Jan 7Happy New Year!

Make sure to mark your calendars for the following events at Roosevelt this week:

Monday, January 7
Welcome Back! Classes Resume

Tuesday, January 8
Free dress for students that performed for WinterFest

Important Dates…
January 14 – Site Council Meeting at 6:30pm
January 21 – Martin Luther King’s Birthday – No School
January 28 – PTA Meeting at 6:00pm
January 31 – Coffee with Principal Girardi at 8:00am
February 1 – Free Dress Friday

Trivia Question…
In honor of the new year, let’s see how much you know about the history of New Year’s Day:

January 1 has always been considered the first day of a new year.

a. True
b. False

Make your guess and find out if you’re right at the bottom!

Pictures Needed…
If anyone has any pictures of the choir singing at WinterFest, please send some to our choir teacher Emily Kaltenbach at emily.a.kaltenbach@gmail.com. She has to put a package together for her AmeriCorps supervisor to show the work she has been doing and she wants to add pictures of her choir performing at WinterFest.

Snowflakes for Sandy Hook Elementary…
When the children of Sandy Hook Elementary go back to school, the National Parent Teacher Association wants them to be greeted by a winter wonderland. You and your child can help welcome the students back to school, which will be in a new building, by making unique snowflakes! The snowflakes are due by January 12. Please send them to:

Connecticut PTSA
60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103
Hamden, CT 06514

The Roosevelt PTA will also be happy to collect and mail any snowflakes. Please drop off your snowflakes in the school office on Tuesday, January 8. (Please drop them off no later than 9:00am so that they can be sent out in the morning mail.) Some classrooms already made and mailed in their snowflakes before the start of winter break, but all are welcome to participate and make as many as you like.

After School Sports…
The Parks & Recreation Department has some after school winter sports activities that are being offered to Roosevelt students.

Winter Wrestling for grades K – 8 – Registration Deadline January 8
Winter Indoor Soccer for ages 8 -14 – Registration Deadline February 8

For more information, go to www.teamsideline.com/redwoodcity/ and select the Winter Sports tab.

Roosevelt Snack Shack…
The 5th grade parents are supervising the 5th grade students in the snack shack for the first 30 minutes each afternoon until Mr. Williams or Ms. Novikoff can take over after their classes are dismissed. If you are not a 5th grade parent, but you would like to help out and take on a 30 minute shift on a day that works with your schedule, please contact Mr. Williams at jwilliams@rcsdk8.net

“Like” us on Facebook…
Please be sure to “Like” the Roosevelt page to get school and district updates and pictures from Roosevelt school events in your news feed. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Roosevelt-Elementary-School/214259038634327

Trivia Question Answer…
new-year-imageThe correct answer is b. False.

The earliest recorded festivities in honor of a new year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. For the Babylonians, the first new moon following the vernal equinox—the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness—heralded the start of a new year. They marked the occasion with a massive religious festival called Akitu.

Throughout antiquity, civilizations around the world developed increasingly sophisticated calendars, typically pinning the first day of the year to an agricultural or astronomical event. In Egypt, for instance, the year began with the annual flooding of the Nile, which coincided with the rising of the star Sirius. The first day of the Chinese new year, meanwhile, occurred with the second new moon after the winter solstice.

The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months and 304 days, with each new year beginning at the vernal equinox; according to tradition, it was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century B.C. A later king, Numa Pompilius, is credited with adding the months of Januarius and Februarius. Over the centuries, the calendar fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem by consulting with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the Julian calendar, which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most countries around the world use today.

As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. Romans celebrated by offering sacrifices to Janus, exchanging gifts with one another, decorating their homes with laurel branches and attending raucous parties. In medieval Europe, Christian leaders temporarily replaced January 1 as the first of the year with days carrying more religious significance, such as December 25 (the anniversary of Jesus’ birth) and March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation); Pope Gregory XIII reestablished January 1 as New Year’s Day in 1582.

Have a great week!