Rushwood PTA Newsletter

1. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Rushwood PTANewsletter Contacts President: Renee Piper 216-577-5644 drjtpiper@aol.com First Vice President Kim Brown 330-908-3125 kimbar34@yahoo.com Second Vice President Dr. Jacqui O’Connor 330-467-0581 Jacqueline.Oconnor@ Nordoniaschools.org Third Vice President Allison Graceffo 216-225-8193 Amgraceffo@yahoo.com Treasurer Andrea Stamp 216-316-9875 astamp75@me.com Recording Secretary Cathy Pendleton 216-215-2041 cathypendleton26@yahoo President’s Message On behalf of Rushwood PTA, I would like to thank everyone who made the month of September a successful start to a great school year. We have had a strong enrollment to our PTA, and we also had many of you signed up for our V.A.S.T volunteer program, becoming a huge help to our teachers and PTA committees and events. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful, dedicated group of parents who help us out in so many ways. Fall is in the air, and many of our activities are well underway. Our coupon book Our Town and All Around Fundraiser was a wonderful success! Thank you to all the students and their families who bought or sold the books to help support our PTA. We will be sending out a notice next week recapping our sale and our prize winners. All funds raised help PTA support all the wonderful events and activities that we do throughout the school year. And mark your calendars for our second annual Family Fall Fest which will be held this year on Thursday, October 17th from 5:00-6:30. This event is free to our Rushwood Families to attend. There will be fun fall games and activities to participate in. Last year was a huge success and we are looking forward to another great time! Again, thank you all for your continuous support of our Rushwood Community. Sincerely grateful, Renee Piper

2. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Important Dates and Events PTA Sponsored Events Marco’s Pizza Night for Rushwood – Thursday, Oct. 3rd Rushwood PTA meeting – Wednesday, Oct. 9th – 3:45 Market Day Order Deadline – Saturday, Oct 12th Rushwood Fall Fest – Thursday, Oct. 17 5:00-6:30 Market Day pick up – Thursday , Oct. 17th 5:00-6:00 Rushwood Family Fall Fest – Wednesday, Oct 17th 3rd Grade Square Dance – Friday, Oct. 25thth 7: 00 - 8:30 PTA Meetings The October PTA Meeting will be Wednesday, Oct. 9th at 3:45 in the Rushwood Media Center. Child care will be provided for Rushwood school aged children . Please write a note stating your child will be staying afterschool to attend the meeting. School Board candidate, Rushwood Alumni Mom Mrs. Tammy Strong ,will be addressing our PTA to discuss her platform. We hope to see you there! Spiritwear Orders Once again, Rushwood PTA will be offering some spiritwear clothing to show off your Rushwood and Nordonia Pride! Options will be different from year’s past – not to duplicate from before and to keep costs down. Please look for the order form to be coming home soon with your student by mid October. All orders will be arriving to Rushwood by each individual order. Sample Tee will be in the main office for you to check out for sizing orders. Questions? -Please contact Cathy Pendleton at cathypendleton26@yahoo.com or Renee Piper at drjtpiper@aol.com.

3. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Important Dates and Events School Dates and Events • Reading Testing OAA – Grade 3 - October 10th In view Testing – Grade 4 – October 15th Terra Nova Science Testing – Grade 4 – October 16th Terra Nova Social Studies Testing – Grade 4 – October 17th Teacher In Service Day – No School – Friday, October 18th Board of Education Meeting – Monday , October 21st – 7:00pm Rushwood Family Fall Fest – Thursday, October 17th End of first grading period – Friday, October 25th Rushwood Fall Walk – Thursday, October 31st – 2:30 Other Dates and Events Family Fall Fest Please mark your calendars for our second annual Fall Fest on Thursday , October 17th from 5:00-6:30 pm! This FREE event is open to all Rushwood staff, students and their families. We will have fun games and activities, music and refreshments to enjoy. We will be set up outside the kindergarten rooms on the lawn near parent drop off and pick up. During the month of October, we are collecting canned food and other non perishable items that will benefit families in need for both the Knights Caring Knights program and the Emergency Assistance Center. The Fall Fest is our way of saying thank you to all of our Rushwood Families for all of their help. If you have any questions, or would like to volunteer for this event Please contact Andrea Stamp at 216-316-9875 or email at stamp75@me.com.

4. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Important Dates and Events Third Grade Square Dance Yee Haw!! Save the date for the annual 3rd Grade Square Dance! This event is for our third grade students and their families. It is on Friday, October 25thfrom 7:00 – 8:30pm in our Rushwood Cafeteria. Our own Mrs. Glenn and her band will be performing for us so gather up your cowboy hats and boots and get ready for a hoedown! Refreshments will be provided. If you have any questions, would like to volunteer for this event, or if you would like to donate any fall decorations (like mums ,pumpkins, bays of hay, corn stalks, etc.. ) please contact Lisa Kellerman at KellermannLM@aol.com or Andrea Stamp at astamp75@me.com Please join us for this rootin tootin fun time!! Holiday Shop PTA is once again sponsoring the heart-warming Holiday Shop which gives student the opportunity to choose gifts for loved ones. Each student can bring home two wrapped items, BUT, because there will be NO cost to shop, we need your help! PTA purchases some of the items, but many more are needed. We will gladly accept any home made items such has home made crafted decorations and jewelry, or any items still in their packages that you would like to pass on for our Holiday Shop. Items for all ages and genders are deeply appreciated. With your generous donations every year, we are able to provide this free event for our students. Please “pay it forward” and consider donating to this event to help our deserving students at Rushwood. We are also need “elves” to help the day of the event, which is Friday, December 13th from 9:30-2:00. Please contact Tammy Guy at 330-748-4819 / email: tammyguy@yahoo.co or Linda Imrie at 330-468-8751 or email: samloubob2@yahoo.com With any questions. Thank you in advance for your help!

5. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Volunteering Rushwood Outdoor Pavilion Update PTA would like to update our families on the new outdoor Learning Pavilion that we raised the funds to build with last school year’s Race for Education Fundraiser. We unfortunately ran into some delays with the building’s approval from the county. When we had to address some structure details through the county engineers , it became more of a timing issue then anticipated. Waiting for board and county approvals and the times of meetings took longer then we expected. We were hoping to have something started over the summer, but our bumps in the road did not let that happen in the timely manner we wanted. But, I am very happy to announce – our last bump seems to be coming to a end – and you should be seeing our ground breaking work started in the next few weeks! The company that is providing the pre-fabricated building has been working closely with Summit County to assure everything will be approved and a safe sound structure will be ready for our students to enjoy soon! We thank you all for your support! We apologize to our families for the unforeseen delays that happened. We are as excited as you are to see our pavilion built and for our children to be able to enjoy their hard work ! Volunteer Spotlight Thank you to all the families and students who attended the 1st grade P.J. Moon Light Math Night on September 26th! It was a fun and educational night where 1st graders got to play their family members and other students in Everyday Math games that can easily be played at home to review important math concepts learned in school. The 1st graders had a great time with their families and classmates. It was a night of quality time spent with family members, exciting friendly competition, informative computer and math skills, and a perfect way to make math FUN! Plus, the reward prizes were a BIG HIT with the students! We hope all of our 1st grade families are continuing the fun and practicing your games at home. Congratulations on a “Winning PTA Night”! A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Kim Brown who chaired this event – and to our parent volunteers that helped to make the event a great success: Dawn and Bella Demarco, Dawn Sedor, Sue Wahl, Christi and Tucker Rusk Renee and Jackson Piper and some other 1st grade older siblings that chipped in to help! Again – thank you so much for your time!

6. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Fundraising Fundraising News • Thank you to all of you that purchased Our Town and All Around Coupon saving books last month. Our sale was a great success, and funds raised from the sale will help us continue supporting Rushwood with all of our great assemblies and events throughout our school year. • As our newsletter went to print – we were not able to let you know our top sellers and winners from the golden ticket raffles. But as of Friday – we sold out of books – so that tells me it was a great success ! If you still have a book – and are not planning on keeping it – please return as soon as possible . If you are planning on keeping it – the cost is only $28 and checks can be made payable to Rushwood PTA. Rushwood PTA thanks EVERYONE who supported this fundraiser – we are deeply grateful to all of our volunteers who assisted in keeping tabs on our sales, especially Monica Gallagher who chaired this event and did all the hard work in keeping track of our sales and funds raised – a HUGE thank you!!1 Box Tops for Education We have had a huge turn in of Box Tops and Campbell & Tyson labels so far at the beginning of this school year – so please keep them coming in! The class with the most turned in every grading period will receive a pizza party reward!! If you are in need of more blank sheets, please send in a note with your PTA Communication Folder or you can get them from our Rushwood PTA Website under blank forms . If you have any questions or would like to help us with organizing and Collections, please contact our chairperson Ann Cook at 330-468-3047 Or email at amcook14@hotmail.com. Thank you in advance for your Collecting !! Rushwood PTA’s Website Thank you for continuing to visit our Rushwood PTA’s website. You can find all of our current event information and forms by visiting the Rushwood Page from Nordoniaschools.org and “clicking “ on Rushwood PTA. And a special note to all of our committee chairpersons – please forward any flyers or forms you have to Connie Perney at cjperney@windstream.net so she can place them on the website – thank you.

7. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 Fundraising Market Day Our October ordering deadline is Saturday , Oct. 12th at 11:00pm Pick up is Thursday, October 17th from 5:00-6:00pm in the Rushwood Cafeteria This month – receive free broccoli florets with a $40 purchase and Free ChicNSteaks with a $90 online order (promo code – OCTBONUS) Get ready for Pie /Dessert Month in November! We will be again having a contest for top sellers of the Market Day desserts! The more pies we sell – the more money we can earn!! This is a wonderful opportunity to purchase delicious Market Day desserts for your Thanksgiving Celebration and raise money for Rushwood at the same time! And I promise you, if you have not yet purchased their pies or cakes before, you will not be disappointed!! Since this sale is huge for us every year – we will be looking to have more volunteers to help with the pick up evening , which is Thursday, Nov. 14th. Thank you! 4th Grade Fundraiser • Rushwood’s 4th Grade class of 2014 is selling Life & Style items through our Market Day retailer to earn money for their graduation celebration day and hopefully a 4th grade field trip. The past two years – our 4th grade class only has sold these items with great success! Our sale starts on Friday, 4th and ends on Oct. 18th. The best part of all - your items that you purchase will be picked up on Thursday, Nov. 14 along with our normal food pick up night! So when you are purchasing your food and desserts in Nov. from Market Day – please consider ordering some items from our life style sale as well to help out our 4th graders! Some items include great holiday gift ideas and wrapping – along with some kitchen needs and beautiful jewelry – gourmet chocolates and nuts too - all at great prices – over 90 items at $10 or less! • Please go to www.marketdayfundraising.com and log on and shop our Lifestyle online brochure and look for other exclusive online items. Or please ask one of our 4th graders to see a brochure! They all were given sale packets with all the sale details. • Our sale ID # is 211798 (Rushwood – account # 14025). Please place internet orders by Wed. Oct 23rd. And again – as always – thank you so much for your support!!

8. Rushwood PTA Newsletter: Issue Two, October 2013 OTHER INFO. Membership Our September 2012 Membership Drive has been a huge success. We have over 200 members so far that signed up to be a member of our Rushwood PTA! But we are always happy to have more! We are always accepting new members through out the school year. Congratulations to Julia Walsh from Miss Finley’s Class for getting 7 PTA memberships from family and friends! And also to Trevor Daniel from Mrs. Soukup’s class for getting 5 PTA memberships ! The following classrooms from each cluster earned the most memberships: Mrs. Glorios’s Kindergarten Class Mrs. Bzdafka’s 1st Grade Class Mrs. Dunn and Mrs. Goodson 2nd grade classes tied! Mrs. Felker’s 3rd grade class Miss Finley’s 4th grade class Your member ship cards are on their way and will be coming in your PTA Communication Folders! Yearbook Calling all Rushwood Students! We are looking for you to design our 2012-2013 Rushwood Yearbook Cover.! One 4th grade entry will be chosen for the front cover of the 2012-2013 yearbook. The back cover will feature the winning entries from grades kng. – 3rd. Winners will receive a FREE yearbook! All entries must be submitted on the Yearbook Artwork Form, arriving soon ! Look for the form and more details soon in your PTA Communication Folder. And a special note to teachers – please take digital pictures of your events or classroom activities so we may be able to add them to the yearbook as well. Questions?? Please contact Chrisy Siewert at siewertc@me.com or Tammy Strong at strongkatz @roadrunner.com – Thank you!