The K-8 Yarmouth PTO provides field trips, visiting specialists, enrichment supplies, and community events through financial support from you, our school families.
Enrichments & activities that the PTO funded last year:
All PTO Schools (Rowe, YES, HMS):
- Teacher Appreciation – Through parent donations, gift cards were purchased from local restaurants for all K-8 staff, bus drivers, and crossing guards. New microwaves for YES and Rowe. A small box of Valentine chocolates for each Rowe staff member.
- Events to build community among school families – Examples of our Welcome Committee events include apple picking, mom’s night out, family dinner out, ice skating, coffee with the principal, movies, Disney on Ice, and more.
- Make-it Take-it Craft Fair – (Cancelled due to social distancing restrictions.) Provided a document of craft ideas along with links and videos for students to make crafts at home.
- Ice Cream Social – (Modified for spring semester) A yearly tradition every spring that everyone looks forward to. Students enjoy ice cream (of course), a book sale, showing off their own displayed artwork, and choosing which baskets to put their raffle tickets in. This year Rowe and YES will have separate Ice Cream Socials. This year, we held a basket raffle for K-4 students. Thirty students received either a raffle basket or $50 gift card to Island Treasure Toys.
- Silver Graphics – Parents can pick from almost fifty fun and beautiful keepsakes that feature their child’s artwork.
- Movie Nights – In typical years we hold a movie night for each school population, as long as we have a parent to run it. Students get to vote which movie they most want to see and then enjoy a family movie night with friends, pizza, popcorn, and baked goods.
- Spirit Wear Merchandise – This is not a fundraiser for the PTO but more of a service we provide to parents and staff who are interested in purchasing Yarmouth gear.
- Kindness Activities which vary from making toys for shelter animals, to visiting residents in assisted living facilities, to food and essential non-food needs drives.
- Helpful live resource documents such as the Camp Packet that contains information about area camps, and the Welcome Packet that has an exhaustive amount of local and state-wide event information that is helpful to families both new and seasoned.
- Paper and online directory to help keep families in touch with each other. This year, due to receiving family information late in the school year, we offered the online directory only free of charge.
- The Bike Swap – (cancelled due to social distancing restrictions) Take your gently used wheeled items and sell them at the Bike Swap. Bikes and other wheeled items are then available for purchase.
- Parent Education – Fall Event: Parenting during a pandemic with Anne Marie Read. Winter Event: Parenting with Marjie Longshore.
Rowe:
- Students participate in a drive for Maine Needs, providing struggling Mainers with basic material needs such as books, clothing, shoes, hygiene kits, arts kits, household items, and more. Students could also choose to make a card for Maine Needs patrons.
- Breakaway lanyards for each student to ensure masks are not lost or dropped and used by other students.
- Playground toys and equipment to help promote social distancing among students.
- Subscription to Mystery Science for K-1 – a website that presents science topics in a child-centered, engaging way.
- Ravensburger puzzles for play during student transition times.
- Playdough for play creations during student transition times.
- Virtual Chewonki owl presentation.
- Snow scooters for students to use during recess, allowing for outside and safe individual play.
- Microwave for staff
- Valentine’s Day chocolates for staff
- First graders receive 24 sleds for extra outside and socially distanced breaks
- Kindergartners receive a mix of hands-on and virtual tide pool artifacts from Coast Encounters
- First grade receives a mix of hands-on and virtual horseshoe crab presentation from Coast Encounters
- Rowe receives lessons on bike safety from the Youth Cycle Project
YES:
- Virtual presentation from Kevin Hawkes, author and illustrator of “The Library Lion,” “The Wicked Big Toddlah,” “Westlandia,” and more.
- Food drive through Wayside Food Programs – students can donate food items or make a card or picture for food pantry patrons.
- Subscription to Mystery Science for grades 2-4 – a website that presents science topics in a child-centered, engaging way.
- Pumpkins for each student to create artwork.
- Time for Kids subscriptions for 4th graders, including remote learners
- Math pouches for 3rd graders
- Jumping Beans enrichment for each 2nd grade classroom
- Microwave for staff
- 4th grade t-shirts
- Field Day tie-dye t-shirts
- Supplies for Field Day
HMS:
- Large climbing structure for HMS playground with three dimensional nets, bouncy ropes, symmetrical climbing paths. Students can climb to the top or sit in the structure to hang out with their friends.
- Funded a 5th grade teacher to attend Lucy Calkin’s Writing Program virtually. The program will help 5th grade language arts teachers transition to the elementary school and carry the 4th grade language arts curriculum into 5th grade. All 5th grade language arts teachers will receive this training, funded by other non-PTO sources.
- Subscription to Mystery Science for 5th graders – a website that presents science topics in a child-centered, engaging way
- Slushie truck for 8th grade end of the year celebration.
- Science equipment for 7th grade.
- Bird seed to bring the birds to the library window for student club sightseeing
- Novels to help build teacher classroom libraries. Book stories and authors are diverse to help build cultural competency
- Tote bags for all 5th graders to help carry their materials
- 8th graders view the virtual play, “Hear My Voice,” a dramatization of a young white woman’s experience as a suffragette during World War l
- 6th graders receive gratitude journals and calm/fidget strips
- Replaced 100 6th grade math books (Variables and Patterns) that were not returned when students returned in the fall
- Virtual field trip to the Freedom Trail for 5th graders
- 5th grade kindness t-shirts
- Build 8th grade civil rights library through purchase of several civil rights books from Royal River Books