Dear YES Families,

We hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! With just three weeks remaining before the longer winter holiday break, we recognize that this is an especially busy and exciting time for many of our students and families. While the season brings joy and celebration, it’s also a time when routines and schedules can feel a bit overwhelming.

Here at school, our focus remains on creating a supportive and engaging learning environment. We are committed to finishing 2025 strong and celebrating students’ hard work and achievements. The coming days will bring concert season along with celebrations and several special events and opportunities that are shared in this month's newsletter. 

Thank you for partnering with us to ensure your child’s success. We look forward to making these final weeks of 2025 productive and memorable. On behalf of the Yarmouth Elementary School faculty and staff, we wish all of our students and families a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season!

Warm regards,

Ryan Gleason, YES Principal & Molly Kilpatrick, YES Assistant Principal

Please be sure that your child leaves in the morning dressed for winter weather conditions. Dressing in layers is always a good idea. Boots, gloves, hats, and snow pants should become part of their standard attire when the snowflakes begin to fall. Students will be allowed to play in the snow if dressed properly. It is also important to label your child’s clothing and boots.

If the temperature is below 40 degrees students may not go outside for recess if they are not dressed properly. This means no shorts. Students' legs need to be covered and that can include items like tights and athletic wear workout material. Additionally, it is expected that students wear a jacket when the temperature is this cold. A sweatshirt is not considered a winter jacket and is not sufficient for those kinds of winter conditions when the temperature is in the 30s.

If you have any questions about this please feel free to contact us. We appreciate your help in keeping all of our children warm and healthy this winter.

The lost and found clothing area in the gym lobby is starting to get quite full. Teachers have been actively encouraging students to look for any missing items. Even with those efforts, there are several unclaimed coats, sweatshirts, gloves, and other articles of clothing that do not have names on them.

On December 19th we will be donating any unclaimed items to a local charity. If you would like to stop in and look for specific articles of clothing please contact the main office to arrange that.

The lost and found area is also accessible for any weekend programs held in the gym, so please take a look when you are at those events or at our upcoming concerts on December 10th and 11th. Again, we encourage you to write your child’s name somewhere on their clothing so it can be easily identified.

Second and third-grade engineers have started the year strong! They dove into the Engineering and Design Process by cultivating a growth mindset, learning to ask questions and identify problems, collaborating on solutions, and continuously testing and improving their designs. Second-grade successful projects so far include Rosie’s Flying Machine, hand pollinators, and pan flutes. Third-graders engineered pom-pom launchers, treehouse prototypes, 3D printed keychains, and turkey obstacle courses. Next, they will begin exploring the foundational concepts of block programming using Scratch, Code.org, and the Dash robot. 

Fourth and Fifth-grade engineers are deeply engaged in the Engineering and Design Process by generating possible solutions to problems, testing and improving designs, and learning how to meet the criteria and constraints of various projects. In addition, all students are reviewing block programming with sequences, loops, events, variables, and conditionals through Code.org and robotics. Fourth graders engineered 3D name plates, marble cauldrons, digital book covers, and harvested Maine wildflower seeds to be planted in the spring. Fifth graders engineered a ping-pong ball launcher, YES News greenscreen and Canva designs, and coded their own digital game. Next up, Hour of Code, Sphero snow plows, chair lifts, simulating an ecosystem, and chemical reactions.

New in the YES Library: a 3-year subscription to Tumblebooks! Tumblebooks offers ebooks, audiobooks, and other resources. The link is live on the YES Library Website. Scroll down to More Learning, and you will see the link for Tumblebooks.

Tumblebooks has really stepped up its collection - there is something for everyone, including our older students. There is a focus on STEM and nonfiction titles, balanced with a wide range of picture books, chapter books, and graphic novels. I was happy to see that they added books in other languages and also Tumbletunes - sing-along books. The videos are all non-fiction, and all resources are multi-user. (There are also games and puzzles, but at school we won’t use those much.) All students have now been introduced to this new resource and are able to share the titles they found intriguing with their teachers. I think our school can get a lot of use out of this collection!

Happy reading and listening!

News from the PTO

Seeking Glow Run Committee Chair and Committee Members

Yarmouth PTO is looking for energetic and organized volunteers to chair, co-chair, or serve on the committee for the Glow Run this January! 

This is the PTO's biggest fundraiser of the year, and we partner with Booster, a company that specifically facilitates fundraisers for schools. They're a well-oiled machine and provide a ton of support, materials, and resources through the process. The committee is also supported by the PTO board.

If you have been looking for your opportunity to get involved and give back to the school community - this is it! Please reach out to yarmouthpto04096@gmail.com for more info.

Make It & Take It and Bake Sale: December 7th at YES

The PTO’s beloved annual Make It & Take It craft event and Bake Sale is coming up quickly. Join us on December 7th in the cafe at Yarmouth Elementary! 

