Inside this issue:

PTO Events 3-8

Classroom Clips 9-12

BC Monthly Calendars 13

BVSD 14-

17

Bear Creek Elementary

2500 Table Mesa Drive

Boulder, CO 80305

Kent Cruger, Principal

October 23, 2015

Bear Tracks

BC At-A-Glance 2

Super Science Night & 4th Grade Program

What a seriously, spectacular, special, stellar,

superb, smashing, supernatural, sublime, Super

Science Night. Students could not get enough

of the activities and probably would have

stayed overnight exploring science at Bear

Creek if we had let them. Thank you so much

for all the amazing parent volunteers, our 4th

grade students and teachers, and Mrs. James.

~Kent Cruger

BEAR CREEK CALENDAR

AT - A - GLANCE

Friday, October 30

Halloween Parade & Parties

Monday, November 2

Picture Retakes

Friday, November 6

End of Trimester

Wednesday, November 11

NO SCHOOL—Veteran’s Day

Wednesday, November 18

Spotlights Concert 9:00 am & 6:30 pm

Friday, November 20

Report Cards go Home

Monday, November 23 - Friday, November 27

Thanksgiving Break

Monday, November 30

Vision & Hearing

Friday, December 4

9:30 Open House Tour

Thursday, December 11

Geography Bee

YMCA Kids Night IN

Tuesday, December 15

1:30 Open House Tour

Monday, December 21 - Monday, January 4

NO SCHOOL - WINTER BREAK

BEFORE AND AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

As you are looking for activities for your children to participate

in before and after school, I just wanted to give you a "heads-up"

about where to look for activities that are happening at Bear

Creek, and which ones are Bear Creek and BVSD sponsored.

*Starting today in Bear Tracks, you will see opportunities for

your children to participate in school sponsored clubs such as

intramural sports, jump rope, Spotlights, and drumming club. Bear

Creek clubs are supervised by Bear Creek staff.

*Lifelong Learning, which is part of BVSD's Community Schools

Program runs many wonderful activities for students in schools

across the district. If you go to their web-page you can find

great kid classes, many of which will happen right at our school!

Lifelong Learning will send you mail alerts of activities that are

happening at Bear Creek. You can sign up for classes at any loca-

tion, but parents have found it particularly accommodating when

classes happen right at Bear Creek. This fall at Bear Creek Life-

long Learning will offer at Bear Creek such things as chess, bas-

ketball, Spanish classes, and Lego building.

*Finally, please check the Community Board in our front hallway

where other activities that are not sponsored by the school or

Lifelong Learning can be posted. Oftentimes these activities hap-

pen at Bear Creek, as groups can rent some of our spaces after

school.

Open Enrollment Open Houses

BVSD open enrollment begins Monday,

November 30, 2015 and closes on

Friday, January 15, 2016. Bear Creek

will be having three Open House

Tours; December 4 and January 14 @

9:30 AM and December 15 @ 1:30 PM. All tours will last

about 45 minutes with a Question & Answer time to

follow. To register please call the office @ 720.561.3500 .

Halloween Parade Note:

We request all parents who want to view the parade and take

photos to please go to the gym on Thursday morning, not the

classrooms. The parade will begin with Kindergarten at 8:50 am.

Most classroom parties will follow.

To stay safe this Halloween:

-Walk with friends or a family member

-Make your rounds at twilight

-If out after dark, stay on well-lighted streets

-Don’t eat candy that is not properly packaged

Also, please note Bear Creek’s Policy regarding Toy Weapons:

Toy Weapons may not be brought to school. This includes but is

not limited to water pistols, rubber knives, swords, guns, darts,

war and self-defense toys, etc. Students are not allowed to have

toy weapons as part of their costume.

PTO PULSE

A BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED OUT WITH TO MAKE SCIENCE NIGHT EXTRA SUPER!!!

We couldn't do great events like our recent Super Science Night and Fourth Grade Musical Extravaganza without a huge amount of help. Thanks to everyone who chipped in their time and talent to make the night a success despite less than perfectly clear skies for the Telescopes. Our talented Parent Presenters: Holden Chase, Daniel Farkas, Bill Penuel, Shannon Rivers and Regner Trampedach. The more than fabulous Parent Volunteers who pull it all together:

Martin Boileau, Ross Phillips, Mary Pettigrew, Sara Pratt, Nathalie Moyen, Robyn Savage and Hope Sieck

And, of course, the Fourth grade teaches: Beth Ellis, Kathy Hawk and Liz Wilmers with sparkling musical direction from Kendra James.

Plus, we can't forget all the help and support we get from Beth and Carolyn in the front office - whose patience is bottom-less. Thanks to you all, and hope to see you at the Spring Event!!!!

