2420 Autumn Sage St. Castle Rock, CO 80108 720-433-0110

Canyon Connection Principal Mandy Hill Main Office 720-433-0110 Attendance 720-433-0112 Weather Hotline 303-387-SNOW (7669)

MARCH 2 0 1 5

Letter from the PTO President Dear Sage Canyon Families: What a fantastic few weeks we have had. The Kids Invite Someone Special (KISS) dance was a huge success. What a great time watching all the Sage Canyon girls dressed up and dancing with their someone special. It was great to see so many Moms, Grandpas, Uncles, and of course Dads enjoying themselves. Mother-Son Bowling was a week later and a ton of fun pretending to be able to bowl. Our Spring 360 Fundraiser wrapped up and once again, thank you so much for your generosity. We are pleased to begin our Spring Grant process; teachers are currently submitting their grants with a deadline of March 6th. We are working on getting this process completed quickly so we can distribute the grants as soon as possible to our teachers. If you haven’t done so, please take a few minutes to visit our yearbook site: www.treering.com. Once you take a look at the capability of the two-page customizable layout, you will LOVE it. This is also the site that you will use to order and pay for your yearbook. The deadline for all orders and completion of the customizable pages is March 27th.

PTO Website

Upcoming Dates 3/4 Spirit Night 3/4 Moms & Muffins 3/11 Dads & Donuts 3/11 PTO Meeting 3/20-4/5 Spring Break 3/27 Yearbook Deadline

A heartfelt thank you to our volunteers that continue to help with our events: Leanne Vakoc and Tony Lamb for Mother-Son Bowling, all of our high school volunteers for the Frozen KISS Dance, and all of our amazing parents who helped feed our teachers during Parent Teacher Conferences: Jennifer Gallivan Terri Hebdon Jessica Roger Lissa Mitchell Nikki Koster Crystal Hector Bonni Pratt Tammy O’Brien Vanessa Powers Kellie Travis Beverly Wilson

Jamie Hall Cari Cusinato Jackie Kobbe Barbi Frazier Julie Nelson Julie Heath Pamela Gaal Jenny Romano Kellie Horn Leanne Vakoc Andrea Deckart

Sherri Hedges Kim Warcholik Kerri Fowler Gretchen Marquez Traci Hower Norma Aguilar-Dave Amy Scholes Tiffany Figueroa Lindsey Bard Tracy Nimmer Stacey Kerber

Our next PTO meeting is March 11th at 630pm. I hope to see you soon. Sincerely, Sheryl Rose Sage Canyon PTO President

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360 Fundraising We just finished our last fundraiser of the year! The food has been delivered with the prizes and the limo ride with a pizza lunch is over. We raised $7,000 for our school with this fundraiser! We will use the money raised to help fund the teacher grants we received this year. We appreciate all of the amazing support from the awesome families of Sage Canyon. Thank you!

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Save the Date March 4 – Chick-fil-A Spirit Night March 4 at 8am – Mom and Muffins March 11 at 8am – Dad and Donuts March 11 at 6:30pm – PTO Meeting March 27 – Yearbook purchase deadline and personalized pages cut-off

Spirit Nights Spirit Nights are a great way to help schools raise money in a fun and interactive way. Sage Canyon has had very successful spirit nights this year. We have raised close to $2,000 this year through our Spirit Nights! Thank you for the amazing support! Here are our upcoming scheduled spirit nights:   

Wednesday, March 4th at Chick-fil-A Wednesday, April 1st at Chick-fil-A Wednesday, May 6th at Chick-fil-A

Sign Up for the Online School Directory! Thank you to all who have signed up for Online School Directory. The Directory has been getting great feedback. This free resource is provided to all Sage Canyon families by the SCPTO. Since teachers can't give out your contact information, this is the main way you will get information to send out birthday invitations or to organize play dates or sleepovers. The best part — you can control how much information you share. And since you enter it in yourself, you can be sure your information is accurate. If you haven't signed up yet, you can easily get registered today. Is it secure? YES! All data is stored behind secure firewalls and can only be accessed by authorized users with a validated username and encrypted password. All data is viewed and passed using SSL encryption. We hope you'll love this new resource to help build our school community. Thank you for your support! Enroll in the Online Directory today.

