Good Morning Parents!!
Can you believe it is December 16th already? Only 9 more days!! I think I am as excited as the children. Not only is it Christmas but my birthday falls on Boxing Day...so it is a very celebratory time for me and my family!
We have been busy little elves in the classroom, and having so much fun as well. The decorating of the gingerbread houses on Friday was wonderful. Thank you to Leah's mom Angela who helped divie out the candy and with cleanup...and thank you to Brady's mom Jody who provided all the excellent icing for our houses. You will see pictures of smiling faces at the end of this blog. So keep reading!!
During these past few weeks we have been making a book of symbols of Christmas. The children have learned about an important symbol and then have done some writing, reading and art about it and have put it into a booklet that they will be taking home. It is truly a keepsake! In spite of the excitement we have still been doing our reading, writing and 'rithmetic. There will be a spelling test on Friday...so continue to study the words at home.

Now a look at our week:
Wednesday: We will talk about Hannukah. The grade ones will make Latkes with our cooking moms in the afternoon after we read about Hannukah and write about Hannukah and add to our symbols book. Latkes are a delicious potatoe pancake...there may be some leftover so take a peek when you pick up your child...we like to share.

Thursday: Pancake breakfast, pajama day. The annual pancake breaky, santa visit, pajama day will be happening this Thursday morning. We will eat pancakes likely around 915 and then shortly after run off our pancakes by going to gym...hopefully their bellies will be okay...haha. If your child does not like pancakes, please have them eat before hand so they are not starving.
After lunch we will be walking across the street to the church to watch a movie that Mr. Hodson has made. Mr. Hodson has written, produced, filmed many movies that are quite amazing. WE are lucky to have him as part of the school. This movie will take place from 100ish till 200ish.

Friday: Our last day of school. We will be busy wrapping gifts, making cards, cleaning our desks, cleaning our room and then in the afternoon we will decorate cookies ( I made some sugar cookies that the children will ice) and we will watch a little movie and then just play. Often the children do not get enough time to just play with each other, so that is what our plan is.

Your child will receive their report card on Friday as well.
And with that, enjoy the pictures and have a great holiday. Stay healthy and have fun! I hope to hear all about your holidays in January.
Lots of love and best wishes,
xoxo 
teri

Our finished properties!

Letters to Santa!

Good Morning Everyone!
Did you know there are only 18 more sleeps till Xmas??? Wow, time is simply flying and we are all doing so well!! The kids are excited but great. I am excited and great as well!! We had a fun week this last week with Tiago presenting on Monday about Sinterklass Day, a Dutch Holiday that celebrates by putting your clogs in front of your fire place and if you are good it is filled with candy...this does not replace Christmas but is a celebration of Santa Claus.  Afterwards we wrote about this celebration and put it into our Symbols of Christmas book that we are working on this month. Ms. Linton came in and talked about the symbolism behind yummy Gingerbread cookies and then our third page in our book was talking about the symbolism behind Poinsettias. In art we painted some lovely poinsettias which will be displayed when you get to school, on Monday. They are lovely!! Next week we will be writing letters to Santa, you will get a copy to send to him and we will be blessed with a baby visit on Thursday. Besides that we have tons of other great activities.....wait till you hear about a covetted classic that we do every year...it's the.....

GINGERBREAD HOUSE MAKING ACTIVITY:
This Friday between recess and lunch we will be making our annual gingerbread houses.  I will be providing the cardboard structures, and the graham crackers. Brady's family will be providing the icing (thank you Jody and Brian) and what I need from you is this: everyone needs to bring a small (500 ml) milk container, this will be the base for the house...it needs to be emptied and clean and brought to me by Wednesday so i can set up the structures. All the children need to bring in some candy....not a lot, we share, but some ideas besides candy...marshmellows, shreddies, raisins, chocolate chips, candy canes, pretzels...etc. We have so much fun on this day. Baking will be cancelled on this day...the grade ones will take their cooking turn the following Friday. 

Finally, our love hamper...thank you so much for everything that has been sent already. We have lots of "gift" items, but are short on the food. If you would like to contribute food, like Peanut free items...pasta, pasta sauces, cereals, soups etc. That would be lovely.

Thank you so much...a few pictures of wonderful things in our classroom.
Have a great day,
xoxo 
Teri

Brady reading one of his favourite books to the class....a porcupine in a pine tree.