Introducing the PTO Facebook Page...

The Bear Creek PTO launched a Facebook page for the school. It is a closed group, only open to Bear Creek parents. It is proving to be a great forum for communication between parents! Thank you to the ad-mins, Karin Larsson and Michi Sakurai, for organizing! To join, search Facebook for “PTO Bear Creek Ele-mentary” and ask to join.

Garden Committee Update

Thank you to the wonderful volunteers who helped put the garden to bed for the fall and winter:

Jon Ouellette, Amy Destauls-Stein, Marlene & Jade Kilpatrick

Radu, Robert, & Albert Handorean, Patty Prazen

Teacher Appreciation Snacks and Meals

Thank to you to the following parents for bringing in October Teacher Appreciation Snacks and Conference Dinners for the Teachers. Bear Creek is one of the few schools who feed our teachers during all 3 nights of conferences. We couldn't do it without our wonderful parent volunteers!

PTO Meeting on November 10

The next PTO meeting will be on Tuesday, November 10 from 1:30-3 in the Fishbowl.

Deborah Whitehead, Heather Pujet

Annie Haselfeld, Mary Davis

Hua Cui, Karin Larsson

Karin Mercer, Bethany Duart

Phaedra Pezzullo, Stephanie Franz

Sun-Young Hendrick, Melissa Locher

Michi Sakurai, Leigh Gannon

Jennifer Marriott, Kathryn Penzkover

Jeannie Wyer, Margaret Lippert

Camila Weise, Puja Jamdagny

Deepa Puthenvedu, Rebecca Rao

Meg Chamberlin, Dina Kriakova

Bear Creek Trip Tracker Update

The numbers are in for Bear Creek’s Trip Tracker

participation in August and September, and WE ROCK!

Of the 20 participating schools, Bear Creek had the

highest participation rate (58%), the largest number of

participants (256), the biggest number of green trips

reported (11562), the longest distance of car-free

commuting (10663 miles), and the most Trip Tracker

dollars awarded to students ($4100). Bear Creek’s Trip

Tracker mileage—about the round-trip distance

between Boulder and Warsaw, Poland--represents 4.8

tons of carbon dioxide not emitted into the

atmosphere, and over the entire school district, green

trips avoided 34 tons of CO2 emissions in just 29 days!

Bear Creek students can spend their Trip Tracker dollars at Table Mesa businesses

including Ace Hardware, Boulder Cycle Sport, Neptune Mountaineering, Kim and

Jakes Cakes, Mickey C’s Bagels, and Play It Again Sports, as well as 46 other businesses in

the Boulder valley area like Gateway Fun Park and WOW Children’s Museum.

We believe that Bear Creek’s great Trip Tracker numbers are mostly due to the active

participation of our enthusiastic principal, Mr. Kent Cruger. Mr. Cruger is ahead of the ball

on this issue, he’s motivated to win*, and he’s creative in encouraging student

participation. Thank you Mr. Cruger for helping Bear Creek to be a shining example for

walking, biking, and scooter-ing to school!

It’s never to late to sign up for Trip Tracker: just visit

http://www.bvsd.org/transportation/toschool/tracker.

Start collecting your Trip Tracker dollars today and help alleviate car congestion at Bear

Creek, stay healthy, and protect the environment!

* This might be due to ice cream.

Your Car-Free Commuting

committee,

Regner Trampedach

David Allen

Jennie Feiger

Andy Jacobson

Mary Pettigrew

The Deadline is Extended until Friday, October 30.

Share - A - Coat

Drive

KEEP EVERYONE WARM!

It’s time again for donating those too-small,

somewhat-worn, but still-warm coats to the

annual Share-A-Coat program. Other items

such as hats, gloves, sweaters, mittens,

snow-boots, etc. will also be accepted for

donation.

Each year the Boulder Valley Rotary Club,

with cleaning services donated by Art Clean-

ers in Boulder, collects coats from many of

our local schools, cleans them and distributes

them to families and children who are in need

of them.

A box has been provided at our school, so

please send coats you are no longer using to

school with your student. Both children and

adult size coats are needed! The Boulder

Valley Rotary Volunteers will pick up the

coats from our school and deliver them to the

cleaners. The collection boxes are in the foyer

and pick up dates are scheduled for Novem-

ber19 and December 3.

Cruger Cup

If your child walked, biked,

scootered, took public

transportation, car-pooled,

etc., to school every day that

they attended school last

year (or 90% of the time)

as you probably know, he/she has

earned the right to bring home the

CRUGER CUP for one week this year.

We have 2 Cruger Cups this year so

very child should get their own week.

There are plenty of weeks still available

so stop by the office.

Boulder Ballet's Nutcracker - an annual Thanksgiving weekend tradition!

