Camp Bimini Year End Class Field Trip!

We had so much fun on our adventure to Camp Bimini! So much to see, do and explore! This really was a great trip for Busy Bees that like to see, touch and do! 

Thank you to the parent volunteers for coming along! We really appreciate having that support to makes these trips possible. And we also want to thank School Council funds to make this a much more cost effective trip for each of little Busy Bees! 

Here are a few pictures from our trip...

Grade 1/2 Advent Calendar

The students have been working through an Advent Calendar throughout the month of December with special holiday books, songs and activities. Since we aren't quite done yet, we thought we share if families would like to finish the Advent Calendar over the break! 

Happy Holidays!! 

Pumpkin Carving Fun!

We were so very lucky to have so many pumpkin donations this year for the whole school. Thank you so very much to Govers Family Farm & Pumpkin Patch who donated pumpkins to our school! We want them to know how much we appreciate their generousity to make events such as this happen!  

We had a lot of fun carving them with our learning buddies! We hope they are enjoyed this week as part of our Pumpkin Walk and make it home safe and sound to enjoy for Halloween! We hope your pumpkins are the special added touch for decorating for Halloween! 

Also a big special thanks to our Grade 5/6 learning buddies for helping us out and to our adult helpers  (Mrs. Frayne, Mrs. Ford, Ms. Carr and Ms. Elgie) that came in to help us with the carving and all the clean up! We couldn't have done it without you! 

We also want to take some time to say a HUGE thank you to our parent volunteers on School Council, led by Mrs. Leppington and Mrs. Smith, that coordinated the very special Pumpkin Walk for our school community. What a great way to put all our students' amazing work on display and bring the school community together in a special evening! There were so many folks that made donations to this wonderful event with and so many fabulous prizes to celebrate! Please see the list coming out in the November school newsletter that recognizes all of those fabulous people and local businesses. We want to honour them and show our support to them in return!  

Here are a few pictures from our activities:

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!! 

This week, we had been exploring some learning about fiction and non fiction books with our Thanksgiving theme. Ask our little friends about some of the differences as we read our own books. With our non-fiction reading, we wanted to share some of facts we have learned about Canadian Thanksgiving:

• He sailed to Canada from England and he was thankful for a safe journey. (Tom D)

• We gather with our family for Thanksgiving. (Claire)

• We get food on Thanksgiving. (Madelyn)

• We have foods like turkey, pumpkins, squash and apples. (Raiden)

• We are thankful for all the food we have. (Rowan)

• We are thankful for the toys we get. (Ethan)

• Thanksgiving is you eat food and pumpkin pie.(Jack)

• We celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October. (Mrs. Herbert)

• We celebrated the first Thanksgiving over 500 years ago. (Mrs. Herbert)

We did some art this week of fall trees with a focus on perspective and warm colours. They have also been posted to our Seesaw Portfolios as well. 

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving called Thankful. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. 

We have had lots of Thanksgiving themed activities this week and more to come next week after we have celebrated this weekend! 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! Enjoy your weekend! 

Grade 1/2 Self Portraits

We worked some 'magic' this last week in art and completed a self portrait (with some special assistance from what we called MAGIC paper in Grade 1/2). Students completed these amazing drawings of themselves and we have them up at school. Can you guess who is who?

Experiment with Texture in Art

Today, we explored how artists may experiment with creating texture in their art through some art exploration and experimentation. While we were playing with different tools to create different 'looks' on our paper, we were challenged to think about which may be the perfect fit for what a polar bear's fur coat may look like in a picture. We don't know how a polar bear's fur coat feels because we have probably never touched a real polar bear, but how do we think that would feel and how can we make it look that, in our art. We have some creative students as they explored different tools and techniques to show texture in their experiment.  

Pumpkin Carving Fun!

We were so very lucky to have so many pumpkin donations this year for the whole school. Thank you so very much to Switzers Sweet Corn & Pumpkins on the Kirkton Road, Govers Family Farm & Pumpkin Patch, and The Soleski Family who all donated pumpkins to our school! We want them to know how much we appreciate their generousity to make events such as this happen!  

We had a lot of fun carving them with our learning buddies! We hope they made it home safe and sound to enjoy for today! We hope your pumpkins are the special added touch for decorating for Halloween! 