The grade ones wrote a reindeer story and painted their own little reindeers to go with it.

Our bear winter collages....very cute!

Why do babies cry? Kacey came in and we talked about why they cry and then how to comfort them. This is part of our roots of empathy program!

Hi parents,
I am so sorry that I have been so slow on the blog this week, report cards have taken up most/all of my home time. I love teaching...but report cards...welllllll???
Anyway, I'm baaaaaaaaaaack!
This last week and this coming week has been filled with guests! And our children have been wonderful!
Last week we had Dahlia and Ebony in...our first baby visit. You can see the pictures outside our classroom, above the chldren's mailboxes of Dahlia and Ebony. We were all so excited to meet baby Dahlia...she was very curious and we discovered that she was longer than the baby doll that we made guesses on.

We had Nikoo in from Spec. She came in and talked about how seeds travel. We looked at a lot of different seeds and then drew pictures of them. Did you know that a cranberry travels by water as does a coconut. This was so much fun!

Gracie, niece-ish, from Victoria came and spent the day with us. She said the class was "lovely" and she wanted to come back!

We met Kathy yesterday, a nutritionalist who works for cobbs and kins market and she talked to the children about healthy eating and the four main food groups, plus how important it was to eat from all the colours of the rainbow. They got to try some yummy samples. Everyone was brave and tried the purple cabbage...a few ate up all their cabbage.

Tomorrow we will have a group from Active Living coming in and doing some fitness with the children. They will be talking about how important it is to move and have exercise in your life.

As you can see it has been a very interesting, very learning filled week! With outstanding behaviours!!

This last week we learned how to write another style of poetry, this one was a diamonte...a diamond shaped poem. We wrote about spiders and we did some spider art to go with our poetry. This was our last activity on spiders. Next week we will be starting our unit on Xmas holidays and Xmas symbols. Tiago and his dad Patrick will be coming in on Monday to talk about their Xmas celebration (the Dutch way).

A big thank you to everyone who donated socks, mittens, gloves, scarves and hats. I took them to the North Vancouver Shelter and they were thrilled and in shock that a tiny school like ours could collect over 86 items in only one week. If people still have stuff to send i have the box in the office and will continue to take them items as they come in. Soon, we will be given a family to make a Love Hamper for. Usually it is a family from Hastings School. You will get more information on that very soon.

Coming up:
1)This Thursday Ruploops, a performance in the gym starting at 9:15.
2) Professional day on Friday.Do not come to school.

Finally this message from Ms.Craig:
Hello parents and students,
I must say that I am really enjoying my Tuesday's with the class. What a wonderful bunch of kids.
We get a lot done in a day and always have time for a little fun. I'm impressed by how responsible everyone is in getting down to work and taking responsibility in getting things done.
We don't have a lot of time together so we really have to make an effort to finish our work and projects each week.

The first topic we undertook in Math was shapes. The work we did will be sent home in a few weeks. If you happen to be at the classroom to drop off or pick up your child, take a peek in the entrance area around the door, inside the classroom. We have our shape art on one of the bulletin boards and around the door. Lots of cool creations. I'll take them down soon and send them home as well.

We are currently working on patterns. We made a special pattern strip for Halloween so hopefully it made it home for an added spooky decoration in your house.

Thank you for helping your child remember to return library books each week. The majority of the students have exchanged their books each week and are excited about going to the library. The students are allowed to sign out a maximum of three books but are not permitted to sign out any new books if there are overdues at home. You can return books any day of the week, if needed.

Looking forward to seeing you all again next week. Have a great rest of the week and weekend.
Ms. Craig  (Catherine

Dahlia taking a look at the children closest to her. When she was sitting with her mama, Ebony, she was very happy!

November 16th,
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and a cold good morning to everyone!
Looking out my window I see the icey blue sky, and Grouse Mountain making it's snow for the season opener today. Can you believe it? People will be starting to ski on Grouse Mountain...I can almost see them from my back window...teeny tiny, freezing cold little flecks, while I sit inside my warm kitchen. This is my preface for my next request...