Come see Bear Creek 3rd grader Zachariah

Nagle dance the role of Fritz in the 2015

Boulder Ballet presentation of The Nut-

cracker. In addition, Bear Creek alumni Maia

Penuel and Sabrina Feld will sing in the

children's choir during the waltz of the

snowflakes at the end of Act I.

If you order your tickets through the school

promotion, Boulder Ballet/Boulder Phil will

donate 20% of the ticket price to Bear Creek.

You’ll be paying the same price as if you buy

your tickets directly from the ticket office.

Last year Bear Creek made almost $400

through this promotion. Drop forms off at

the Bear Creek office any time up un-

til November 2 - any questions can be di-

rected to Edie Cheng

(edie.cheng@gmail.com). The form is on page

9. (Macky Auditoriom Seating chart)

Thanks for your help!

Join us for Super Science Saturday at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), an unforgettably fun family event that exposes children to the thrill of science through hands-on experiences. In keeping with the 2015 International Year of Light, this year’s theme is “Celebrating LIGHT!” Super Science Saturday will feature experiments from the Little Shop of Physics at Colorado State University, a children's robotics workshop, demonstrations in the Visualization Lab, an all-time favorite event – the NCAR Science Wiz-ards Show - and more!

This is a FREE event. Carpooling is recommended! Where: National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mesa Lab 1850 Table Mesa, Boulder, CO 80305. See the map for more location details When: Saturday, November 7, 2015 10 am - 4 pm For more information: Contact Eileen Carpenter at ecarpent@ucar.edu

Library News

Thank you to all who attended our book fair and made it such a huge success. We earned $4,251

in Scholastic credit (50% of sales). We will use these funds to expand and update the library and

classroom book collections. A special thank you goes out to all of the volunteers who helped set-up,

close up, and run the book fair: Jeanne Kaufman, Courtney Williams, Nicole Rudman, Heather Burhop,

Michelle Wellington, Michelle Williams, Gwen Grasse, Lenora Reynolds, and Maya Key. Without your

help, the book fair would not have been possible!! If you ordered books from the online fair, they will

be delivered to Bear Creek and sent home with your student.

The next meeting of the 5th grade book group will be Friday, Nov. 6th in the library at

lunchtime. We will be discussing No More Dead Dogs, a hilarious realistic fiction book, by Gordan Korman. All 5th graders are welcome to attend. Please see Mrs. Brockway for copies of the book.

Be sure to check out the Bear Creek Library website

for other news, links to the library catalog and other

websites, and book recommendations.

Any exercise can benefits kids heart health!!!

TUESDAY, Feb. 14, 2012 (Health Day News) — Even

if kids spend the rest of their time sitting around, an

hour of any physical activity a day will benefit their

heart health, English researchers report.

Their study found that children and teens who got

more moderate to vigorous physical exercise daily than

their peers had better cholesterol levels, blood pres-

sure and weight, which are important for long-term

health.

"Parents, schools and institutions should facilitate and

promote physical activity of at least moderate intensity

in all children and be less concerned about the total

amount of time spent sedentary, at least in relation to

these cardiovascular risk factors," said study author Ulf

Ekelund, group leader of the Physical Activity Epidemi-

ology Program at the Institute of Metabolic Science in

Cambridge, England.

"We demonstrated that higher levels of physical activi-

ty of at least moderate intensity — equal to brisk walk-

ing — are associated with [improving] many cardiovas-

cular disease risk factors, regardless of the amount of

time these children spent sedentary," he said.

For example, those children who belonged to the most

active group had a smaller waist than those in the least

active group, he said.

"In adults, this difference is associated with an about 15

percent increased relative risk of premature death,"

Ekelund said.

The type of activity is not important as long as the in-

tensity is at least equal to brisk walking, Ekelund said.

Possibilities include outdoor play, bicycling, dancing,

aerobics, walking and playing team sports.

However, the positive benefits of exercise don't neces-

sarily counteract the harmful effects of a couch-potato

lifestyle, he said. "There may be specific sedentary be-

haviors, such as TV viewing, that impose health risks as

TV viewing is linked to other unhealthy behaviors

[such as snacking]. Therefore, limiting TV time is still

important for children's health and well-being," Ekelund

said.

The report was published in the Feb. 15 issue of the

Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, the researchers pooled information

from 14 studies involving more than 20,000 children,

aged 4 to 18, obtained from an international children's

database. A motion sensor measured total activity and

time spent sedentary and in moderate and vigorous

intensity activity. The actual activities they engaged in

were not recorded.

Overall, three-quarters of the children were of normal

weight, 18 percent were overweight and 7 percent

were obese. They spent an average of 30 minutes per

day in some form of moderate to vigorous exercise

and 354 minutes a day — or nearly six hours — seden-

tary.

