ICS PTSA NEWSLETTER

December 22, 2024

See the ICS Calendar for more upcoming event dates.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: CLASS ASSISTANTS & PREP HELP

The volunteer signup is open here - please check and see how you can contribute. All classroom spots are to assist parent leads - no special skills required! Thank you for helping to make Art Day happen!

PLEASE READ CLASS DESCRIPTIONS & MAKE SELECTIONS

We have 19 classes lined up for Art Day on January 27 and every student gets to attend 3 classes! Students in grades 6 to 11, you received an email from Dr. O'Donnell on December 18 to fill out a survey to indicate your top 5 class choices. The survey closes January 9. We will use the submitted responses to guide class assignments. Read about the classes here; please read cooking class descriptions carefully to check for any food allergens. Contact artday@icsptsa.org with any questions.

START THE NEW YEAR BY VOLUNTEERING FOR THE STAFF LUNCH!

Our monthly staff appreciation luncheon is coming up on January 15. This is an event that the staff looks forward to and is much appreciated! Please click here and sign up for an available slot. Thank you!

NEWSLETTER UPDATES FOR 2025

Happy Holidays from the Newsletter Team! This is our last newsletter of 2024, and the last newsletter to be published on a Sunday. Beginning with our first edition in 2025, the newsletter will be published on Tuesdays at 5:00 PM. Accordingly, the submission deadline for articles from will move from midnight Thursday to midnight Friday.

We rely on our newsworthy submissions from the ICS community to build the newsletter each week. Submission guidelines and instructions are on the ICS PTSA website here.

The newsletter team is looking for one or two additional volunteers for this school year, with the hope that volunteers will continue serving for the next school year as well. Currently, we have the February shift, and a one-month post-spring break shift open. This is a volunteer-from-home position - training and all support needed will be provided! Email Jennifer if you're interested in helping. Thank you!

ICS SOPHOMORES & JUNIORS - SIGN UP FOR SAT PREP NOW!

Want to help your ICS student ace the SAT? Don’t miss this opportunity! Paragon Tutoring is offering an in-person SAT Prep course at ICS. The Winter SAT course will run every Tuesday for 1.5 to 2 hours per week depending on the week in the lCS Library, from January 7 to March 4. Please note that Sessions 1 and 9 are 2 hours each, and Sessions 2 through 8 are 1.5 hours each.

The cost for the 9-week package is $499. Sophomores - there are spots for you! You can find more details, including the complete class schedule, and register for the course by clicking on this link and using the password: Spring2025. For further questions, please email Raksha Pant.

All parents with children enrolled in the prep course, please sign up here for a volunteer shift if you have not done so. Thank you!

ICS SKI BUS - LAST CALL FOR LESSONS

Want to learn to ski/snowboard, improve your skills, or just have fun on Wednesdays in January and February?

This is the last call to sign up for lessons! You may still be able to sign up for free skiing/riding until we run out of seats but the option to get 6-lesson pack is about to be close. Please do not delay! We are open for siblings and friends. Signup here.

Signup will continue until we reach the bus capacity. For more details and questions – please join the WhatsApp group.

HELLO FROM THE ICS LIBRARY!

Thank you AGAIN for the generous PTSA library grant! It has made a world of difference to be able to purchase newly released books this fall and get them in students’ hands! Recently when a student was checking out the latest Rick Riordan, he told me how lucky he felt to have the book because when he tried at KCLS there were hundreds of holds for the book already and now he didn’t need to wait! Win for reading! Here are some of the other things happening in the ICS Library right now:

We have 12 teams signed up to challenge themselves on their reading knowledge for our Battle of the Books! Our December practice included a sample challenge that is very similar to the actual building challenge but using questions written by our student teams!

On December 11th and 12th sixth graders who take Study Skills got to participate in the 2024 Hour of Code (HOC) event. The theme for HOC this year is to connect programming to real life applications: “making the invisible, visible.” Students participated in a NASA themed project using block coding that demonstrates how scientists use coding to organize data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in a process called sonification. Some students also had time to do an exercise to learn a bit about Python which involved a lot of puzzling!

We have a group of High School readers participating in our Horrible (Horror-able) Holiday Book Club. Students chose a mystery, a thriller or a horror book to read over winter break and will bring it to discuss on January 9th. At our meeting after sharing about their book, they can choose to keep it for their personal collections or swap with another group member. Mystery is my favorite genre, so I’m reading the latest Richard Osman murder mystery to get ready for our meeting!

I often get requests for book recommendations for gifting at this time of year. Feel free to email me if you need suggestions or check out my Instagram for years of great MS and HS recommendations! @ Mrs.Peterson_Librarian.

Thank you again for supporting our Library! Amber Peterson, ampeterson@lwsd.org