On Thursday I went to the homeless shelter to drop off the Halloween candy. The workers there were sooo thankful and appreciative of the candy as they said right now due to the extreme cold weather they have an incredible amount of people staying with them and they would love the candy. When I asked them what else they might need they suggested socks and mittens that they could/would distribute to the people. This got me to thinking about our kind school children who donated so much of their candy...fifty pounds...and if we could get that much candy, could we get that much socks/mittens. Again with our buddy class, Mr. A's class we have started our campaign. We will be encouraging every child in the school to bring in either a pair of socks or mittens and put it in the box in the office. The socks or mittens do not have to be new, they just have to be adult sized and with no holes in them. Imagine if I could deliver over 300 pairs of mittens or socks to the shelter, how they would feel, maybe a little warmer and cozier. We will be keeping a graph outside of the office to see how many we can collect! Hope you all can help.

I am so excited to be able to share this next piece of information with you. We are going to be a Roots of Empathy classroom. Our class even has a former Roots baby....Sadie, our very own was once a little visiting baby. We also have siblings of Roots baby....Matthew's sister and Samara's sister were also babies at Bayview. So this is a perfect time for us as well. Ebony, an SSW at Bayview will be bringing her little baby, Dahlia to our school. She will be our new roots baby. Our first lesson will be taught by Casey (a current SSW at Bayview) on Monday and then Ebondy will be bringing in Dahlia on Wednesday for our first baby visit. Forms were sent home to give permission for pictures, etc to be taken, can you please sign them and return them as soon as possible. There will be a picture board outside of our classroom that will hi-lite what we are doing with our baby and will show how Dahlia is growing. I personally am so very excited!!!! What a great learning experience.

Information:
1) School fees due, please send them back in the envelope provided.
2) Off to a running start is cancelled for our class (as well as Ms. Jung's class). It is too cold and too slippery and I don't want any injuries. We will resume running in the spring, when big boots and big bulky jackets are not an issue.
3)Pictures have been sent home for you to decide if you want to buy, or have retakes.


Finally:
Can every one try to bring in a branch, not too big, not too small, but that has about three sticks from it....we will be using it to create our own spider webs after talking about how spiders spin webs. Also if anyone has any surplus yarn for us to use, we would love this too. Our plan is to make these webs on Wednesday or Thursday. So to clarify, not just a straight stick as it cant be made into a web, but more like a branch with many little branches sticking out from it.

With that, I hope everyone has a delightful day in the sun!! Dress warmly.
xoxo
Teri

This is where our roots of empathy information will go.

This beautiful writing and art work was up in the gym for our amazingly, beautiful, sincere, special assembly.

So beautiful!! I am sure you will want to frame this!!

Good evening parents,
Has everyone adjusted to the time change yet? I was up at 430 am just because my body is used to waking up at 530am. Is it time to go to sleep yet???? hahaha 

The children were all really productive today and very busy. We started the morning off with our spelling and for the grade ones their two new spelling words to add to the spelling words that they have gotten in the last few weeks. Their new words are he, in...practice them and the others and before you know it, their writing and their reading will flourish, just like my grade twos did. The grade ones also focused in on the vowel sound e and worked very hard at differentiating it from the a sound. 
I had a long discussion with the grade two children as well. I told them how important it was to practice their spelling words not only for their test, but to put it into practice in their writing. I was a little surprised at how many got the word Halloween right on their spelling test, but how many wrote the word incorrectly when they told me about what they did on Halloween in their journals. So it is important to work hard at transferring their knowledge to their actual practice of it!! Please continue to practice the words with your child for their spelling "test" which is either on a Thursday (if there is a holiday Friday) but most often on a Friday.

Today we also talked about Remembrance Day. We worked on a Remembrance Day poem/art project that is almost finished and is hanging up inside our classroom. This Friday at 11am we will be having our Remembrance Day Assembly. This is our opportunity to express our thanks and show our respect to our Veterans and to those that helped us find and keep peace. Together with our friends from Division 11 we will be doing our annual "Poppy Procession". It is a beautiful, solemn, tear inducing march that you won't want to miss. For this event we are asking the children to come dressed in black, red, or white (if possible). Children who are part of the cubs or brownies, or boy scouts are invited to wear their uniforms. Due to the fact that we are in the poppy procession, the children from our class and Ms. Jung's class will not be a part of the Colour Guard Party that marches in at the beginning of the ceremony. They will just sit with their own class. Please review expectations of this solemn assembly. I already told the children that they were to be on their best behaviour. That this was an assembly that would be a no clapping, no talking assembly. Thank you for your support.

