Mikayla Blackenter

Everybody in the world has emotions, from the basic ones like sad, mad, happy, and scared, as well as more in depth emotions such as frustrated, anxious, and silly. But it’s how we deal with our emotions that tends to be the problem. That’s why in Ms. Boyer’s Social Skills class, we are writing a Social Story. The fun and great part is it is by her students! This Social Story, otherwise called Emotions, is specifically for the elementary kids. It will teach them their range of emotions, how and how not to deal with them, how to identify their emotions, and whether or not the time is appropriate to act on that emotion. Her class has given scenarios of emotions in the book such as “I got frustrated because I couldn’t figure out a math problem”. Then of course you have to solve that problem so therefore they also wrote in the book for that scenario “To keep myself from getting frustrated, I asked the teacher for help”. Being that this book is for the elementary students, they have to make sure that those students can understand it. We will also be including pictures of the scenarios so that the students that reading it can understand it more. Ms. Boyer’s Social Skills class is hoping that this book is helpful. But it can only be helpful if the students try to understand their emotions as well as learn appropriate coping skills.

Mikayla Blackenter

Halloween is right around the corner! Here are some safety rules to help keep you safe and secure.

• Rule #1: ALWAYS have an adult with you!
• Rule #2: Carry something reflective or bright such as a glow stick so you can easily be seen by drivers.
• Rule #3: If you are driving, eliminate any distractions in your vehicles so you can easily watch for kids as they are excited and could move in unpredictable ways such as running.
• Rule #4: Keep watch for kids from 5:30 pm-9:00 pm as those are the popular trick or treating hours.
• Rule #5: When selecting a costume, make sure it is the right size to help prevent trips, falls, or any further injuries.
• Rule #6: Cross the street at corners, using traffic signals, or crosswalks.
• Rule #7: PUT YOUR PHONES UP. Always pay attention to traffic. Mobile devices are one of the #1 cause of accidents.
• Rule #8: Always walk on sidewalks. If there are no sidewalks, walk facing traffic as far to the left as possible. Children should walk on direct routes with the fewest street crossings.
• Rule #9: Choose face paint or makeup when possible, as masks can sometimes block a child’s vision.

Mikayla Blackenter

Shoutouts is something that Spainhower has to recognize good deeds that people have done. The purpose of Shoutouts is to recognize the good in people, if they’ve had a good week, good grades, happen to be a good friend, helped others, and many other good recognitions in people at Spainhower. It’s not just the students here that get a Shoutout, even the staff get Shoutouts! Shoutout! Shoutouts is something we all should enjoy and be grateful for. For most people Shoutouts make their day end up so much more better than what it started out to be or what it was going to be. We do Shoutouts every Thursday during the last ten minutes of our school day. Shoutouts is beneficial to all of us because it spreads positivity, makes people's’ day, puts a smile on their faces, and spreads compliments. For those long days, and sometimes long weeks, Shoutouts let us end the week on a positive note.

Sam Schneiders

What’s Christmas without a carnival? On Monday, December 3rd, 2018 the Marshall school district will be hosting a magical event! The event is from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Fun and cheer will be spread throughout MPS families, faculty, community, and staff. There will be cookies and punch provided for everyone to enjoy! Pictures with Santa will be taken by a photographer who has volunteered for the carnival. There will also be a holiday themed photo booth for you and your family to enjoy. You can participate in activities such as holiday crafts ,face painting, and Christmas filled games! There will also be holiday music that you can enjoy with your family and friends. This is the time to spread the love and spirit of the holidays. All these services are free and open to the community! Have a happy holiday!

Mikayla Blackenter

Bundle up! ‘Tis the season for snow days! It’s about that time for snow days to start coming back. But what is the reason as to why we have snow days? We have snow days whenever the weather is either bad, dangerous, or both. It helps us to feel safe and know that we’re comfortable. Hopefully you are comfortable at school. We do try not to have a whole lot of snow days due to make up days which can interfere with breaks or our summer vacation. Although we love snow days just remember that more make up days are to come. We of course can always make the best of it by being positive and grateful. On a snow day, most people don’t want to just sit at home and do nothing. You may want to do some activities to maybe brighten up the atmosphere and make you forget about the dreary weather for a bit. Well I’m coming to the rescue! I’ll be giving some examples or ideas on what you can do during your snow day. If you want to challenge your inner kid, you can build a pillow fort. Make it as big or as small as you want. Make a list of rules for your pillow fort. Or you could maybe be original and drink some hot chocolate and bake cookies. Who doesn’t like hot chocolate and some nice, warm, baked cookies on a cold day? You could even go out and build a snowman, have a snowball fight, make snow ice cream, which is amazing by the way, or make snow angels. There’s a ton of fun stuff you can do in the snow. Another fun thing you can do on a slow and dreary snow day is to have a movie night. Make your front room, bedroom, or wherever you’re watching a movie at feel like a movie theater if you want. Make some popcorn, get some pop, get nice and cozy. Then put on your favorite movie. You can always cook a special meal. Make that meal a snow day tradition. There’s all kinds of things you can do when it’s cold outside. If you want, you can also turn up the heat, put summer clothes on, and act like you are at the beach! Have a safe and snowy winter!

