Division 10's News of the Week

Hi Parents,
Well I think Fall is officially here...the rain is falling, the heaters are on, the squirrels are running everywhere and we are starting to bunker down with our cozy blankets and sweaters!! Brrrrr.
Having said that it is now time to think about the rainy weather! We as a staff still strongly believe that the children should be outside getting some fresh air, even if it is wet fresh air...but we do not want them getting sick because of them not wearing appropriate gear. So, it is the time to make sure that they have rain jackets with hats and boots for puddles and a change of clothes, in the events that the rain sneaks under all of their appropriate outer wear! Also, it is very important that they all then have indoor shoes to change into so that they do not get our carpet wet and muddy. WE do a ton of work on the carpet and this will ensure that our carpet stays clean.Thank you for that. And that is my inspirational message for the morning...now for all the things that we have done this week!!
The Terry Fox run was a success! Thank you to the parents who cheered on our children as they ran loop after loop around the school. They were soooo excited and sooo positive about their running. We had watched a video on Terry Fox and really talked about what an inspiration he was to all of us and how he is truly one of Canadians heros. The children wrote about him afterwards and did a great job. I will include a picture of it in this blog. Thank you to all that donated to the Terry Fox fund. As a school we collected $725 dollars. That is almost a hundred dollars more than we collected last year. Yippee for Bayview families!!
This week we had our guest gardener in. For the last maybe five years we have had Catriona, a former Bayview parent who now works as a school and garden coordinator educator for SPEC. She is passionate about environmental education and organic gardening and loves to enthuse the kids about the amazing world of plants. She will be doing 6 or 7 lessons over the year of which the first one we had was this past Thursday. She talked to the kids about mulching and how important it was to mulch a garden and get it ready for the spring. We looked at the different types of mulches and then she took them out in small groups of 4 or 5 to clean out our garden beds (which is at the back of the church across the street) and plant some cover crops. Catriona was especially proud of all the children with their enthusiasm to try curly kale, some raw broccoli and the chives that are growing there. Later on we will be asking for a financial contribution to keep our garden growing and for paying Catriona for her wonderful gardening workshops.
We have had a busy week in the classroom as you can see. We have continued on with our printing and spelling program and I was very proud of the excellent results on the spelling test that all the children had on Friday before the Terry Fox Run. Thank you for reinforcing their spelling at home. The home reading is also coming along very nicely. Please continue to try to read every night and return the books every morning. for a teacher/volunteer assisted exchange. If the book that your child is way tooooo easy, write me a note or send me an email, or have your child talk to me about it and we will move them up a level. We do want them to read what they love to and are capable of reading!
We did our second Todd Parr lesson this week. We talked about who Todd Parr was and how unique his art was. Did you know he puts noses on animals but not on humans??? We will be continuing on with our Todd Parr unit in a team teaching capacity with Super Y in the library. That is very exciting!!
WE are still doing our Student of the week and this week it was Katelyn. Katelyn did an excellent job of expressing her likes and interests and is a very good public speaker. Kudos to Katelyn. WE are working on her book right now.
Finally a big thank you to everyone coming out to the meet the teacher open house. It was great meeting you!

BEFORE I SIGN OFF THIS LONG NEWSY LETTER:
I had an oopsy daisy...our two week old electric sharpener went crashing to the floor the other day....it truly was an accident...just wondering if anyone has a good used electric sharpener that they might want to donate to our class? We are currently writing with very dull pencils...argh!