What is the 4th grade team doing?
This is either a team meeting or a bedazzling party.
What is the new Daniels Run principal doing?
Good kickball form with the head down, though.
The staff that plays together, stays together.
The entire Daniels Run ES staff is so excited for all of our students to return on Tuesday for the first day. The teachers have been busily preparing all week long to make sure that we are ready to make this a great year for everyone.
On Tuesday, the staff participated in some team building activities centered around a baseball theme. You can see from the pictures that they enjoyed creating team hats and playing a game of kickball. These activities were important parts of us connecting with one another, building trust and teamwork, and dreaming about who are moving forward.
The PTA provided an amazing luncheon that day with typcial baseball fare of hotdogs, hamburgers, and all the fixings to help fuel the teachers for their preparations.
All the fun and hard work paid off on Thursday in the form of lots of smiles.
On Thursday, we had an energetic Open House with so many of our students and parents coming in with smiling faces. We hosted a New Family Orientation and made them feel welcome with important information and a tour of the building. Everyone had fun reconnecting with familiar faces and meeting new ones too. Open House is a great time for finding out where your classroom is, seeing a smiling face on your new teacher, and getting comfortable with the idea of coming back to school. The transition back to school can be an anxious one, and we hope that this event helped ease everyone back into the swing of things.
Ms. Tabri knows these girls can't wait to come back to school.
Mom can't wait for them to go back either!
Happy to be together again.
Kindergarten, the happiest place on earth (Mrs. Ollis Room)
Mr. Gerstner makes a new friend.
Ms Fecik and her new friend enjoy some pizza in the kitchen center.
Ms. Neeper and a happy 1st grade family.
The learning has already started in Mrs. Hollis room.
The Family Resource Center is back in action again with Mrs. Brown.
Karaoke and Mrs. Riechers = a winning combination.
Dancing to celebrate a new year!
Fun for the whole family!
We as a staff truly believe that we each now have 760 sons and daughters and promise to take care of them this year as if they belong to us all. We recognize the great trust that you place in us by handing them over to us, and we thank you for the gift that they are to us every day. The Daniels Run ES Family looks forward to being part of your family this school year. And hey, the family that dances together and has fun together will learn together...I always say. See you Tuesday!
Today marks the end of our very successful Young Scholars Summer Program here at Daniels Run. For the past 3 weeks, seventy sensationally smart and inspired scholars in grades 2-6 have been conducting experiments, running businesses, creating weather instruments and tracking storms. Our rising 2nd graders learned about the importance of plants and have gained a deep understanding of plant systems, which they shared in their musical production of “Save the Plants.” Rising 3rd and 4th graders became scientists, as they learned about the scientific process and conducted several investigations. 3rd graders studied matter while 4th graders learned about simple machines and inventions. Our rising 5th graders became entrepreneurs overnight as they developed a business plan and launched their super successful food cart, “Super Awesome Food Land.” They visited all the classrooms during snack time and sold out in under 2 days, while learning all the ins and outs of running a business. Rising 6th graders spent the 3 weeks becoming argonauts as they learned how to use different weather tools to predict some of Earth’s fiercest weather.
This last week of summer school was a culmination of our learning, with a trip to Home Depot for our 2nd, 4th and 5th graders, and a presentation to the community. Students were eager to show off all that they had learned! Thank you students and teachers for a very successful summer school program.
Take a minute to watch our Animoto to see all that we have learned!
Where do you find 55 fun, soon to be kindergartners in the middle of the summer? You might think of the pool or camp. However, if you are Daniels Run ES, you might start by looking on the playground!
Well over half of our rising kinders found friends, fun, excitement, and bugs on their Safari around our school as smiling staff members made them feel safe and welcome in their new school home. It was like a big play date and it was hard to tell who was having more fun, the kindergartners or the new principal who was lonely without kids and staff in the building! Parents got a chance to connect with each other and find a sympathetic ear to the idea of handing over their children to our care.
We started our play date out back on the playground and then students were split into different animal groups as the searched for bugs in the outdoor classroom, met new friends playing with equipment in the gym, heard a story in the library, and imagined catching a lion with the art teachers. Then we all joined back together to get on the big yellow bus (without our parents) and took two laps around the front of the school with our awesome Kindergarten teachers and sang silly songs. When we returned from our journey, we feasted upon Flavor Ice Popsicles (we had a few hundred left over from other events, so why not?).
As new principal here, this group of kindergartners will always be special to me as the group that started with me. Relationships are what matter most, and I’d say we got off to a successful Safari start! I cannot wait to learn together with these young explorers this year and beyond! Thank you to the parents who made special arrangements and made the effort to have their student participate in this event. Thank you to the 14 staff members who willingly came in to make this possible. You all made it a huge success!
Over the last week Mr. Erbrecht and Mr. Gerstner have met a lot of Daniels Run families through their event “Popsicles with the Principals.” The first day approximately 30 people attended the event, this morning we had about 18 students come from the camp that is going in in the school, and finally, this afternoon we had a HUGE group of at least 55 people! Next week they will be reading to the students that are in our Young Scholars Summer Program. I hope everyone is looking forward to it! This event has given the community and new administration a great chance to get to know each other. Check out this animoto of pictures and some video clips!
Hello Daniels Run Community and welcome to our principal’s blog! This blog is intended to be a short and sweet glimpse at what’s going on at school each week. I’m sure your kids never do this, but I know that when my son comes home from school, I ask him what he did at school. I usually get a few standard responses. “I don’t remember.” “I don’t know.” “Nothing.” Through the great pictures and information that came home from his teacher, I was able to ask better questions and get more of an idea of what his day was like. So I hope that this blog gives you a window into the life and times of our students and teachers here at DRES.
I first want to say a big thank you publically to Kathy Mullenix, our previous principal. Not only has she been a dedicated public servant for this school community, but she she also was very kind and gracious to me in the transition, sharing her knowledge and insights on multiple occassions and giving me the opportuinty to meet the staff and students before the school year ended. Parents, you already know about Mrs. Mullenix’s dedication, but I want to say on behalf of everyone, thank you, Mrs. Mullenix! There also can be no better model of service than that of our previous assistant principal, Mrs. Jackie Turner. I came to know her as a fellow assistant principal and have always admired her warmth and heart for kids. We thank you too Mrs. Turner and wish the both of you the best that retirement has to offer with time to be with family and pursue everything or nothing that suits your fancy!
I know I am excited to get to meet everyone, and I have no doubt that you are curious to get to know more about myself and our new assistant principal, Mr. Dave Gerstner. There are a few events coming up that will be a fun chance to do just that. We are hosting two “Popsicles with the Principals” events where we will read some stories with the kids and enjoy some popsicles afterwards. The first will be this week on Thursday, August 2nd at 10:30 AM. Then, next week we’ll do one in the afternoon on Tuesday, August 7th at 1:30 PM.
If you can’t make it to either of those, we have another way for you to start to get to know us. Attached please find a YouTube video of an interview that some of our talented student news anchors did with us yesterday. I’m sure you’ll agree that they did a great job and asked some great questions!