Sam Schneiders

Missing school is for losers! Yeah I know what you’re thinking and yeah I am a loser too. Having good attendance can actually look really well on your record. Coming to school and doing what is needed in the classroom is a big part of learning successfully. I have missed so much school already and let me tell you, it’s not the smartest idea. One thing for sure is you get behind and then you have to rush to keep up with the rest of the class. I understand if you’re truly sick, but if you’re just wanting to skip don’t waste the time doing that. Get your butt up and come to school! One thing I have experienced while skipping school is that your mental health becomes unbalanced. Your mental health is hard to keep up with and you don’t want to do anything but sleep, which is unhealthy. School can be a very boring, challenging environment; however it is a healthy and successful setting. I can’t really give you the best advice for perfect attendance because I’m not even great at keeping up with good attendance. If I could tell you one thing it would be to appreciate. What I mean by to appreciate is don’t waste any time at all. My biggest accomplishment was that I didn’t mess around with my credits, meaning my senior year will be a piece of cake. Attendance can also determine your GPA (grade point average). Colleges often look for students who are good with staying in school and being on time. Another part of attendance is being on time. There are times where you wake up late and you miss the bus, possibly making you late for school. One thing you should know about being late is that you don’t need to make it a habit. Once you make being late a habit you’re going to do it everyday, than eventually start missing excessive days of school. If your attendance has anything to do with your sleep schedule, work out a plan with your parents or trusted adult. Sometimes sleep schedules can differ for older students because of jobs or after school activities. Perfect attendance is a good way to show your effort in wanting to succeed.

Mikayla Blackenter

From having fun, to learning good choices, as well as gaining knowledge, our lovely teachers at Spainhower have excellent ways of teaching their students new things. Let’s start off with the lovely Ms. Boyer. Ms. Boyer’s IPC class has been reviewing the scientific method as well as collecting data and afterwards graphing. She let them choose their experiments but they had to be realistic experiments. One of Ms. Boyer’s students, Heilee, made a scavenger hunt for her experiment. She was going to see how long it would take the group with phones to go through the scavenger hunt and how long it would take the group without phones to go through the scavenger hunt. Blake said that it made the review more interesting because he got to pick his experiment.

In Mr. Coslet’s class, his students just got done learning about the Solar System. Mr. Coslet’s students learned about the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory is the theory of how the universe started. What they did was create a model on rotation. This model showed the Big Bang Theory and how it would of looked. Skylar loved it and was way into it. They all worked together on it and it only took them 10 minutes! They learned new things and really enjoyed it!

Mrs. Miller’s class did a small activity about the presidents. For example they learned the presidents’ birthdays, where they lived and were born at, how long their term was, etc. Jonathan said the best part about it was learning all the information. As you can see, our projects help us learn and hopefully understand more in a fun way. We can show that learning can be fun!

Mikayla Blackenter

Mindfulness is bringing your attention to what is going on at that moment. A lot of the time mindfulness is used in a therapeutic manner. But what are the benefits of mindfulness? One, mindfulness can help with relieving stress. Mindfulness is also known to treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, and to improve your sleeping. A big benefit of mindfulness is it helps to improve mental health. It helps with depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness and have seen great results coming a long with it.

Ms Boyer’s classes practice mindfulness on a daily. Her classes do a wide variety of mindfulness activities, such as yoga poses. These poses help to elevate us while de-stressing ourselves at the same time. Sometimes we’ll sit and do a mindfulness activity. For example, the dandelion activity. For this activity we are to close our eyes, pretend to pick up a dandelion that has gone to fluff, put every stress and worry on the strands of the dandelion, and then blow it all away. The purpose of our mindfulness activities is to help us transition to the next class with a clean slate. We do these mindfulness activities for 60 seconds (1 minute) and we do it after every class period. We do these mindfulness activities to help us de-stress for the next class. It helps us once again, have a clean slate for the next class. We’re likely to be more present with a clean mind. This means that we’re able to focus on what the teacher is teaching instead of those thoughts that have been overwhelming you for however long.

It’s always nice to read a good book with a good friend. That’s just what I have been doing. For the past 3 weeks I have been reading to David. We’re teaching him to use his context clues in reading such as pointing out objects in pictures. I’ve been reading picture books to him. These picture books are shown to him to help him with observing his surroundings. When reading to him, he points out what he sees. For example, he’ll tell me if he sees any bugs, animals, people, objects, etc. He’s even able to tell me what time of day it is in the book. Normally every Friday David and I read to his class and they would do the same things he did when he read the book. When reading to his class, he’d have them tell us what they saw first or what caught their eye. It helps him to focus more as well. When pointing out your surroundings, it involves focus or those focal points. It’s helping him in the long run and he enjoys it.