Click here for May Events or for June Events. Mark your calendar. One special event next week is Teacher Appreciation Week. Take a moment to tell your favorite teachers how important they are or were. Teachers, thank you for your hard work and dedication to the success of the students! 

Congratulations to Jr. Great Books Authors Shakespeare is not only responsible for many great works of literature, but for coining phrases that are still used today (although the meaning might be different). Shakespeare taught us not to stand on ceremony or to budge an inch. Fortunately, neither did our fourth grade Jr. Great Book students. They took Shakespearan phrases, incorporated them in writing, and submitted them to the Folger Shakespeare Library, a premier resource. Several students had their work published on the web. Just click here and check out "More Kids are Quoting Shakespeare". For goodness sake, way to go!

Congratulations to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders for their recent concert, Music of the (Mostly) Middle East.  Many talents came together for this musical and informative multicultural performance--improvising, playing games, dancing, harmonizing, memorizing, and instrument playing....and singing!  Also thanks to the family members and Grade 4-6 students who were a great audience I know it meant a lot to the children that you were there.  Shalom and salaam to all!

Let’s Work Together to Keep the Library Clean Our library is a much-used, valuable resource. It is used throughout the day and for after school and evening functions and meetings. Please remember leave the library as clean or cleaner than you find it. Many hands make light work. Thanks for your help!

Horace Mann Site Council The Site Council will have some openings for next year. Click here if you would like more information about Site Council. If you are interested in nominating yourself or another person, please email your interest to mann.site.council@spps.org. The Site Council will take nominations and conduct elections at our May 9, 5:00 p.m. meeting in the library.

ATTENTION 6TH GRADE PARENTS! Daily (May 7-11) photos and journals from Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center will be posted on the Horace Mann School website @ www.mann.spps.org Look for the link on the homepage!

Staff & Student Wellness: Fruits and Veggies Like school districts across the country, Saint Paul Public Schools adopted a new Wellness Policy this year to encourage healthy eating and exercise. Here are some ideas on nutrition.

• The best thing we can do for our children is to set a good example and enjoy fruits and vegetables with them. Of course, my kids will never be brussel sprout lovers because they are learning from my example, but I think they will like salad, broccoli, and asparagus.
• Vegetables and fruits are filled with vitamins and minerals to keep us healthy and to supplement the other foods. There are many studies that correlate eating fruits and vegetables with prevention of disease and cancer. For long-term health, it is in each of our interest to enjoy veggies and fruit.

There are many ways to encourage eating more of these healthy foods in your family.

1. There may be times when kids eat fewer fruits and veggies. Just keep offering them and keep eating them yourself.
2. Variety, variety, variety! Start with familiar or well-liked fruits and veggies, then branch out.. Try out recipes that have new vegetables. I've heard it said that it takes four or five tries to develop a taste for a food.
3. Try preparing them in different ways. Sometimes a child who dislikes raw broccoli will love cooked or vice versa.
4. Lay out fresh fruit and veggies for snack time.
5. Encourage the veggies at the start of a meal, when children are hungrier.

Try www.mypyramid.gov/kids for more ideas.

Know Anything about Pouring Concrete? If you do, I could use your help with the new playground. The project calls for about 14 footings and 1.5 cubic yards of concrete. I know nothing about concrete work and the district does not do this kind of work. Otherwise, installation plans continue to move forward. We have about 10 volunteers to date and need about 20 more. We will install on Saturday, June 16 in the morning, more details to follow. All you parents or family members who haven't been able to volunteer, here's your chance. Please email Jim Litwin at jim.litwin@spps.org or call 293-8965, ext. 305.

Raising Responsible Children Raising a child means more than helping him or her grow up healthy and happy. It’s important that, by the time they’re ready to leave home, children have learned to be self-sufficient and responsible. Those kinds of lessons take an entire childhood to learn, but they’re among the most important legacies you can pass on to your children.

Assign weekly chores to everyone in the house, rotating them so that, eventually, everyone has a turn at doing the dishes, putting away laundry, and taking out the trash. Divide the jobs by age, with older children doing the harder jobs, and make sure to never list anything as a “girl” job or a “boy” job. When we are on our own, we ending doing all of the chores anyway.

Financial responsibility is easy to teach if you start when your children are young. From their very first birthday money, teach them to set aside a certain amount for the future. A good rule of thumb is to put half away for savings and save half for spending, either on things they want right away or things they’d like to buy in the future. You can also consider matching funds. Match whatever is put into savings as an incentive to save more. You can also match funds that a student saves to purchase something. Even though it sounds like the same concept as saying you’ll split the cost with them, it’s actually more effective to have them demonstrate to you first that they’ve worked and saved enough to pay for their share.

Thank all of the students for their hard work in state testing this year. Thanks also to our younger students for maintaining a quiet school environment during testing.

Bulletin Submissions If you would like to submit an article or announcement, please email it to jim.litwin@spps.org by Thursday at 9:00 a.m.