Ongoing Fundraisers

Atkins Farms Country Market. Use your Atkins card when you shop at Atkins Farms Country Market, and they will donate a percentage of your purchase to Fort River School. Just show the card when you are checking out. Atkins has provided us with one card per family, which should have come home in an envelope with your youngest Fort River child. There is an expiration date on the card, which is the date that youngest child graduates from Fort River. It's another easy way to earn money for your school! Stop & Shopʼs A+ BonusBucks Program. This program has ended for the year: Fort River has earned $2,198.43!! Please keep in mind that you will have to re-register your card next fall for the next school year. Thanks to everyone who participated. Box Tops For Education. Keep clipping and bringing the Box Tops to the office! Even though have made our last submission for this school year, we will hold all additional box tops clipped this year and over the summer for submission next October. Big Y Education Express. Use your Big Y Express Savings Club card and Fort River can earn points for buying equipment and supplies! Visit the Big Y customer service desk and fill out a form that will link Fort River with your card. Fort River ID # 5947. Target Take Charge of Education. Designate 1% of the value of your purchases to Fort River every time you use your Target REDcard (credit card). Visit www.Target.com/tcoe . Fort River ID 58645. Fort River Roasters by Dean's Beans. Order forms are available here. Last order deadline for the year: Friday, May 8th! Stock up for summer! Please deliver forms and checks to Parent Council mailbox in the Main Office. Cellphones & Ink Jet Cartridges. Protect the environment and raise money for Parent Council by donating used digital cellphones and ink jet cartridges. Please deliver to the Main Office.

Upcoming School Events

Public Forum on Redistricting the Public Schools and the School Budget. Tues. May 5, 7pm: Middle School Auditorium. This is the last of the public forums about the proposed closing of Marks Meadow and redistricting the elementary schools. 4th, 5th & 6th Grade Chorus Concert, Thursday, May 7th, 7:30pm. Click here for more info. Kindergarten Event: Family Dance Party, Friday, May 8th, 5-7pm, Ft. River Cafeteria. Fort River Roasters by Dean's Beans Coffee Orders Due. DEADLINE POSTPONED! Friday, May 8th, is your last chance to order coffee for the school year. Don't forget to stock up for the summer! Parent Council Meeting, Wed. May 13th, 8:30am. Fort River Cafeteria. (Please note: this meeting has been postponed from the original date of May 7th.) Grade 3 Event: Potluck and Games at Mill River Park. Friday, May 15th, Time: TBA. Grade 2 Event: Spring Garden Planting & Ice Cream Party. Wed. May 20, 2 to 4 PM at Fort River. Rain date is 5/27/09, same time. Grade 4 Event: Potluck Dinner. Thursday, May 28 at 5:30pm. Fort River Playground. Sixth Grade Graduation. Friday, June 19th 1:30pm. Note: Items in teal are sponsored by Fort River Parent Council.

Empty Food Containers Needed

5th graders will soon be using Microsoft Excel in the computer lab to graph and compare nutrition content in foods. We will look at the fat, salt, sugar and calorie content of many different kinds of foods. We need your help! To help with this unit could you send in a few clean, empty containers with the nutrition labels intact. Some ideas would be, soda cans, juice cans, cereal boxes, cookie wrappers, soup cans, snack bags (chips, pretzels etc) and any other prepared foods with nutrition labels that your family eats. Please make sure the containers are empty, clean and no sharp edges. Fifth graders will work in pairs to produce a spreadsheet and graphs of all the nutrition data. Each pair will have a bag of "groceries" with approximately 10-12 items in each bag. What this means is that we need about 100+ items, so that each pair will have enough data to compare. Thank you so much for your help with this project. Joan Gallinaro Technology Integration Teacher

Sixth Grade Graduation Information

To All Sixth Grade Parents and Guardians: First thank you to all who came out Thursday night to the planning meeting for Sixth Grade Graduation. It was long but productive and we are on the way to having a very special day for our children Two requests for all parents at this time. Powerpoint Presentation: Lynn Hayes coordinator of the Powerpoint presentation reported that she is in need of pictures as she has very few at this point. She would like to have photos of any sixth grader in activities or events over the years at Fort River. You can either e-mail them to her at hay3bay@comcast.net or burn a CD and put it in the Parent Council mailbox with Lynn’s name. The more photos we have the more choices we can make. Each student will have a current photo but to have more candid pictures will make for a memorable Powerpoint for our kids. Sixth Grade Class Gift. Again many donations have already been received. We would like to receive all donations by Friday May 15th. Donations may be given to Sixth Grade teachers or directly to Paula in the Main Office. Checks should be made out to Fort River Parent Council with Sixth grade Class gift in the memo section.

Kindergarten event: Family Dance Party!

The Kindergarten grade-wide event will be held on Friday May 8 from 5:30-7:30 pm in the Ft. River Cafeteria. Do you have a dance you want to teach? Do you have music your child loves to dance to? Bring your family and your dance moves and join us! Please return the volunteer-fliers that were sent home this week as soon as you can so we can have a good sense of who is coming and what everyone is bringing.