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PAGE 4 What is the Support Committee? This month, we are happy to share an article The Support Committee is the third and final our Sage Canyon Student Council — written sub-committee. The Support Committee's job is to work with local businesses to by the students. Enjoy! support our school. They have the privilege What is Student Council? to contact businesses that will help our Student Council is a small in-school school in many ways such as setting up organization that aims to help our fundraisers or a donation. The Support environment inside and outside of Sage Committee helps raise money for our Canyon. It's split into three sub-committees: learning needs. the Sustainability Committee, the Service What is Our Mission? Committee, and the Support Committee. Student Council has a goal to help our school Each of these subcommittees have a and community. We want to make this different goal to aim for, but as a whole Student Council, the mission is combined as school community the best learning experience possible. Student Council always a whole new purpose. has a project to work on that will help our What is the Sustainability Committee? community in as many ways as possible. Our The Sustainability Committee is the first out mission will go on forever, always helping of the three committees. The Sustainability the environment inside and outside our Committee's main goal is the create an school grow into a better learning outdoor learning environment for Sage community. Canyon. To have living specimens rather than just a book makes it a whole new experience. For example, when you are learning about oxygen, wouldn’t you rather want a hands on experience with trees and plants rather than reading out of a textbook? As the Sustainability Committee at Sage Canyon (a PBL school), we aim to give this to the students who need to have hands on learning. What is better? To sit inside teaching kids about the outdoors? Or showing it to them and giving them the experience a textbook couldn’t imagine?

Student Council

What is the Service Committee? The Service Committee is the second of three sub-committees. As the Service Committee, our goal is to give back to the community. We put together projects such as the "Unselfie Project." The Unselfie is a selfie, but represents you do something unselfish and giving back to the community. As Henry David Thoreau once said, "Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?" Everyone is going through hard times. The question is, would you treat them differently if you knew what they are going through? The Service Committee’s most recent project is aiming to try and gain some empathy for and from all the students. We believe that everyone deserves to feel the support they have earned. Advertising in this newsletter does not imply endorsement by Douglas County School District.

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Frozen Kiss Dance Our Sage Canyon girls and their guests had such a fun time dancing under the snowflakes. We had over one hundred couples attend participating in a dance competition, taking photos in a photo booth, getting snowflakes painted on their face, and eating lots of yummy treats. Who knew we had so many Sage Canyon adults that can truly ‘bust a move’ to the YMCA. Fun times for all!

Continued...

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Reminder: Get Your Yearbooks!

The yearbook purchase deadline is approaching fast! March 27 is the very last day by which you can buy your yearbooks for the 2014/2015 school year. It's easy to purchase — just visit our yearbook website at www.treering.com and enter Pass Code 1014063018364659. There, you can pay for your yearbook, customize your child’s two-page layout, upload pictures, and more. There are two options this year: a soft cover option for $23 and a hard cover option for $30. Orders will be accepted via the TreeRing website — no paper orders or checks to worry about. Once you buy your yearbook, you will see the customizable two-page layout that you can update for your child. You must personalize your pages by March 27 — if you don't customize your two pages, your yearbook will be printed with two generic autograph pages instead.

There is also a mobile app you can use to easily upload mobile photos. This is an extremely similar application to other photo book creation websites. But if you are in need of help, TreeRing has wonderful customer support as described on the website. Again, all yearbooks must be ordered, paid for, and the customizable pages complete no later than March 27. As always, any questions please reach out to PTO at [email protected].

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PAGE 8

Mother - Son Bowling Our Moms and sons had a blast bowling together on Feb. 8 at Celebrity Lanes. Sons challenged their moms to bowling while everyone had a chance to win some fun prizes. A HUGE thank you to Tony Lamb and Leanne Vakoc who organized this fun event!

