The Panther Post
Embedded Files
News & Updates from
Gum Springs Elementary
February 12-15, 2024
A Message from Administration
Good afternoon! As always there is much to celebrate at GSES. While you can see the full stories below, I want to congratulate our students for their outstanding performances at the Science Olympiad and Lego Robotics State Competition. Our students and teachers work hard to demonstrate their knowledge and skills on various fronts. We are proud of the way our students and staff represented GSES!
I had the privilege of attending the WJMS Daddy/Daughter Dance with my daughter Saturday evening and I was thrilled to see many of our students there dancing the night away with their dads. It is good to see our community come together to support our families and our schools. It is also good to see that many of our dads still have some wicked dance moves.
If you have had a chance to drive by the school, you have no doubt seen the new LED sign that was completed last week. Building the sign was a partnership between our community, our PTO, and our school district. We have an exceptionally supportive community and GSES is grateful to be able to see the fruits of that labor in the form of the LED sign. In addition to modernizing the property, the sign will also help us communicate with all stakeholders and celebrate our students. We still have to work out a few technology kinks, but the sign is up and running. Thank you again to our community for your investment in GSES!
Have a great week and thank you for all that you do to make GSES great!
Joshua Todd
Principal
News and Updates
We hope you enjoy the extra-long weekend for our upcoming February break. As a reminder, there is no school for students or staff this Friday, February 16th and next Monday, February 19th.
We are looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day this week! Many of our classes have special activies and snacks planned, as well as time for students to exchange Valentines, but we will not be having parties with outside guests. As a reminder, GSES will not be accepting deliveries of flowers, balloons, etc. for students. Thank you for understanding.
This Thursday, February 15th is CLAW SPIRIT DAY! Be sure to have your child wear his/her Claw shirt or Claw color. We're starting a new tradition on Thursday where our winning Claw gets to participate in a Claw parade around the school with Gus! This month, we're excited to celebrate the BLUE CLAW.
Our next All Pro Dad event will be on Tuesday, February 20th from 6:00 to 7:00 P.M. Sign up HERE if you'd like to attend. The event is open to students and their fathers or male mentors. Chick-Fil-A boxed meals can also be purchased for $10 on the registration form. If you purchase meals, don't forget to make your payment via School Pay.
Deadline this week: Pre-Kindergarten lottery registration for the 2024-25 school year is open. Families can register for the lottery through Friday, February 16. Please note this application does not guarantee admission into a Pre-K program inside the Jackson County School System but is rather an application into the lottery. JCSS will hold a lottery drawing in March and families will be notified following the drawing. To register for the lottery, click HERE. Please help us spread the word to families in our JCSS community who have rising Pre-K students.
The Kid's Heart Challenge collection window closes THIS THURSDAY, so if your child is working toward earning some special prizes, be sure to get those donations included before the end of the week. So far, we have raised $7,612.42 toward our $25,000 school goal. We have 219 students registered and 20 students who have completed Finn's Mission. KHC is a fundraiser to support to the American Heart Association, teach our students about the importance of exercise and heart health, and raise money for our GSES P.E. program. To learn more, you can view the video students watched to kick off the event HERE. If you haven't gotten started yet, you can still sign your child up to be a Heart Hero fundraiser at https://heart.org/Schools.
We'd love to see and share your photos from this weekend's Daddy-Daughter Dance. Click HERE to upload your favorite photo to our shared folder. You can also email a photo to krogers@jcss.us if you have trouble uploading or don't have a Google account. Submissions uploaded by Tuesday, February 13th at 5:00 P.M. will be included in our social media album (limit one photo per student and no videos, please). We hope you had a GREAT time!
Families are requested to give feedback about our school on the annual Georgia Health Survey. Survey results help us find out how families feel about our school climate and community. We'd love to hear from you! This short survey can be completed in 10-15 minutes. Click HERE to get started.
The Family Lunch Guest Sign-Up is live for Feburary dates. Click the button below if you'd like to reserve a time to join us. Please read the specific guidelines at the top of the form carefully before signing up (and be sure to click SUBMIT).