For those returning families, you will recall that we had an amazing lady who came into our classroom to teach us about gardening, that was Catriona. Catriona has gone back to school to become a teacher herself, she loved it so much so this year we have a colleague of hers named Nikoo who is from SPEC and will continue to support us with our study of gardening. Her first visit with us this year is this Wednesday where she will take small groups to the garden at the church across the street to first clean the gardens, plant the garlic and then mulch the gardens. We will be participating in the gardening whether it rains or not, so please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately. As we confirm the number of lessons that Nikoo will be teaching, we will need to charge the children $2. for each lessonb, but i will send out the that request and information at a later date.

Final bits of information:
1) If you hear your child talking about "Caleigh" she is our new volunteer that will be helping out on Mondays. Yay. Caleigh helped out last year as well, so we are excited to have her back.

2) There will be no school next Monday or Tuesday. Monday is a district closure day and Tuesday is Remembrance Day, so i will see everyone on the Wednesday after a four day weekend.

3) I hope everyone had a great Halloween. Thank you for respecting the no treats at school (besides  a cookie, or home baked snacks). Mr. A's and our buddied up to make posters inviting people to bring their excess candies, chips etc. to the office and then I will deliver it to the Shelter here in North Vancouver as well as to the Salvation Army here as well. If anyone would like to deliver some to the Covenant House, that would be great too. Just let me know. It looks like we have received a lot of candy surplus donations.  We will accept the candies till Friday, at which point i will haul it to my car!! Thank you to the children who have already shared their goods!!

Take care and have a great night and I will see you all on Wednesday,
Teri

hmmmmm. kind of blurry!! much better if you come in and take a peek in person

Hi parents,
A big wet good morning to everyone! It seems like a very long time since I have seen everyone, and am looking forward to Wednesday when I get to see all my kids again! Friday and Monday were professional days. On Friday I went to an art workshop down at Art starts on the corner of Robson and Richards. This is a new art gallery made by children, for the children. I talked to the curator there and I am in the works for setting up a workshop for our children to go there. I think they would enjoy the intimate little gallery and the activities that would be done there. So stay tuned for information on this. On Monday I worked on learning about our new school Ipad cart and how to operate the little tablets. I am excited about implementing this technology within our own class as well as being able to use the projector and laptop to further extend my lessons. Two valuable learning days!!

What have we been up to?
We are continuing, slowly but surely through our spider unit. This last week we looked at the Spiders Anatomy and learned some dinosaur words like "cephalothorax"! The children learned a very important scientific skill of "labelling".This week we will look at the life cycle of spiders. Every time we do a science project it is often linked to an art project as well. So if you come in, you will get to see both the science that we did as well as the beautiful pastel and watercolour art projects.

Every day we do math, either with Ms. Taylor, Ms. Jung or Mrs. Applebee. The children work in age appropriate groups to learn different numeration skills. The grade ones are working on teenage numbers...ie. 17 is ten and 7 more. If your child is unfamiliar with the teenage numbers, then this is a really great time to review this concept with them.

Due to our professional day cooking was cancelled. This week it will be the grade two's turn and they will make a yummy treat for the children to eat for the Halloween Festivities. If you still have not sent the $10 for cooking, I would really appreciate it. I think at this time, I only have half of the cooking fees in.

What's coming up?
Well, it's Halloween of course! The first fun filled event is the Halloween Howl which is sponsored by the PAC and JKC. The children are not to wear their costumes to school for this (which I understand is tomorrow). If they go to JKC, they can take their costumes with them. Do not send them in their costumes.

On Friday, the children will have the opportunity to wear their costumes to school. We will have our annual school parade ( I think during our assembly, in the gym), so the children will love to wear their costumes then. Please make sure that if they have big, rough, itchy, uncomfortable costumes that they can change out of it, if they want to. Also, often the children choose not to put on the face paint as it can become very uncomfortable and itchy as well if left on too long. So feel free not to put the make up on until it is time for them to go out trick or treating. 

For this Friday, our Halloween day at school, we will have a tiny, low excitement celebration together. We will snack on the cookies that the Grade 2's will make, we will have some popcorn, that i will make and we will watch a few videos about Halloween safety and maybe a Rugrat episode. Something low key as they will be excited enough as it is. It is not necessary to send any snacks or treats for this event.

