Division 10's News of the Week

Walking in a winter wonderland!!!!
Does all this snow make you want to sing the Xmas carol?
Looking out my window, it is absolutely beautiful. It is so quiet and peaceful and bright!
Getting around and out of the neighbourhood, a little more challenging, however we are trying to walk and just enjoy the moment. I hope you are too.
Due to this beautiful snowfall, we did have to cancel our skating session on Friday. We had to put the safety of the children first and the beautiful thing was how the children handled the news of our cancellation. No one said, "it's not fair" or seemed overly disappointed. They loved the snow and playing in it, so it was a great trade off for them. Have I told you before what wonderful children you have?

Last week was a short but productive week full of guest visitors, guest teachers, and special events. I will give you a highlight of our week in words and later in pictures.

Monday--was a professional day.
Tuesday--We talked about Chinese New Year and read a great book called the The Great Race. About animals who were challenged to race to the Jade Castle and see who would be first in the Zodiac calendar. Then we talked about the characteristics of the people who were born in the year of the rooster and did some beautiful art to go along with their writing. We also spent time in the library with Ms. Whitelaw and talked about poetry that "exaggerated" things. We wrote poems about how we would love our friend even if they had.....(ears as big as an elephants)...ask your child some of their exaggerations. They were pretty funny. Then finally in the afternoon the children had Mr. Tozack in and they worked on the ipads. I think they did some stop animation???? Ask your child as by now they are more computer literate than I am!

Wednesday-Happy Groundhog Day. The groundhog did not see his shadow (the Canadian one anyway) so spring is on its way...so why the snow??? hmmm??? We did some great writing in the first person. We were the groundhogs!!!

Thursday--We had our Owl visit! What a wonderful feast of information we received from Jen at the Owl Rescue Center. We also got to meet Cricket the little Australian Boobook Owl and a Peregrine Falcon whose name escapes me (but Im sure your child will remember). We joined Ms. Applebees class and listened to a one and a half  hour presentation. The children were amazing. They had to sit still and make no sudden noises or loud outbursts. They were perfect!

To continue then with our presentations, Deana, our first nations worker, came in and talked about how our communities then and now were so different. We then started our Musqueam community mural. The children created Salmon in the style used by the first stations artists. Salmon were very important to the Musqueam people as they felt they had similar DNA. And then on Friday we added to our mural by creating Owl topped totem poles. You will need to come in and see our growing mural.

As you can see our week was filled with wonderful stuff!

Finally:

Clement reads us his favourite book in French!

Saori shows us her Year of the Rooster artwork.

Nina and Eli work on their Year of the Rooster creations.

Saori does her book talk.

This is Cricket!

happy ground hog day!

our door

Our mural, just getting started

look at the intricacy of their scales!

Our school on Friday!

1) Ms. Jung and I have also been organizing more lessons with our SPEC coordinator Nikoo and have set up more dates to learn about gardening, the importance of bees in nature and so on. To have Nikoo come in and organize and support the planting as well as teach as many valuable skills about our environment and connecting children to their food, to each other, to nature and to the community we must charge everyone 15 dollars for the years lessons.
So if everyone can bring in a check or cash for this amount by next Friday that would be greatly appreciated. The check is to be made out to Bayview School.

Thats all I have,
enjoy the snow and I will see you all on Monday!
teri