Current 5th grade families, be sure to mark your calendars to attend 6th Grade Orientation Night at West Jackson Middle School or Legacy Knoll Middle School. These nights will include important information to help you and your child prepare for their middle school transition. See information below. Rising 6th graders interested in being part of the cheer program should also complete the cheer interest survey. See graphic below for details.
Don't forget to order your child's yearbook by March 22nd. Click HERE to order online and enter school passcode 101485563232668. (If you can't remember if you already ordered this year, check your email for a receipt from publisher Treering.) With your purchase, you get to create two free custom pages, printed only in your child's yearbook, including pictures of your child this year and answers to personal memory questions. As a reminder, yearbook sales are PRE-SALE ONLY. Extra copies will NOT be available when books are delivered. See flyer below for more details.
This Week's
After-School Clubs
Thursday: Science Olympiad Team (pick up at 4:00 P.M.)
Thursday: Chorus Rehearsal--only speaking parts and all orphans--No Crew, no New Yorkers, no servants, no ushers (pick up at 4:00 P.M.)
Upcoming Events
February 15: Claw Spirit Day: Wear Claw Colors!
February 15: Kid's Heart Challenge donation deadline
February 16: Deadline to register for Pre-K lottery for 2024-25 school year
February 16 & 19: No School for Students
February 20: All Pro Dad; 6:00-7:00 P.M.
February 22: GSES PTO Spirit Night at WNB Factory
February 27: Rising 6th Grade Advisement Night at WJMS and LKMS; 6:00 P.M.
SCHOOL SPOTLIGHTS
Gizmos Shine at State Competition
Saturday, February 10th was a big day for the Gum Springs Gizmos robotics team! They competed in their final competition of the year at the FIRST LEGO League State Competition. The Gizmos made school history by being the first FLL team to make it to the state competition, and the icing on the cake was that they came home with a trophy too! Twenty-four teams competed in the state tournament held at the University of Georgia, and our Gizmos brought home a 3rd place trophy for the Innovation Award! The team has been training and competing all school year, and we are proud to see them rewarded for their hard work What a creative new addition they are bringing back to our GSES trophy case! Congratulations to team members Allie Duncan, Murphy McSwain, Mason Williams, Elliel Gutierrez-Alvarez, Candler Chambers, Carson Powers, and Parker Hamrick. The Gizmos are coached by Mrs. Kasey Sheridan, Mrs. Haley Meier, and Jackson County Georgia 4-H mentor Mr. Jonathan Page. The Gizmos are packing up their bots for the next few months, but they're already eagerly awaiting starting next year's mission. Gizmos, you've made us Panther Proud all season! Congratulations!
Science Olympiad Team Takes First Place
Our Science Olympiad team, who has been training most of the school year, kicked off their competition season on Saturday at the Jackson County School System Elementary District Science Olympiad tournament, where they competed against the five elementary schools in our district. We are excited to report that our Panthers earned FIRST PLACE in today's competition!
A Science Olympiad tournament consists of 18 science and engineering events, in which students compete with a partner to earn points toward a team group total. Teamwork really paid off this weekend--in addition to their first place win, many duos were recognized as Top 3 finishers in their individual events as well. Congratulations to the following teams:
1st place Grab-a-Gram: Ethan Abutiate and Scarlett Pearson
1st place Water Rockets: Olivia Bennett and Scarlett Pearson
1st place Simple Machines: Valentine Skrobot and Graham O'Neal
1st place Crime Busters: Charleigh Kayumova and Jonah Black
1st place Deep Blue Sea: Parker Wilson and Graham O'Neal
2nd place Data Crunchers: Kaleb Martin and Brodie Thomas
2nd place Disease Detectives: Samuel Srbljanin and Olivia Bennett
2nd place Backyard Biologist: Jackson Clark and Berkeley Doster
2nd place Barge Building: Ella Romero and Owen Cannon
2nd place Rock Hound: Will Roland and Owen Cannon
2nd place Weather or Not: Kaleb Martin and Charleigh Kayumova
2nd place Egg Drop: Will Roland and Otto Mardos
3rd place Metric Mastery: Otto Mardos and Berkeley Doster
3rd place No Bones about It: Jonah Black and Parker Wilson
3rd place Paper Rockets: Ethan Abutiate and Samuel Srbljanin
We are proud of our team members and are cheering them on as they prepare for the Northeast Georgia regional competition, taking place next month. Great job, Science Olympiad Team!