Regarding "treats". I tell the children that they are not to bring their treats to school as we do talk about having healthy lunches, no junk food as it does not help them maintain a healthy energy level for the afternoon. Often after eating their candy/chocolate treats they crash and their behaviours tend to become a little irratic. So, I would appreciate your support in keeping their treats at home and enjoying them with their family. Thank you.

Enjoy your week with the children. Keep reading daily and returning the Home Reading every day. Especially, have a great Halloween!!
teri

My daughter (Abby) and I carved pumpkins last night. Guess which ones I did? Guess which ONE my artistic daughter did?

Good Morning Everyone,
It is early Tuesday morning and this is the best time for me to do my blog. Any morning people out there?
First off Thank you to everyone from myself and Ms. Craig for coming out the Intake Conferences. For me it was wonderful meeting all the new parents of our wonderful children and to have an uninterrupted opportunity to have a quick chat about expectations, concerns and philosophies. I loved it. It was also great for me to have some opportunities to talk to my former parents. Communication is a big key to my teaching. I like to communicate my expectations to the children and I like to communicate to all the parents. That shows that we are all on the same page of what is going on. So, always feel free to come in and talk to me. I have a very open door policy! With that again, thank you, and below some information!

1. We are still looking for a Monday lunch person. Thank you to Beverly's mom who has been dropping by to see if we need help....we always do. 

2. Cooking fees are still needed for our cooking program. Thank you to those who have already paid. We have had one opportunity so far for each group to cook but with all the Fridays off that has been it. We are excited to make more yummy stuff next Friday.

3.There are hot lunches being offered on Mondays and Tuesdays. Often your child does not remember that they have a hot lunch. Will you either let me know or remind your child. They must eat their hot lunch down in the lunch room as the trays are too cumbersome for little people to bring up and down.

4. Did you know that this Friday and next Monday are Professional Development Days? For my first one I plan to go to an all day Art Workshop. I am soooo excited!

5.We continue to explore Spiders. Due to our short weeks it is going slower than my usual themes, but we are still enjoying them. We wrote some simple poetry and combined it with som bright line art on "I like Spiders". This week we will be talking about the Spiders Anatomy. So get ready for some big words coming out of their mouths.

6. If you are a grade two parent you should have received a math news email forwarded to you from me from Ms. Jung. If you did not get it , let me know. In grade one the children are covering numbers to 30, recognizing more, less and the same...and working hard on correct number formation. Please help reinforce the numbers to 30 at home. Working on the teenager numbers is critical right now, helping them remember that it is 12 (for twelve) not 21.
Counting forwards and backwards from 30 and for some from 100. The beginning of grade one math is numeration and solidification of the numbers. Some may think it goes slowly for their child, but you will feel confident when they begin their grade two math, how confident and prepared they are for the challenges that Ms. Jung throws at them.

Lastly, I would like to do some clay work on Thursday afternoon from about 100 till 300. If I could have a parent helper, that would be great. It does not take any skill to do this project. It might take a little muscle power in rolling out clay slabs...but that's it. This parent will be calling children one at a time to do a simple clay leaf. If you can help....I would sure appreciate it. Just remember it's first come first serve!! Ha ha.

With that have a great week.  
Teri

Happy Tuesday morning to everyone and a happy belated Thanksgiving to all as well.

I hope everyone had a fantastic long weekend with their friends and family and that all the bellies are full with the feasts that they enjoyed! We talked with the children about sharing food together with friends and families and how it is such a special opportunity to have conversations and talk about their day, not just on Thanksgiving but everyday. We had the opportunity to share some food on Friday as the Grade ones made some very delicious Applesauce muffins with the cooking mom and grandma team. They turned out to be very yummy and the smells of the muffins were so tantalizing and eagerly awaited to be munched on at the end of the day. Thank you grade ones and thank you cooking supporters. It was a busy day on Friday what with assembly, gym, buddies (we made a beautiful thankful turkey with our buddy class which is displayed right outside Mr.A's door), then we had cooking, grade two guided reading (thank you to Samara's mom ...michelle for supporting us in this), then art and writing about Thanksgiving. That was our fulllll on day for Friday. You will have the opportunity to see our writing/art on Thanksgiving when you come to the parent teacher conferences today and Wednesday. Both Ms. Craig and I look forward to meeting up with everyone. Thank you again for all your support.

