Good Morning families!!
It was sooo wonderful to see so many of the Bayview Parents at the Cabin party fundraiser. I loved being able to touch base with many of my former parents and I loved being able to talk with some of my current parents. AND it was great even meeting some of the parents that haven't had the opportunity to make it over to Camp Bayview. It was a wonderful evening of hotdogs, auctioned off items (thank you to Nolan's dad who is a great auctioneer!), treats and music (thank you to the Lollygaggers). Everyone looked so happy and relaxed and having a good time. If you didnt make it this year, I am sure we will be doing it again next year. It was a little odd not to have platters this year though, i must say! Maybe next year!

We have had a great week (albeit shorter for me as I left on Friday for the celebration of life for my wonderful neighbour)...thank you to all the people who sent me love. I certainly felt it!

This week we continued our talk about birds. We love birds and there are plenty of birds around our new school. On Wednesday we made our bird seed cookies for the birds. We looked at the simple ingredients, all took turns adding ingredients and then the next day we hung them on the trees and hopefully the birds appreciated our act of kindness.

Speaking of acts of kindness, this Wednesday, Feb.26th is our PINK SHIRT DAY. We will be celebrating kindness, acceptance and diversity. We will meet in our Family Teams to do a special activity led by our Spirit Team. We are encouraging all Bayview students,staff, parents and families to join in on this acknowledgment by wearing pink...lots of it. Please help your child contribute to this important day by helping him/her to find something pink to wear. And...if you cannot and they do not want to...then that is fine as well. We will accept everything...it is fine! Pink Shirt Day started in 2007 when two Nova Scotia high school students decided to create a "Sea of Pink" to support a grade 9 boy who was called homophobic names when he wore a pink shirt to school.
The following messages are hope to be taken from this acknowledgement:
*Colours, toys, sports, etc don't belong to any gender
*Homophobia, gender teasing, and name-calling are not OK
*Speaking up to meanness and bullying does make a difference
*students have the power to inspire meaningful change.

Bayview is an anti-bullying school. I will take this opportunity to remind the children of what to do if they find themselves or their friends in a situation where they feel uncomfortable or bullied. By definition, bullying is intentionally aggressive behaviour, repeated over time, that involves an imbalance of power. Bullying is mean but mean doesn't necessarily mean bullying!

These past weeks we have been travelling across Canada. Every Tuesday we have been lucky to have Mrs. Whitelaw join us to talk about another province. We are creating our own travel guides. This Tuesday we will be heading to Quebec! I think when we are done you will be asked to go on a cross country trip. They are certainly in the know and are like little sponges sucking up the wonderful information!! We will show you their booklets during our parent teacher child conferences.

Reminders:
1: This Friday is our last skating session. Thank you so much to all the parents who have driven for the last three. I am going to ask one more time for a beg. I am short (by a lot) for drivers for the last session. If you can help out, we meet in the classroom for 1220, and are back at the school for 240ish. If you cannot help and stay at the rink its fine, I just need you to drive there, drop off, pick up and drive back to the school. Let me know if you can squeeze in a session with us.

2: Please send in washed out milk/water containers..the four liter ones are the best, the others do not work. These will be used for making mini green houses that will stay outside over the spring break. And then we will see what we will have when we get back from our two week vacation. So exciting to watch seeds grow!

I hope you enjoy getting these weekly updates.
We do more than this...but this is just a little snapshot of your blossoming child.
Enjoy the pictures
and enjoy the rest of your day.
xo
teri

We hung our bird seed cookies in the apple trees by the field. I hope the birds enjoyed their little treats.

If you would like to make your own, here is the recipe.

Nolan was the first to take on the make a duck challenge. I went to a workshop and we were given 6 lego pieces and told to make a duck. You should have seen all the different ducks that were created. So I brought the pieces back and am curious to see how many different ducks our class will create! I like your duck Nolan!

Looking at our cookies!

Look at our sunny day!!! Hard to believe with the rain coming down right now.

HI parents,
Im going to try send some pictures of the children working in teams discovering which bird beak works for what food it collects.
Fingers crossed that it doesnt crash again..other wise..maybe ill be looking for a new computer..grrr.
xo
t

This first set of pictures is during our DAY OF PLAY. In this particular picture Sophia, a grade 7 student, came into our class to show the children how to draw different characters. Then the next few are simply of the children playing and doing what they love to do. They all played so nicely and cooperatively together!

These next pictures are of the children working in teams of two or three to discover what kind of beak works best for different foods. We used a straw bent in half and a cup that had cuts in the side to pick up different pretend foods. They tried to pick up bits of straw with a big straw and with a cup. The children had to figure out what worked the best and talk in teams. They were very engaged.

