Courtade Elementary School -

In the "way to early to think about it" category... Congratulations to Talen and Winnie. They will represent our school as junior royalty at the 2026 National Cherry Festival.

So much news to share today!

1. The rain held off, and our Jog A Thon was a success! Thanks to the PTO, our student athletes from CHS, and all of the parent volunteers that helped!
2. Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners!
3. We met our fundraising goal! Mr. Phillips will now be the lucky beneficiary of a human car wash!

Yesterday during all lunches, we were lucky to have Chef Adam (who is also the dad of a Courtade preschooler) join us for what will be monthly taste tests. Our Farm to School friends have done this for the past three years, and we were happy that Chef Adam will continue this as Farm to School programming ends. Chef Adam prepared garlic roasted potatoes for us, with potatoes out of our garden! Check out how many kids loved it!

On Wednesday mornings at the drop off line, fifth graders will be present to accept donations of pop cans to help fund their fifth grade camp trip. If you don't want to bring your cans, but want to donate, we'll also accept the receipts that we can cash in! For those of you who cannot make it during drop off, you can drop off bags of cans in the shed by the garden.

Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners!

Every month, we gather as a whole school to talk about positive behaviors and how we all can be ROAR Models. We call these assemblies ROAR Days. Today was our October ROAR Day. We talked about goals. We set goals each month. Last month, some of us met our goals and some of us didn't. To have fun while we learn, we have a fun, assembly activity. Today, that activity was the Whitney Houston Drum Challenge. The GOAL is to hit the drum at the exact time that it sounds in the song after a period of silence. The message is that some goals are hard... this goal was supposed to be one of them. Check out the video. One of our five participants absolutely nailed it. Mr. Rob is a legend.

https://youtu.be/dOsefk4bQg0?feature=shared

Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners! Also, we had a ROAR Day assembly today. Stay tuned... soon to be posted is how some of our staff and students fared on the Whitney Houston Drum Challenge! You'll never guess who absolutely nailed the challenge!!!

It's Farmers Market Day! Thank you to our Farm to School friends for organizing another great market. Huge thanks to our volunteers for helping us out today! And it wouldn't be possible without great vendors. We were lucky to have Rusty Moose Garden, Kewadin Lavendar Farm, Nine Bean Rows, Full Circle Lavendar Farm, and Howling Moon Farms at our school today!

Look at all of these shoes! Our school was selected to receive over 40 pairs of brand new shoes through the Tradehome Shoes Give at Home program. Mr. Q will use some of these shoes for Cougars who don't have gym shoes and we'll have lots more to give away to any Cougars who just need a nice pair of shoes. Thank you, Tradehome Shoes!

The year is young, but we've gone on a ton of field trips already! We've gone to state parks, the Alluvion, the Au Sable Institute, the Conservation District, and we have a couple more field trips already scheduled. Some of these field trips are funded by grants that our teachers are always on the lookout for. Others are covered by our PTO. Field trips are a great way to take educational adventures!

Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners!

Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners!

Congratulations to this week's ROAR Model award winners!

These students helped to pick tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden and Ms. Sam and Mrs. Don prepped them and put them on our salad bar. Mr. Phillips asked everyone in the cafeteria if they'd like to try our garden tomatoes and cucumbers and many Cougars did! Ask your Cougar if they tried any. Talk about garden fresh!!!!

Happy Constitution Day! We celebrated with our traditional flagpole ceremony. Special thanks to our fifth graders for leading us in the singing of The Start Spangled Banner!

Take the advice from some of our first graders about how we can be ROAR Models! And check out this monarch ROAR Model that we found on our playground today!

Today, we recognized our first ROAR Models of the year! Each week, teachers nominate 1-2 students from their classrooms. Students are recognized for lots of things, but most importantly, if a Courtade student consistently does the right thing, even if they don't think someone is watching, they'll get recognized (and many get recognized more than once). Thanks to our PTO for purchasing the ROAR Model award books!

We also held our first ROAR Day assembly today. Check out this week's newsletter to read more about some of the fun we had. Ask your Cougar about what we talked about at ROAR Day!

Thanks for a great first week of school! It was so cool seeing so many students and staff members wearing our new awesome school shirts. Check out these playground pictures! Speaking of our playground, two short weeks from today, we'll be hosting our first free, family after school event of the year! We hope many families will join us for our annual Courtade/Trojan Homecoming Cookout, which takes place on Friday, September 19th, from 4:30-5:45. Our PTO is sponsoring a hot dog dinner that is free for all who come. Dinner will include a hot dog or hot dogs (grilled by Mr. Phillips), a bag of chips, and a bottle of water. We always have plenty of hot dogs, so come hungry. In order for us to have plenty of food, we are asking families to sign up as soon as possible by filling out this quick form.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeg_1thi30MVWVA_8k3uwTDMJSPKZ0UDXxsNr3RzO1H3DqCDA/viewform