Important Information:
1) We have started our cooking program this year which is a very valuable part of my curriculum. The children have the opportunity to learn about cooking, how to stir, about ingredients, about measuring, taking turns, writing up a recipe and other important scientific things that go along with cooking. To make this possible, we are asking for $10.00 from every child for the purchase of ingredients. At this time I think that will be all that we need for the entire year. I will let you know later in the year if money runs out, but usually costco purchases keep us going all year long. Send your money in cash, as that is easier for me to pay off the parents who are purchasing the supplies. Thank you.

2) Please send your child with indoor shoes to change into especially as the weather is becoming very rainy and when they come in boots they are often tracking muddy stuff into the classroom and onto the carpet where they sit. Thank you.

3) Continue to read every day and return the home reading bags every day as well. Even if the child cannot read their home reading book that day, it is still important to send it back as in the afternoon during Drop Everything And Read, they read to a partner. The grade ones are typically partnered up with a grade two and then are reading their books once again out loud to them, then the grade twos read four pages of their chapter books out loud to their grade one partner. So as you can see it is important to remind your child to get into a habit of reading their book at home and then putting it immediately into their back packs. Thank you.

Finally big thank yous to:
1) All the families who sent in kleenex, handy wipes, soap, plastic bags and an electric sharpener and so many other wonderful things for our classroom...thank you thank you...it is soo appreciated.
2) All the parents who are helping with the lunch program...coming in and looking after the children....you will see a much happier child with a full belly, ready to learn. The only day still not covered right now is Monday. So if you think you have some Monday time to hang out...it is usually from 1200 till 1230, we would appreciate the help.
3) To the moms who are doing the cooking (and a grandma)...the children love it and I appreciate it.

If there are any of you who still want to volunteer, please let me know. You are always welcome.
With that, have a great week and I will see many of you tomorrow at our Intake conferences.

We are learning about spiders. This shows what we already know!

Cheers,

Our smiling portraits, in the style of Todd Parr

Teri

Hello to everyone,
I am soo excited to be starting my blog...i even took a couple of pictures to add to the excitement of them.
Thank you for getting back the paper work to me...some are still coming, so don't think I don't want them I do.
As I said earlier today, I am soo excited to be back in the saddle again and am falling in love with the class. They are a wonderful group. I am especially proud of the grade 2's for being such amazing role models and for taking on such leadership roles. They have been waiting since last year for their turn at "putting up chairs, taking down the attendance, doing the calenders etc." Just you wait grade ones, it will be your turn next year.

During our first week back we were busy learning rules of the classroom (give me five on the carpet), how to be safe, fair and kind and just participating in activities where they had to listen to multiple directions and do what I asked them to do for an entire day. That is exhausting. But if you have been into the classroom you can look around and see all their amazing work already.
We have artwork and writing about themselves in the hallway, and writing and artwork in the classroom. If you haven't discovered already, we love to do art and are constantly decorating our class.

This year there will be a lot of teacher's involved in the education of your child.
Mainly it will be me...yayayayy
On Tuesdays you will have Ms.Craig (another big yay)
Now...onWednesdays you will have Ms. Montagano...she will teach the children social responsibility and eventually they will do the care kit. Mrs. Montagano is a teacher of the grade 4/5's and while she is teaching your child I will be teaching the art to her kids.

On Thursdays, Mr. Asmoucha (Mr. A) will do social studies and music. He is sooo funny and kind and an amazing guitar player. The children are always very excited when they know he is coming!!

On Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, your child will work with Mrs. Hinds...the PE teacher...please come properly fitted, equipped (running shoes etc) for her highly energetic days.

And finally the grade 2's will be receiving Math instruction from Ms. Jung. (I will be teaching hers and my grade one math)

AS you can see it's kind of like being in high school!! If you have any questions for any one of the teachers or myself...always feel free to drop in for a chat!!

Just a little more reading and I will sign off:
1)We are in dire (yep dire) need of two more lunch parents...one for mondays and one for Tuesdays. If you can do it on a daily, we would love for you to volunteer!!

2) Also...on alternating Fridays we will be cooking first the grade 2's then the grade ones's so I need some cooking parents...especially for the grade one class...at this point i only have one parent(grandparent) being able to do this job. If we do not get enough parents, I would have to divide that group in half and then they would only be cooking once every three weeks. So hopefully someone can help!!

