you to our Fantastic Ithaca Fire Department for spending time at Ithaca South Elementary today teaching our students about fire safety. Students learned a lot and just loved the fire hats and goody bags! We are so lucky to have such great community involvement! 💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

We addressed fire safety in STEAM lab by creating escape routes for Indi robots. Students placed red, orange, and yellow cube "fires" in different rooms and then had to code routes to safely get their robot from the green "bedroom" to the purple "meeting place".

Please join us on Tuesday, October 22, for our 'Donuts with Grownups' event!

Our 2nd grade classes showcased their creativity by painting their pumpkins from Lake Farms! 🎨🖌