New Information about the H1N1 Virus from the Superintendent's Office

Principal Ray Sharick has sent out a special edition of his online newsletter. Attached to the email are two documents from the Superintendent's office with some of the latest information about the so-called "Swine Flu" and procedures that are in place for dealing with any possible outbreaks in the school system. Here are links to the two documents: http://is.gd/vWva http://is.gd/vWtk Also, you can check the ARPS.org website for updates as the situation develops.

Upcoming Community Events

Please note that these events are not sponsored by Parent Council. There's lots of stuff to do this weekend in town! 18th Annual Amherst Ultimate Invitational Tournament, May 2-3, 2009. Hosted by Amherst Regional High School (ARHS). The Tournament will be held at the Ultimate fields at ARHS and Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Thirty high school teams from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts will compete in one of the largest and most prestigious Ultimate tournaments in the country. On Saturday, games will be played from 9:45am to 5pm at both venues; on Sunday, games will run from 8am to 4:30pm at ARHS. Combining the non-stop movement and athletic endurance of soccer with the aerial passing skills of football, a game of Ultimate is played by two seven-player squads with a high-tech plastic disc on a field similar to football. Amherst is steeped in the history of Ultimate, acknowledged to be to be the birthplace of the sport by an Amherst College student in 1967. Ultimate has grown precipitously over the following 40 years to over 4.9 million competitive Ultimate players around the world (2008). Amherst coaches Tiina Booth and Jim Pistrang formed some of the first competitive teams in the country in the 1970s. ARHS last won the national Ultimate championship in 2004. For schedules, times, locations, and much more information on the tournament, see: http://www.amherstultimate.org/ai/2009. The 62nd annual book sale of the League of Women Voters of Amherst opens on the Amherst Town Common at 9 a.m. Friday morning, May 1, and runs until Sunday, May 3. The hours are 9 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Sunday. The sale attracts book lovers from all over New England, and bargain hunters can find thousands of books under the big tent at the area's largest and oldest book sale. League members and friends spend hundreds of hours processing the more than 30,000 donated books. The books are sorted into over 40 categories, and the wide variety assures that there will be books that appeal to all tastes and interests, from children’s books to books for scholars, homemakers, poets and all manner of light and literary reading. In addition to serving as a major effort in recycling affordable books for readers of all ages, the sale is the League’s primary fund raiser and helps to support projects and publications that encourage informed voting and citizen participation in government. For more information, call 253–0633. Award Winning author Jane Yolen reads “My Uncle Emily,” Saturday, May 2, 10 a.m, at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Join us for a reading and booksigning to celebrate Jane Yolen's new book, My Uncle Emily, a children's story based on the relationship between Emily Dickinson and her young nephew Gilbert. Light refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public. http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/. Details of many other Emily Dickinson-related events in May here. JOIN MULTI-ARTS INTERACTIVE ARTS FESTIVAL. Performances & Workshops, Music – Dance – Art – Mime – Creative Writing. Where: Barnes and Noble, Hadley, When: Saturday, May 2nd. 11:00-12:00 for Little Ones, 3:00-6:00 for everyone. Music: Bring your instrument and join us in the performance of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and Haydn's "Toy Symphony." Art: Design & make your own 3-D cardboard dog. Dance: Watch "Las Chicas", a Flamenco dance show. Have a taste of Flamenco in a ten-minutes workshop. Try Funk and Break dance extravaganza. For little ones: Paint your face, learn basic juggling, Entertainment by clowns, mimes, and story tellers. Don’t miss it. See you there! Some Fort River first graders will have their writings read by WFCR's John Montanari! Click here for more information. May 2 - 7, Conversations with the Past. The West Cemetery Walk. Founded in 1737 West Cemetery was placed on the National Historic Register in the year 2000. As part of Amherst's 250th anniversary, walk along the avenues and boulevards of West Cemetery and explore Amherst's past. Come meet fourteen residents spanning three centuries who will come to life to tell their stories and answer your questions. The West Cemetery Walk is planned for the following dates and times:

• Saturday May 2, 10am - 1pm
• Sunday May 3, 1pm - 4pm
• Tuesday May 5, 9am - noon
• Wednesday May 6, noon - 2:30pm
• Thursday, May 7, 5 - 7pm.

A note from Parent Council. We will publish information about non-Parent Council sponsored events with the following conditions: 1. The event should be of interest to Fort River families.

2. The information should be sent to Ann McLaughlin at damclaughlin@comcast.net in the form of a short description. 3. Contact information (website or name, telephone and/or email address) must be included. We add new information to the blog every Friday during the school year. Please note that we do not accept announcements of items or services for sale (with the exceptions of children's classes/lessons). Inclusion in this section does not imply any guarantees or endorsements by Fort River Parent Council or Fort River School.