3) Home reading is very important. Please help your child remember to read and then put their homereading in their back packs!!

FINALLY:
If you have not sent back the two forms...one information on your child, or the sign up for parent teacher interviews, please do so asap.

And with that, 
feel free to email me anytime you want...i will try respond in a timely fashion!!

TAke care and enjoy the sunshine!!

that's the jam we made and tried...so delish

teri

Thank you thank you thank you!!
I am so sorry that this has taken me so long to express my gratitude to everyone. But here I go:

Thank you for my very generous gift to costco. I am waffling between some spa utopia packages, a tablet (but abby says go for an apple ipaddy thingy like unit) as she says the tablet is too confusing for peeps like me, or some jewellry. I love my gift and am so very lucky to have received such a generous gift.

Thank you for my card. I love my card. I love the beautiful words that you wrote in them that made me cry all the way home. I read it in the car before I left and I was so emotional. The crash landing of our year end and your nice words to me had me blubbering.

Thank you for your children. I loved getting to know each and everyone of them and watching them grow over the year and for some two. They are beautiful, precious, and wise little boys and girls who showed such an out pouring of love for me once they heard we were on strike. The hugs, the coins, and the cards, as well as their innocent proclamations of how they support and love us. 

Thank you for all the help that i received from everyone over the year. To the moms and dads who helped me at lunch, thank you. To the moms who did my cooking program, you are saints! And to all that helped drive, make ice cream, make music for our centennial, come in and do presentations, water and tend our gardens.....thank you!

I feel like i could go on and on and on, but I want to end this with all my appreciation for everyone who has come and visited me and the others on the line. You give us such support and optimism, we all appreciate you. Thank you to Candy who has opened up her bathroom for all of us! Greatly appreciated...and if you want to come and share some hugs...i of course have the early bird shift...i am there at 630 and am off by 930. Drop by and say hi!

With that, I am going to try and load in some of our butterfly release pictures for you to enjoy with your children.
I love you all,
Have a fantastic summer,
Teri

Good Morning Parents,
I think I am able to send this out to you as it is a working day and within the hours of me possible being at work. With the lock out we have been given many restrictions that we must follow, many that do not make any sense to us teachers at all. We were told not to be available to children at recess and lunch, not to do any extra curricular field trips over recess and lunch and so on. We were told that we could not come any earlier than 815 am (yikes for me) and not stay any later than 345pm. 

This brings me to my main point.
This Wednesday is our big Centennial Celebration. Our class along with Ms. Jung's class has been working very hard at singing this beautiful song that Mr. A wrote, called, this School is Your School. We plan to be the Opening Act for the centennial and will sing it on the stairs at Bayview at 310 and then dismiss the children to their parents then. The children who go to JKC will be picked up by JKC staff after the song. The children who do not go to JKC must have a parent or guardian pick them up after the song. If you do not want your child to participate, or they cannot participate, let me know and I will release them to you right after school.

Thank you to everyone for their support yesterday (and the timbits and the washroom facilities).
Your ongoing support and your appreciation and "love" is always felt and cherished.
Thank you 
Teri

Being Brave

This is a video that the kids helped make about being brave.  They had fun dancing and taking photos with Annie's mom, Cherish. We even got to show the video to the whole school!

We hope you enjoy!!
 http://youtu.be/x_3c-mCdOVQ

Good Morning Everyone,
Welcome back to all the parents and children. Over the last few weeks I have heard some great stories about your Spring Break and now we are all settled and ready to continue our third term!
We had a belated start to our Frog unit as the first week back was filled with a lot of exciting activities. We had a free presentation from a local folk singer named "Eric" who sang for forty five minutes, a whole bunch of folk songs that represented a variety of music. He played his guitar and his banjo. The children loved it. Because it turned April while we were gone we also decided to do some rain art and some rain writing. We looked at the cherry blossoms and did some cherry blossom poetry.And of course we worked on our math.The grade two's are now beginning their final unit on math which will take them into double digit adding and subtracting with regrouping and carrying. We will start with our adding and carrying.Please practice this new strategy at home with them. Practice makes perfect. With the grade ones we will be solidifying our knowledge of adding and subtracting to 15, learning and memorizing our doubles and working on different strategies for adding besides using our fingers.