ASk your child what two items we used to figure out what worked best.
And with that...
have a great day...fingers crossed that this will post.
teri

Good Morning and Happy Superbowl Sunday!
Will you watch? or simply make superbowl nachos??? I do both...I am a pretend superbowl fan, just for the snacks and half time...I am more of a Groundhog day fan. Did he see his shadow? Will it be more winter or the start of spring? The children all predicted that he would NOT see his shadow and that spring was around the corner..well all but one! My bet is was wishful and hopeful thinking. Check out all the cute little videos on line to see what our Canadian groundhog did and what our most famous Puxatawney Phil Groundhog did? We watched a cute little video on how this celebration first started.

This week we have been busy with learning about birds and the different parts of a bird and what each part of the bird was essential for the bird to do. We will be looking at beaks this week and how different birds have different beaks and how those beaks determine what a bird can eat. We will be doing some investigative science to see how the bird beak works this week.
Speaking of birds, I would like to invite you to join us for a schoolwide presentation by OWL (Orphaned Wild life) this Monday afternoon at 1:00 in the QE auditorium. The OWL program will provide an opportunity for the children to meet two live raptors: 1 owl and 1 hawk/falcon/turkey vulture. The children will learn the function of the OWL Society, the basic raptor biology, and what they can do to help raptors and other wildlife. The Bayview staff thought that this would be a great presentation given that we are on the edge of the Bog and that we are always looking for different birds and often will see our own Bayiew Eagle checking us out. This is a great tie in to our current classroom unit. We will talk about owls a bit more extensively in class as well as investigate some Owl pellets.

This Wednesday, February 5th Bayview and the children will be participating in GLOBAL SCHOOL PLAY DAY
There is a great deal of research that demonstrates the importance of unstructured, imaginative play as being essential to developing life skills. This is a time for students to learn essential skills such as communicating with each other, cooperating with each other and problem solve with each other.
Our day will be broken up into the following blocks of time:
We will play in the classroom till recess with games, puzzles and things that the children bring from home (as well as blocks etc). Basically they will be given free choices for the morning section. After recess the children go to gym with Mrs. Hinds. If the weather is okay they will play outside, if it is rainy they will play in the gym. After gym we will have camp read...so for 30 minutes they can take the pillows and their stuffies and read around the classroom. They can read all the fun books that they love to read with their friends. After lunch I plan to take them into the forest area of Camosun Bog and play in nature. They love to do that and we havent actually gone too far into the forest and if weather permits we will go further than we usually do. Please dress warmly and dryly ...just in case!

Then on Friday we will be going skating again. Our first skating was awesome..just a few little falls..but all the kids bounced back up and kept skating. I was sooo proud of them.
Thank you to all our drivers who made this event possible. And thank you to all the children who were so responsible for bringing in their carseats and all their gear. It worked so well. So again..please send all their stuff on Friday. We have our lunch at 1200 and leave at 1225. Skating starts at 100 and we all got back by 230 to catch buses. By the end of four sessions you will see such growth in their skating skills. I saw it by the end of the first session.

Finally, Valentine's Day is around the corner. These are the names of the children in our class: Carter, Neil, Emil, Hadley, Felix, Kento, Lis, Ray, Benjamin, Darian, Lily, Neve, Kaito, Julien, Teo, Tea, India and Nolan. That is 18 children in our class. If your child is handing out Valentine Cards, please make sure s/he includes everyone in the class. This will prevent feelings from being hurt. You can send the cards to school on Feb 13th and we will celebrate Valentines Day on the 13th as the 14th is a Pro-D Day. We will have a little party and exchange cards on the afternoon of the 13th. Please note that it is not necessary to send cards ..only if you like.

Just a little reminder before pictures, please send back the report card covers. Keep the paper work, I just need the envelope.
Thank you and enjoy the pictures!!

The baked good that arrived for our bake sale. Thank you sooo much to everyone for contributing to our bake sale. We raised 247 dollars for the Hispid Bunnies.

Three former Bayview Students, Anthony, Nolan and Max did an endangered species presentation with the children on the same day as our bake sale! Quite the coincidence!

The girls all ready to sell! We totally sold out! Not one crumb was left!

Look at their bunny outfits!!

On Thursday afternoon we went outside to explore puddles. We were wondering if we threw different things into puddles what kind of ripples would it make? If we threw big things in would the splash be bigger or smaller? Would we get more ripples? If we threw a small thing in harder would it make a bigger splash? HOw much force and energy would we need to use to make the biggest splash? How are all the things related? We threw in big and little rocks, big and little sticks, leaves, feathers. And Boy did we get wet!! Afterwards we came in and drew and wrote about what we did.

Look at those ripples!

We found quite the big "stick" and we were sharing it to see how big of a splash we could make. As you can see boots were necessary!!!