Boys and girls who exercised more than 35 minutes a

day had lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, low-

er blood sugar, lower triglycerides and were thinner

than children who exercised less than 18 minutes a

day, Ekelund's group noted.

Average waist size differed by more than two inches

between the most active and least active children and

teens. And those with the largest waist size at the

study's start were the least active at two years' follow-

up.

Samantha Heller, an exercise physiologist and clinical

nutrition coordinator of the Center for Cancer Care at

Griffin Hospital in Derby, Conn., said that "there is ab-

solutely no reason for our children to be fat, sedentary

and at risk for cardiovascular disease."

"Exercise, in whatever form it takes, is fantastic for chil-

dren and teens — and adults," she said.

Even children who are not cut out for competitive

sports, have the innate need to be physically active,

Heller said.

"Parents and caregivers need to limit tech time — com-

puters, iPads, texting, TV — and let kids be kids, running

around playing," she said.

Grown-ups must get involved too, Heller said. "They

can jump rope, play tag and throw the Frisbee with the

children. Kids will do better in school, develop social

skills, enhance coordination, [and] be happier and

healthier for it."

In accordance with the BVSD policy on distribution/posting of non-curricular material-Bear Tracks will print

curricular items about our school. Many outside opportunities available, (i.e. Science Matters, second language

programs, parenting workshops, community sports, non-profit organizations, etc.) may be posted on the hall

bulletin board with prior approval of the Principal, but may not be included in Bear Tracks. Be sure to check

the Parent’s Board in the school for information regarding outside opportunities. All articles can be submitted

to Carolyn Walker at carolyn.walker@bvsd.org.

Additional information about Bear Creek can be found on the website at http://www.bvsd.org/schools/

bearcreek/ .

Submission Deadline Publication Date

Nov. 4 Nov. 6

Nov. 18 Nov. 20

Dec. 9 Dec. 11

The annual Bear Creek Great Pumpkin Contest is coming next week. If your child would like to participate, have them DECORATE a pumpkin however they want. PLEASE NO CARVED PUMPKINS. Pumpkins also should not be larger than a basketball. Pumpkins can be dropped off Monday, October 26 before school in the library. Student Council will be judging on Wednesday, with prizes distributed on Friday. Judging categories will range from the silliest to the scariest. Pumpkins need to then be taken home on Friday.

November 2015

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2

Picture Retakes

3 4 5 6

End of Trimester

Bear Tracks

7

8 9 10

PTO Meeting @ 1:30PM

11

NO SCHOOL

Veteran’s Day

12 13 14

15 16

Garden Com-mittee @ 8:45

17 18

Spotlights Concert at 9:ooam &

6:30pm

19 20

Report Cards Go Home

Bear Tracks

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

Vision & Hearing Screening

Thanksgiving Break

Student accident insurance 2015-2016

Low-cost student accident insurance is again being offered by Markel this year. They have changed their enrollment method from

paper to electronic and will not be providing print outs to schools to distribute to students. Attached is a PDF of their enrollment

information. This information is also available on the district website at

http://www.bvsd.org/employees/AthleticsActivities/Athletic%20Insurance%20Information/Forms/AllItems.aspx.

Healthy Kids Initiative

Another possible option for parents whose students need health insurance is the Boulder County Healthy Kids Initiative which

helps families enroll in Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) and Medicaid. CHP+ and Medicaid are free and low-cost health insurance

plans that provide dental, medical, prescription, mental health, and vision benefits. There are no monthly premiums, and co-pays

range from $0 - $15 depending on family income. CHP+ has higher income eligibility limits than many public assistance programs,

so many working families can qualify. Assets are not considered when determining eligibility for these programs. Some families

who have not previously qualified may be able to qualify now due to new income guidelines.

Eligibility specialists are available to serve families at all BVSD schools. Call 720-515-1454 today to talk with a specialist or to make

an appointment!

More information is available on the district website at http://www.bvsd.org/healthykids. A link to this page is on the front page of

the district site: Go to www.bvsd.org and click the Healthy Kids Initiative logo at the bottom of the page.

NONDISCRIMINATION/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

In compliance with Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

of 1973, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of

2008, Colorado law and Board of Education Policy AC

(Nondiscrimination/Equal Opportunity), Boulder Valley School District does not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual

orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, religion, ancestry, need for special education services, age, marital status, genetic information, or

physical characteristics in admissions, access to, treatment, or employment in educational programs or activities which it operates. Complaint proce-

dures have been established for students, parents, employees and members of the public. The following person has been identified as the compliance

officer for the district:

Superintendent

Boulder Valley School District6500 Arapahoe Rd.

Boulder, CO 80301

720.561.5114

Superintendent@bvsd.org