This week:
1. On Wednesday we will have an author visit in the library. Her name is Fiona Bayrock. She is the author of "Bubble Homes and Fish Tails". She mainly writes factual books. I am sure this will be a very fascinating author visit. It will take place at 940 on Wednesday as a result our gym time will be moved to Thursday at 905am.

2.On Thursday our report cards will be sent home. Please keep the inside (the report card) but send back the envelope signed. Last term a few were not returned and we do need to have them.

3. Over the year Catriona has come in as part of a SPEC program to deliver a set of gardening lessons. Right now our garden at the church is sprouting like crazy. The lettuce is up, the radishes are growing, there are long garlic leaves. It is sooo exciting to watch it grow. This next Monday Catriona will be coming in to discuss flowers and the necessity of the flower on plants. For this lesson we are asking if any parent can go to an Iga or Safeway and see if they might want to donate a class set of flowers to our class...preferable ones with visible stamens...ie. tulips/lilies or a combination of them...they do not have to be in the best of shape, petals can be falling off etc....If anyone can do that it would be greatly appreciated. Also for our next set of lessons I will be needing $5.oo from each child to pay for this wonderful program. All money goes directly to SPEC. Send the money in a ziplock, with the name marked on the baggie. Thank you.

Thank you to 
1. Chloe's mom and dad for helping us out on Friday. They helped us plant our indoor seeds. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, basil and lettuce. These are the seeds that need to start indoors before they can be transplanted and sent outdoors. They will join our SPUDS in tubs that are already sitting by the windows. WE will be watching all of our plants grow and will be looking forward to the harvesting that we will be getting to do in June. Our tummies are grumbling already.

Have you seen the Daffodils?
The daffodils that we planted outside are in full bloom. This is perfect for April as it is Daffodil Month, and Cancer Awareness month. As a result we have made a bunch of daffodils with our buddy class which you will see through out the school and the hallways. So not only are they outside but inside as well!

With that,
Feel free to come in anytime and take a peek at our growing children, our growing spuds and our growing seeds. It is an exciting and wonderful time in our classroom!
Teri

Good Morning everyone!
Is it snowing again??? It is here on the North Shore, the mountains look absolutely beautiful, I hope everyone is going to go and have fun in the snow while it is here. On that note, with the rain and the snow it is soo important to have indoor shoes to change in and out of. When they come in from the outdoors they need to put on some dry shoes, and then when they go out...on goes their outdoor shoes. It is a great time for them all to practice their shoe tying skills! Even if it hurts their little bellies to do so....inside joke with Ben and myself!

This Friday I got to see many of the families from Bayview at the gala. What an amazing event!! The decorations were outstanding, the items up for auctions were wonderful, the food was fantastic and the auctioning of our platter.....intense! Our platter finally went to Annie's grandpa who apparently was moved to tears when he excitedly got the platter. Congratulations to him. It was definitely a beautiful platter! Thank you to everyone who helped with the Gala and contributed their time, their energy and the stuff that they donated for our gift basket. I think our gift basket raised a considerable sum. If you didn't get to go this year, remember this date for next year. It was fantastic!!

Last Wednesday we celebrated our Pink Shirt Day. It was wonderful to see the sea of pink in our classroom. We spent a lot of time talking about the symbolism of the Pink Shirt as well as writing, reading and then attending an assembly on it. Mr. T talked about committing to kindness and acceptance not just on Pink Day, but everyday. Our class also agreed that we would always try very hard to accept people for who they are and what they are like in the inside...not for what they wear and how they look on the outside. Did you know we have an amazing room of really nice children!! Kudos to all you parents!!

This Friday we will have another special assembly. It will be held at 9:25 in the gym. At this assembly Mayor Gregor Robertson will be there to speak about homelessness. Ms. Bailey's class has been doing an extensive study on the homelessness with many activities and random acts of kindness. They will be doing some presentations as well during this assembly. Parents are invited to attend.

Finally, this Thursday will be our final skating day. I am soooo impressed by the children's love of skating and of their increased confidence and ability with this sport. So many of the children have wanted to learn to skate so that they could be involved in the hockey game at the end of the arena. And touch wood...we have only had a few minor injuries! We have had more smiles that tears! Thank you in advance for everyone who has been able to drive during these field trips. Without your assistance, we could not do these fun activities.
I will be posting a bunch of pictures of skating for everyone to enjoy!

With that, 
enjoy the rest of your snowy Sunday and I will see you at school on Monday!

Teri