Good morning good morning everyone!
I would like to start this blog off with a big Thank YOU!!!
Kimberly (Neil's mom) presented me with the group Christmas gift!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. My gift bag was filled with all the things that I love! The costco card (which I think I will use to buy some work out gear for myself), the restaurant (I have never had French food and am excited to try it), wine and chocolate.Wow! I was spoiled! I feel very loved! Thank you for thinking of me and for being so generous. Lucky lucky me! That is what I tell the children all the time..how lucky I am that I know them and that I get to be their teacher!! xoxoxooxo💕

A big thank you also goes out to the following parents:
To Lily's and Felix's moms for making our icing for the gingerbread houses (it was sooo sticky and worked like a dream), and to Tea's and Hadleys mom and grandma (Beth) for coming and helping us with the decorating or our houses and the cleanup! And to my baby girl (Abby)..not a baby anymore but my baby..for supervising and reading to the children while we set up and for helping inspire the children with creating their gingerbread houses by making one for Carter who wasnt able to be there! We had soo much fun making our gingerbread houses. The smell of sweet candy and graham crackers filled the air. But the sweet smiles of the children filled my heart! I hope they made it home in one???? piece!! 

Some information for the week...
1)Instead of Off to a Running Start on Tuesday and Thursday this week we will be  OFF TO A SINGING START. To celebrate the season, all Bayview students and staff will be singing in the gym.  Please come to the classroom first to drop off your back packs and we will go down to the auditorium together. If you arrive late and we are not in the classroom, have your child leave their backpack at the door and come and find us in the gym. We will be sitting where we usually sit for assemblies.

2) It is PANCAKE AND PAJAMA DAY on Thursday. Your child can just roll out of bed and come to school!! Yay, easy!! The children are welcome to bring a stuffy to school today..perhaps do not bring their favorites ...as sometimes they get dirty and sometimes they get misplaced and I would hate to have their sleeping buddy not come home!! If you want to send a change of clothing as well that they might want to change into...then do so. I also heard rumours that a certain HO HO HO might be dropping by.
The children will be offered pancakes and water and an orange for breakfast. If they have allergies, or will not eat pancakes, have them come with a breakfast in their belly already. Bayview has been a big supporter of Covenant House over the years. This pancake breakfast is a fundraiser for the Covenant House. If you would like to help support the street youth the children may donate 3 to 5 dollars...they will be given a sticker of appreciation. All funds will go directly to the Covenant House.

3)This is our last week of school. We will be trying to continue to do our projects. We are finishing up many of our units and I have been sending entire packages home. I hope you have had the opportunity to go through things. There will be another package be sent home of our me/and family unit. My hope/mission is to keep the children calm by continuing our daily routine. I will be showing some holiday videos in the afternoon and having them participate in lots of play and creativity as their gift for working so hard this year!

Here's to a wonderful last week of school before we go off for the holidays. I am so excited to hear all the wonderful things that are going on for you and your families! 
Take care, stay healthy and I love you all!
xo
teri

Making our wreaths out of the nature that we found on our walk.They were so excited to create these lovely works of art!

Decorating our gingerbread houses....Do you see our new student???Abby fits right in doesnt she???

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Grandma Beth came to help!! Lucky us!!

Good Morning everyone!
Did you hear the rain last night? Yikes, it was quite the storm here in North Vancouver, so to wake up to the beautiful sunshine was such a nice surprise!! Hopefully the rain will hold off during the week for the children as well. It is always so much nicer to walk through the "open air" hallways when there isnt any rain!

Well we had a lovely week, full of exciting and fun activities!
On Tuesday Karlee came in and talked about urban animals but focussed primarily on Squirrels. What an engaging presentation.The children had lots of questions but were eager to listen to the information as well. Karlee had lots of pictures and then she also brought in some skulls of different animals and a stuffed hawk. On Wednesday we went out into the forest edge and thought about being a squirrel and where would we want to be in the winter? Where would we set up our habitat to be away from humans, coyotes and other predators. We then came back into the classroom to draw our safe space. The children were all so eager to get drawing to share what they learned from Tuesday.

Also on Wednesday we had a fantastic presentation the had the children dancing and snapping to some old Motown music. It was sensational!!

Deana also came in on Thursday to talk to us about Elders. How the elders in the First Nations culture were revered and respected and listened to. As we ran short of time, Deana will come in again to talk more about this important subject. We are so lucky to have Deana come in and share her stories and experiences with us!

Our cooking program is going strong. These last few weeks we have looked at "chocolate" as our primary ingredient. Last week the grade ones made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, this week we made chocolate muffins and it will be a surprise what we make on Friday with the last rotation. Thank you to Shino and Kelly and other moms who help out with our cooking. The children love it.They love to cook and they love to sample!

