Tuesday 5/25: PTA General Meeting, 6:30 – 8 p.m. Childcare will be provided

Monday 5/31 No School – Memorial Day

Thursday 6/3 Brent Exhibit Night, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Thursday 6/10 The Wizard of Oz performance

PTA Events and Year-End Festivities: Join Brent families for a day of festivities celebrating the end of the school year! The PTA is planning a giant year-end picnic followed by a school-wide trip to the Nationals game on Sunday June 20. Information and RSVP forms will be sent home in students’ backpacks – stay tuned. And please contact Daniel Holt at Daniel.holt@mail.house.gov if you have ideas or would like to help prepare for the event. Also, please join us at the PTA meeting on Tuesday May 25 from 6:30-8 p.m. for PTA elections and several interesting presentations. Children will enjoy a movie night with nutritious food and popcorn.

Middle School Update: This is it! At last, DCPS will lay out their current thinking on plans to improve middle schools in Ward 6 and they are looking for feedback from the community. Make your voice heard and let them know if their plans will meet the needs of YOUR FAMILY at the public meeting on Wednesday May 19 at Payne Elementary School, 305 15^th St., SE from 5-7 p.m.

Taekwondo Promotion: Brent students who have been taking Taekwondo after school had their promotion test and ceremony last week, and they earned their orange or yellow belts (see photo). Congratulations to our hard-working students!

Focus on Learning This Spring: It’s May and we have five more weeks of serious teaching and learning so remember EVERYDAY:

Be respectful of teachers and peers by being on time

• Wear your uniform* and closed toe shoes for safety
• Be in touch with the office if your student has special needs with which we can help

*If somehow your student is unable to wear a uniform, we have a Parent Clothes Closet of laundered pants and shorts for this or for emergencies.  We will ALWAYS call the parent first, but if we cannot get in touch with you, may we have your permission for a quick change so no instruction is missed?  Or do you want them to wait in the office until we reach you?

Brent Garden News: Check out the vegetable beds on the pre-k playground to see what is growing. Thanks to the teachers and classes who have been involved in planting and watering, including all pre-k 3, both pre-k 4, Mrs. Amjad’s and Ms. Pressman’s classes. Ms. Harding-Wright’s class had their first crop: sugar snap peas. Every child was able to eat a pea right from the garden and they loved them! Now that the weather is warmer, the plants are growing quite quickly. Check out the climbing beans and the morning glories that are growing on our Tee Pee in the Outdoor Classroom. See if you can find the fish in the pond. They are an experiment, along with some new plants and the solar-powered fountain, to see if the water will stay clear. And look for the sunflowers that are starting to pop up in the Rain Garden. They are currently little clumps of leaves along the 3^rd Street fence and garden fence area. Hopefully they will bloom before summer break!

Visit the Citywide Student Art Show: Six talented Brent students were selected to represent our school in the DC3 Collaborative Schools’ 2^nd Annual Art Show at the Sumner School Museum (17^th and M Sts., NW). The exhibit includes artwork by Brent kindergarteners Cian Fitzgerald, Nina Shaw, Ariana Townsend and 4^th graders Maribella Alvarado, Jada Carlisle (artwork pictured) and Danielle Garris. The students enjoyed the opening reception last week, featuring a performance by the Brent Glee Club, and the exhibit will continue at the museum through May. Please stop by the museum and see the Brent students’ artwork on display.

Quality Family Time: National Asian Heritage Festival, Pennsylvania Ave., NW, between 3^rd and 6^th Sts., Saturday May 22 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Enjoy craft exhibits, live performances, food, martial arts demonstrations, flash mob dancing and other festivities at the Fiesta Asia Street Fair.  See www.asiaheritagefoundation.org. Bicycle Safety Day, National Children’s Museum (112 Waterfront St., National Harbor, Md.), Saturday May 22 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Bring your own bicycles or tricycles and spend the afternoon decorating your bike, participating in a bicycle rodeo, and joining the Great NCM Bicycle Parade. See www.ncm.museum. Egg Drop Contest, College Park Aviation Museum (1985 Corporal Frank Scott Dr., College Park, Md.), Saturday May 22 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Design a device that will protect a large egg from breaking when dropped – then drop the egg onto concrete from a 20 ft. balcony and see if it works! Contestants must build their device at the museum with provided supplies, and the dropping begins at 2 p.m. Museum admission $4 for adults, $2 for children ages 2-18. See www.collegeparkaviationmuseum.com. Healthy Food for You, Marian Koshland Science Museum (6^th and E Sts., NW), Saturday May 22 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Learn about healthy foods and how to incorporate them into your diet. Test for vitamins and minerals using hands-on food science experiments, taste nutritious drinks, and take home some healthy recipes. See www.koshland-science-museum.org/events. Caterpillar Hunt, Hillwood Manor Park (in Sligo Creek Park near New Hampshire Ave., in Montgomery County, Md.), Saturday May 22 from 10 a.m. to noon. Join an insect ecologist to look for caterpillars and other signs of life in lower Sligo Park. Families will be given containers then will fan out into the woods to collect inchworms, cankerworms, leaf rollers, tent caterpillars, cocoons and more and have your finds identified by the ecologist. See www.fosc.org for details and directions.

Several Short Notes: Help with the school play: We’re still looking for more parent volunteers to help the student actors during rehearsals for the Wizard of Oz or to help paint the props. The cast meets from 5-6:30 p.m. on most school days. Please contact Ms. Homayoun at all4wski@yahoo.com or Ms. Miller at s.derr@yahoo.com. Show thanks to our Chinese teachers: Help say a big collective thank you to Brent’s Chinese teachers by contributing to a Brick for Brent’s walkway in their honor. Contributions should be brought to Denise Diggs in the office. All donations are welcome. Please help show our appreciation for the amazing work that they have done this year! Buy Bricks for Brent: Would you like to provide a lasting tribute in the Brent walkway and help earn money for our school? Bricks for Brent are available again – you can buy a 4×8 brick for $85, which includes three lines of text of 18 characters each. The deadline is May 21 and forms are in the office. Volunteer to help with t-shirt sales: Volunteers are needed to help with Brent t-shirt sales and inventory over the summer and next school year. Responsibilities include organizing the sale of school merchandise during the summer meet-and-greets and next school year and delivery of online sales to students’ classrooms during the school year. Please contact Lisa Perry at lperrys@mac.com to volunteer. Recruiting student reporters: We’re working on the next issue of Brent’s student newspaper, The Brent Bears News, and we’re always looking for students who would like to write articles, take photographs, or draw cartoons or illustrations the newspaper. Any students who would like to submit an article or get an assignment are welcome to stop by Ms. Homayoun’s room on Wednesdays at 8:10 a.m. for the weekly BBN staff meeting. Help with Brent recipe book: We’d like to create a Brent recipe book as a fundraiser for the school, which will be a great opportunity to share your family’s favorite recipes and help Brent at the same time. We’ll do most of the work on the book in the fall, but are gathering a team now to get a head start. If you’d like to help create the book, work together to gather recipes from Brent families, or contribute your favorite family recipe to the book, please contact Melissa Williams at melwilliams5@verizon.net. Box Tops update: Please continue to collect your Box Tops for Education, which earns money for our school. The next submission deadline is not until the fall, so you can either hold onto the Box Tops until then or you can turn them in to the school now.

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