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2014/2015 PTO Events Calendar

New This Year: Sign-up for all events at our Master SignUp Genius March 4 – Chick-fil-A Spirit Day March 4 – Moms and Muffins, 8am March 11 – Dads and Donuts, 8am March 11 – PTO Meeting, 6:30pm March 20 to April 5 – Spring Break

March 27 – Yearbook Purchase and Customized Pages Deadline April 1 – Chick-fil-A Spirit Day April 8 – PTO Meeting, 6:30pm April 11 – Applebee's Breakfast April 13 to 17 – Spirit Week May 4 to 8 – Teacher Appreciation Week

May 6 – Chick-fil-A Spirit Day May 13 – PTO Meeting, 9:30am May 15 – Hoedown If you use Google Calendar, you can add our PTO calendar to your own by using the Add a friend's calendar option in the calendar list on the left of your Google Calendar. Search for our ID "[email protected]" to add all of these dates to your own Google Calendar.

PTO Meeting Schedule We would love to see you at a PTO meeting! All Sage Canyon parents, teachers, and caregivers are welcome to attend. We discuss new ideas, make plans for future events, and decide how to spend our funds. All meetings are held in the Rodeo Room at school. This year, we are alternating between evening and morning meetings to try to accommodate more schedules. March 11 – 6:30pm April 8 – 6:30pm May 13 – 9:30am We hope to see you there! Advertising in this newsletter does not imply endorsement by Douglas County School District.

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School Spotlight: Meet 6th Grade Teacher, Mr. Lamb!!

Tony Lamb (Huskers and Chicago Cub fan and collector of autographed baseballs) grew up in the south central town of Hastings, Nebraska, with three younger brothers (two in Washington and one in Omaha). Tony was working as a restaurant manager but moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, for his wife’s job at Frito Lay. There he went back to school and got his teaching degree. His wife continued to move into technology managerial positions at Frito Lay, requiring them to move from Virginia to Colorado to Maryland. She took a position at Leprino Foods, and they moved the family back to Colorado. Tony spent almost 12 years as a stay-at-home dad raising their three kids: Conner, 7th grader at Mesa Middle School, Emma, 5th grader, and Aspen, 2nd grader.

Tony has been at Sage Canyon for approximately three years, the last two serving as a 3rd grade and 6th grade teacher. When Tony is not busy here at Sage Canyon, he works as a professional taxi driver (aka Dad driver). His son, Conner, is into rugby, swimming, cross country, and wresting — while his girls are busy in gymnastics, cheer, volleyball, and swimming. Free time is spent gardening and golfing in the summer and snow skiing as a family in the winter. Favorite mountain………Breckenridge. Something you wouldn’t know about Tony….Patrick Swayze gave him a ride a long time ago. Tony was managing a Lone Star Steakhouse and they were filming the movie, “To Wong Foo” nearby. The crew would come into the steakhouse to eat and one day Tony and a buddy got passes to the set. When they finished their set tour, Patrick gave them a two-mile drive back to their car! As the discussion continued, Tony proceeded to share another story about sneaking into the Kansas City Royals Visitors’ Locker Room and getting Mark McGuire’s autograph. But we’ll save that one for another day! Thank you for all you do Mr. Lamb!!!!! Advertising in this newsletter does not imply endorsement by Douglas County School District.

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Photos We would love to see your photos from our school events! Please send your photos to mailto:[email protected].

Spirit Night at Freddy's

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Ongoing Fundraiser Programs King Soopers Gift Cards We love our King Soopers Gift Card fundraising program! This is such a great program that benefits our school. The King Soopers' cards are reloadable at the register before you purchase your groceries and continue to provide returns to our school each time you refill them. King Soopers' cards cost $5 and come with $5 already loaded on them. SGCE earns 5% back on every purchase, making King Soopers' one of our most valuable community fundraising resources. To purchase a King Soopers' card, email [email protected]. Target Take Charge of Education Program Here is another easy fundraising opportunity! All you have to do is use your Target REDcard (credit, debit, or Visa). Once you register your card for our school, Target will donate 1% of the purchase to Sage Canyon Elementary. This money goes directly to our school and can benefit our children and teachers. So if you are going to Target anyway, please consider registering and using your Target REDcard. To register your Target REDcard with the Target Take Charge of Education program, just visit www.target.com/tcoe or call 1-800-316-6142 to designate our school. The school ID number for Sage Canyon Elementary is 151902. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors are all welcome to participate in the program. The more people we involve, the harder the program works for our school. If you are already participating, thank you! Check out our school’s progress anytime at www.target.com/tcoe. Thank you for your support of this easy fundraising program!

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