Another thank you the Jacqueline (Nolan's mom) and Claire (Julien's mom) for helping us with our paper macheing....a sticky but fun project. We are making ornaments to sell at the christmas market. The parents are invited to pre-buy their child's ornament if they want. Each ornament will sell for 5 dollars. I will take pictures of them when they are finished and let you take a look. The children were pretty excited about doing this.

AS you can see we have had a great and busy week!

One thing that I would like you to discuss with your children is being respectful when working with other teachers. Mr. A who comes in to do music as well as Ipad's had a very difficult class this last Thursday. He said many of the children misused the ipad's and did not follow the directions that he set out for them. He said that they were very very silly and not only disrespected him, but disrespected the ipad's. He also said that if these same children continued to not follow the directions of use, they would not be able to use the ipad's anymore. This would be very very sad. Now, he also said that children who were on task did a FANTASTIC job, did what was asked of him, and would not lose their ipad privileges. Please check in with your child and have a discussion aimed at guest teachers and following directions. I appreciate this and so will Mr. A.

And with that...enjoy the pictures...enjoy your day...and I will see you all on Monday for another great, fun filled week!
teri

Working our family tree projects.

Karlee came in to discuss squirrels.

Looking at a skull.

Deana came in to talk about Indigenous families

Playing cards with our buddy class. Memory...cards that add up to ten.

Ben, in yellow, a grade 7 student helps out with the paper mache.

Anthony, Mrs. Montagano's son, helps out with the paper mache.

Claire, Julien's mom, enjoying the paper mache.

Jacqueline and her group enjoy smoothing the ornaments!!

Good Morning Parents,
We are half way through November, I am thinking this is going rather quickly dont you think?? Before you know it it will be the Winter Holidays....wow! We have been lucky that the rain hasnt been keeping us away from going outdoors too much. In fact we spent Wednesday afternoon exploring Cedar trees. We took some rubbings of the trees, we touched bark from a Cedar tree versus the bark of Deciduous trees, we read a first nations story about the Cedar tree and how the first nation's people call it the Tree of Life. On Thursday, Deana came in to do a power point presentation and read another story about how the First Nation's used the Cedar trees and how they always respected the trees, how they asked for permission to the trees to use them and how they always thanked them afterwards. Deana really introduced the subject of respect to the children around how the First Nation's people used things from nature. After these activities we did some writings and drawings to show our learning. I am very impressed by how much the children retain and how much they are capable of writing and doing their independent activities.

Did the children tell you that we had another team from UBC that came in? This time it was a group of Student Nurses. This team of student nurses came in to talk about washing our hands and how washing our hands helps us stay healthy during cold and flu season.
The team of student nurses were very impressed by how much the children participated and how much they knew already about keeping themselves healthy. Washing our hands is a key factor in staying healthy as well as NOT putting our fingers into our mouths!!

This Tuesday we will be having another guest come in. This presenter is from the Northwest Wildlife Preservation Society. I made a mistake and said that our presenter is coming in in the afternoon, when she will be coming in after recess. To help cover the costs each student is asked to pay $6. Because the process for collecting money has changed each family member must go online to pay for the presentation. If you do not know how to do this, please call the office as I am not too clear on it myself. I sent you a link on Friday but here it is again: 

 https://vsb.schoolcashonline.com

This presentation will be all about squirrels. We have seen many squirrels on our adventures outside and I know how excited the children get when we see squirrels so this will front end load us for when we go on our next nature walk.

This Wednesday afternoon, we will also be having a school performance. The cost for the performance has been paid for by the PAC, which means all of you! Thank you, I hear the performance is supposed to be very exciting!!

Speaking of which I am still trying to get two parents to sign up for Popcorn Sales. We are allotted two days for doing this. If you can sign up, let me know and we will try to find two days. All money raised from the popcorn sales will go to the classroom for guest speakers, or fund other exciting activities.

With that, I hope you are all having a great day and a great weekend. I will see you all on Monday. Enjoy the pictures.
teri

Looking at Cedar Trees.

Hmm, a deciduous tree doesnt quite feel like the Cedar tree.

Deana reads us a story about the Cedar tree.

The UBC nurses give the children a presentation about Handwashing.

The children do a word search.

They wash their hands.

They look at the germs left on their hands with a special flashlight.

On Friday we invited our buddy class to play cards with us. We played a card game called, Make Ten.

Playing card games together is such a wonderful way to engage your child in math. They all had so much fun!

We started our stars of the week. Congratulations to all the children in the class as you are all stars!

The grade twos did some writing while the grade ones baked. We learned about the main character of a story, the setting, the problem and how to briefly state the beginning, middle and end of a story. Then of course our dessert was to do some art!

On Fridays we do art and free play in the afternoon. The children worked on their Starling art. We see tons of starlings and crows in our school yard, so I thought this would be a fun project.

The story that we read to help us with our art!

The cedar trees!