The Kettle Falls Early Learning Center stays open during spring break to provide a fun environment where students get to be creative and spend enjoy time outdoors.
Students at KFMS attended their first annual pi night on 3.14. Mrs. Purvis provided different activities for students and families to earn tokens for participating in “pi challenges.” Pi, in mathematics, is the ratio of the circumference to its diameter. In its decimal form, the value of pi is approximately 3.14; but the full decimal representation for Pi never ends. Kara was awarded an blueberry pie for being able to recite the first 103 digits of pi from memory. Other students took home pies from a raffle drawing. The night ended with families enjoying pizza. Make sure to join us next year for our next pi celebration!
Mr. Kroiss and his students have started learning and playing the popular game of Pickleball! It is an indoor or outdoor racket/paddle sport where 2-4 players hit a plastic ball over a net using paddles. Pickleball has been the fastest growing sport in America for the past three years. There are currently 10,320 pickle ball courts in the United States.
Kettle Falls High School's woodshop classes offer students the opportunity to develop valuable woodworking skills by making projects that are both fun and functional. The high school offers three levels of classes to improve students skills that will help in various trades. Students who complete these classes have a great understanding of woodworking skills, safety skills and techniques. Our kids make some pretty amazing projects that they get to take home.
Third grade had an awesome adventure to WildWalls in Spokane. The students did a great job representing Kettle Falls. They were polite, had perseverance, and some say they even faced their fears!
Friday, March 17th was St. Patrick’s Day. The middle school was lucky enough to have some special leprechauns visit each and every class today sharing some special treats with the teachers in our building. We are very lucky to have these special people in our building! Thank you for sharing your magically delicious snacks with us!
Mrs. Debbie Crumpler drives bus four to Williams Lake each day and has been driving Kettle Falls students for the past thirteen years. Each day, Mrs. Debbie and other awesome drivers transport students safely to and from their homes, sporting events, field trips, etc. Mrs. Debbie is one of eight drivers at the Kettle Falls School District and we are lucky to have all of our dedicated bus drivers and transportation staff; they are a crucial part of our school!
Students at KFSD have been practicing safety drills all year long. This week the schools practiced a full evacuation which would happen if there was an emergency and we were unable to go back into the building before going home. The KFMS students evacuated to the high school gym. In the event of a real emergency, parents would be rerouted to the high school for reunification with their children. We currently have two students who were unable to walk to the high school, so this gave us some practice on how we would transport students who needed additional assistance. Each drill gives us the opportunity to review what went well and what we need to work on. Our School Safety Officer, Matt Stephens, serves as our district liaison and is able to align the building’s safety plans.
Kettle Falls High School has partnered with GEAR Up to offer some great experiences and opportunities to visit postsecondary campuses to learn about admissions, academic programs, and financial aid options, attend student workshops, and participate in summer campus experiences. Our students have recently been on several campus tours to learn what it takes to be a college student and explore each school’s campus and culture. KFHS students have recently traveled to the University of Idaho, Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, The Paul Mitchell Institute, and Spokane Community College.
4th Graders have been researching animals common to Washington state. They were fortunate enough to have some experts from the Department of Fish and Wildlife come to give more information about white-tail deer, bald eagles, cougars, and grey wolves. The students learned more about the animal’s habitats, how they protect themselves, and their life stages.
Mr. Hansen’s Opps Electives Podcasting class is busy taping interviews and creating quarterly school broadcast updates. This quarter they have focused on Character Strong, Spring Sports, Build A Better World Day and our new School Security Officer. The students are responsible for the entire broadcast from designing the questions to taping and completing the interview. This quarter of broadcasts will be posted on our website this spring. Stay tuned.
Students in Mrs. Tetrick’s textiles class have been busy creating dresses for girls around the world. In partnership with “Dress a Girl Around the World”Kettle Falls students create dresses for girls in third world countries. Dress a Girl is a campaign under Hope 4 Women International which brings dignity to women worldwide and has been doing so since 2006. This is an excellent service learning opportunity. According to Dress a Girl, “We dream of a world in which every girl has at least one new dress. We want girls to know that they are worthy of respect, and that they are loved.” Excellent job students!
You are never to old to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday! Some lucky students in Mrs. St. Clair's class enjoyed listening to a Dr. Seuss book and eating some green egg and ham! Other classrooms spent some time reading Dr. Seuss books and participating in “Read Across America Day.” This day was launched in 1998 and is the nation’s largest celebration of reading.
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”- Dr. Seuss
Kindergarten students have been learning about the art of paper collage. During expedition labs, they are creating leaf artwork to decorate our classroom. This ties together with our module about trees and how animals and people depend on trees! They also celebrated the 100th day of school in style by making crowns and participating in STEM activities. Students collaborated to build creations using 100 legos, brain flakes, plates, and cups.
The FFA trapshooting team did GREAT at the shoot in Tonasket. Aiden Fowler placed 1st for the boys and Bailee Heater placed 1st for the girls. The team placed 1st overall out of 13 teams!
The elementary school celebrated Valentine’s Day with the traditional extravaganza of parties and activities. Such a sweet opportunity to practice building a community of inclusion and kindness within every classroom!
Building ONE TEAM! Thank you to the high school cheerleaders for coming to the middle school to teach our students some new cheers. With your help we are building some great school spirit. Our students are doing a great job cheering at the basketball games. Also, thank you to our new school security officer, Matt Stevens, for helping with our class competition during the assembly. Welcome to our school, we are happy to have you working in our school district.
What’s Up in the Sky
Our 1st Grade students are starting a new Expedition called “What’s Up in the Sky: A Study of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. Students are building their literacy and science skills as they engage in a study of the what is in our sky. They will be learning about the patterns we can observe in the sky as well as how different authors have used their knowledge and observations of the sky to write stories. To begin this new study 1st Grade students are making observations and connections to different pictures of the sky and what they notice and wonder about each of the different pictures. Soon these students will be engaged in lab activities where they will be able to create, explore, imagine and research with their classmates.
1st Graders are hard at work on math and their new expedition Sun, Moon, and Stars. For expedition they are watercolor painting to match photographs, later they will paint pictures to match self written poems. For math they are working as partners to add numbers with unifix cubes.
2nd Graders are being paleontologists. Practicing their fossil digging skills on chocolate chip cookies, and then moving on to digging dinosaur bones from fossil kits and recording their findings just like real scientists. This week they also got to create air dry clay dinosaurs.