We're still looking for several volunteers to help at craft tables and/or bake and donate goods for the bake sale--it takes many hands to make this fun event happen. We welcome folks who want to help out at a table with a buddy, with their kiddos as helpers, high school volunteers, and/or grandparents.  

Sign Up to Volunteer Here

Images of available crafts here

And a reminder that everyone must fill out this quick Yarmouth School District Form EVERY YEAR to volunteer. It's required by the district and can take some time to process, so we ask that you submit it as soon as you sign up for a shift. Thank you!!

Cozy Gift Basket Raffle

Keep an eye out for a cozy gift basket raffle we’ve organized which will be on display at Make It Take It! We already have hundreds of dollars worth of goodies, all generously donated from local businesses. With the bounty of goods inside, winners can consider their holiday gift shopping sorted, with copious treats leftover for themselves!

Tickets are $5 each and you'll have two chances to win. Members of the PTO will be selling tickets at winter choral concerts, Make It Take It, and other avenues to be announced. Don't miss your chance to enter to win one of these gorgeous baskets!

Minted Holiday Card Fundraiser

If your family typically sends out holiday cards, we have exciting news to share! We are partnering with Minted this year to offer you a discount on your annual cards while also raising money for the PTO-- a win-win! 

Here's how it works: Use the promo code FUNDRAISEYARMOUTH at checkout and receive a 20% discount on your order. Minted will then donate 10% of the sales earned using the code back to us! 

Please feel free to share the code with friends and family to help us raise even more. The promo code will also remain active year-round, so you can use it for weddings, birth announcements, and so much more while continuing to support the PTO. 

Our code is specific to our organization, and we ask that you please don’t use coupon sites like Honey or RetailMeNot to share it, as that could affect our donations.

We hope you're as excited about this new opportunity as we are! Our personal favorite Minted feature is that it can even address all of your envelopes for you -- a valuable time-saver during an extremely busy season! 

Thanks, as always, for all of your support! 

Deadline extended: TODAY is the last day to order your 2025-2026 Directory!

The Yarmouth PTO's school directory is created annually to help you connect with local families with students in PreK-8th grades. This easy-to-use tool makes contact information readily accessible, fostering community communication, supporting school activities, and facilitating connections with friends outside of school hours. (With a long winter break not so far off, this last benefit is especially helpful!) 

Membership Toolkit, our directory service, has been updated with the information of families who have opted in to participate in the Yarmouth PTO Directory. If you have opted in, please check your information, as this is what will be included in the printed booklet.

You can access the directory information in one of three ways:

1) Online through Membership Toolkit. Use the same email address you provided to PowerSchool to create or log into your account.

2) On your Apple or Google phone or device through the Membership Toolkit app (respective app stores linked). You can log in once you have created an account.

3) Order a printed booklet to have on hand for $10 each here. Orders for printed booklets are now due TODAY, November 25, 2025. We will only have one print run this year, so please plan accordingly.

Have a question? See the FAQ sheet here.

December PTO Meeting

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, December 18th at 4 PM in the YES library. Our meetings are open to everyone, and we plan to have a babysitter available. We hope to see you there! 

PTO Gather & Greet 

Join us on Tuesday, December 2nd for our monthly casual coffee hour at Fox & the Fiddle (inside 317 Main) any time after 8:45 am. If you're hoping to learn more about the organization or would just like to chat with some other parents and community members, we hope you'll join us. Drop in, grab a coffee from the cafe, and pull up a chair! 

Gather & Greet is a recurring event on the first Tuesday of each month, so even if you can't make it this month, we hope to see you in January!

We wish you all a happy Thanksgiving! We're grateful to operate in such a wonderful community. 

To help us keep dismissal running as safely and efficiently as possible, we ask that all parents and caregivers remain in their cars during pick-up and pull forward as directed by staff. This helps us keep traffic moving and ensures a safer environment for students and families. Please also remember to have your car tag clearly visible in every vehicle at pick-up time so we can quickly match students with cars. Thank you for your continued help, patience, and support with this routine!

Who? 5th Grade Chorus, Band and Orff Ensemble, Families and Friends

When? Band Students will meet Mrs. Stebbins in the gym with instruments and music at 5:45. Students in the Chorus and/or Orff Ensemble only will be at school by 5:45. Concert begins at 6:00 in the YES Gym and we anticipate being done by 7:00.

Who? 4th Grade Chorus and Orff Ensemble, Families, and Friends

When? Performers will be at school by 5:45. Concert begins at 6:00 in the YES Gym and should wrap up by 6:45.

We will hold an all-school community meeting that morning and enjoy another performance of the concert with our 4th and 5th graders.

As our last student day before the holiday break, we have declared "Comfy Clothes Day" once again at YES.  Everyone can start picking out their favorite comfy clothes to wear to school on this day. PJs seem to be the clothing of choice again this year!

Happy New Year! Remember that classes resume at YES on Monday, January 5th.