Egg-spert Guests
Our GSES Agriculture classes have enjoyed several guest teachers recently. In January, JCHS junior Shelby Pruett introduced students to poultry science. Through Shelby's leadership, students learned poultry vocabulary and had some fun with Skittles. Then, Mrs. Gillespie, WJMS Ag teacher, and her amazing WJMS Ag students came to teach our fourth and fifth grade Ag students more about poultry science. Students learned essential poultry vocabulary, the parts of an egg and their purposes, and even how to grade eggs using the candling method. WJMS Ag students also shared opportunities that our rising 6th graders will have in Ag and in the FFA programs. It was a fun experience for our GSES Ag students. We our thankful for our guest teachers!
Reading Champs!
Twelve GSES classes have been hard at work reading, reading, reading for the last four weeks, and we are excited to celebrate their success in this year's Read Bowl competition! Read Bowl is a "4-quarter" (4-week) challenge sponsored by former NFL and UGA superstar Malcolm Mitchell through his nonprofit Share the Magic Foundation. The competition takes place each year during the four weeks between the College Football National Championship and the Super Bowl. Students around the world log all of the minutes they read as they compete with other classes to see who can read the most minutes. During the competition, students also enjoyed receiving video messages of encouragement along the way from some cool NFL stars. We are proud to report that our twelve classes read 199,483 minutes during the Read Bowl challenge! Great job, readers! Let's keep it up! Congratulations to 2nd grade team Cofer's Captains who claimed the top prize among our participating classes.
"Super" Learning
We love capitalizing on excitement about real-world events to make our lessons more engaging for students, and Super Bowl fever last week was a great time to celebrate learning.
2nd grade students enjoyed activities like completing a math escape room to help the Super Bowl committee plan for the event, solving Super Bowl math problems, completing challenges to earn their Super Bowl rings, using their math and engineering skills to build and test working field goals, and earning their Read Bowl certificates after four quarters of hard work.
In Mrs. Franks' 4th grade class, students divided in two teams--Chiefs and 49ers, of course--and competed against each other in various math challenges. We'll see what happens tonight, but the 49ers won the Fantastic Franks Super Math Bowl!
The Chiefs and 49ers may be battling it out on the field for the big event, but we are always excited to say, "Gooooo Panthers!" in our GSES classrooms.
Spreading the Love
Mrs. Rechin's 2nd graders helped spread the love for Valentine's Day by sending virtual cards to patients at St. Jude's hospital. Want to join in? It only takes a few minutes and could really brighten the day of a young patient in need of some cheer! Click HERE to create your own virtual Valentine.
All Smiles!
February is National Children's Dental Health Month, and Pre-K enjoyed a special visit to kick off the celebration. Pre-K friends enjoyed having the team from Sweet Maple Pediatric Dentistry teach them how to take care of their teeth. Thanks for supporting our students, Sweet Maple!
World Read Aloud Day
Mrs. Lyle's Pre-K Pals enjoyed a special guest reader for World Read Aloud Day on February 9. Pre-K students loved having one of Mrs. Lyle's former students Camden Pittman as their guest reader.
PANTHER SUPPORTERS
Thanks to those of you who supported GSES PTO at this week's Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night. We also loved having the Chick-Fil-A cow visit us at school on Thursday! Your purchases helped GSES PTO earn $254.70 to support initiatives for our students and staff. Congratulations to Mrs. Lowery's 5th grade class; they had the highest participation at Spirit Night and will be treated to a Chick-Fil-A cookie tray. We love Chick-Fil-A, Braselton!
Join Heroes Elementary School for the first-ever Dress Like A Hero Fun Run & 5K on Saturday, March 16. The run will begin at 8 A.M. and will be held at Legacy Knoll Middle School and Jackson County High School. Pre-register before the end of February to ensure you get a commemorative shirt! Click HERE to register.
Want to know more about how you can support our school? Click below for details. Feel free to contact Mrs. Hannah Freyre at hannah.freyre@jcss.us with questions.
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