Also a big special thanks to our learning buddies for helping us out and to our adult helpers  (Mrs. Frayne, Mrs. Hammond, Mrs. Ivanouski, Ms. Carr, Ms. Elgie, and Mrs. Westman) that came in to help us with the carving and all the clean up! We couldn't have done it without you! 

We also want to take some time to say a HUGE thank you to our parent volunteers on School Council, led by Mrs. Leppington and Mrs. Smith, that coordinated the very special Pumpkin Walk for our school community. What a great way to put all our students' amazing work on display and bring the school community together in a special evening! There were so many folks that made donations to this wonderful event with and so many fabulous prizes to celebrate! Please see the list coming out in the November school newsletter that recognizes all of those fabulous people and local businesses. We want to honour them and show our support to them in return!  

Here are a few pictures from our activities:

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!! 

This week, we have been exploring some learning about fiction and non fiction books with our Thankgiving theme. Ask our little friends about some of the differences as we read our own books. With our non-fiction reading, we wanted to share some of facts we have learned about Canadian Thanksgiving:

* Thanksgiving is about pumpkins. (Abigail)

* Thanksgiving is about having chicken. (Liam)

* Thanksgiving is telling everyone what you are thankful for. (Parker F.)

* They healed people with the food they had.(Cash)

* Why we have Thanksgiving is because this person sailed across the sea. (Gavin)

* We celebrate Thanksgiving so we can spend time with our family. (Ruth)

* We eat those food because they are nice and fresh and ready to eat. (Ruby)

* On Thanksgiving, orchards share their really yummy foods. (Tessa)

* Everything in the fields are ready to eat because they are fresh. (Zoe)

We did some art this week of a turkey after we read our stories. We were focusing on the primary colours and how we can mix them to make new colours called secondary colours with our water colours. Here are some of our finished art pieces. They have also been posted to our Seesaw Portfolios as well. 

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. 

We worked with our Learning Buddies today to complete a literacy activity with the big word Thanksgiving. We sure do love when are our big buddies come and help us with our learning activities. 

We have had lots of Thanksgiving themed activities this week and more to come next week after we have celebrated this weekend! 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! Enjoy your weekend! 

Pumpkin Donations & Pumpkin Carving Volunteers

 

Our Grade 1/2 class, and many classes in the school, will be decorating &/or carving pumpkins coming up later in the month for a new special 'Pumpkin Walk Showcase' school event on Tuesday, October 29. If your family (or a family/farm nearby) has an abundance of pumpkins you are willing to donate to the school, please reach out to Mrs Herbert. We have a some large donations coming from local farms already for the majority of the classes and just filling in the last few that we may need. 

We will be seeking donation commitments by the end of this week BUT we will not be gathering the pumpkins until closer to the end of October. We do not have a place for them to be stored at school to prevent frost damage or out of the way for safety reasons.  

Also, we are looking for some volunteers to assist with carving pumpkins with our learning buddies to have some extra hands to dig in and get dirty to support our wee artists. If you are able to volunteer your time, we would love some extra hands. We are hoping that all plans work out to carve on Tuesday, October 29 in the morning and wrapping up at first break. A current police check/declaration is required to be filed in the office. Please let Mrs. Herbert know if you would be able to assist. 

Thanks so very much!

Grade 1/2 Self Portraits

We worked some 'magic' this last week and completed a self portrait (with some special assistance from what we called MAGIC paper in Grade 1/2). Students completed these amazing drawings of themselves and we have them up at school. Can you guess who is who?

Pumpkin Carving

We were so very lucky to have so many pumpkin donations this year. Thank you so very much to Switzers Sweet Corn & Pumpkins on the Kirkton Road who donated pumpkins to our school! We will be sending them a little goodie basket with some local treats to say thank you, along with some photos of our pumpkins and a card. We want them to know how much we appreciate their generousity to make events such as this happen. 

We had a lot of fun carving them with our learning buddies! We hope they made it home safe and sound to enjoy today! We hope your pumpkins are the special added touch for decorating for Halloween! 

Also a big special thanks to the mom's (Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Frayne, Ms. Riddell) that came in to help us with the carving and all the clean up! We couldn't have done it without you! 

Here are a few pictures from our morning's activties:

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!! 

This week, we have been exploring some learning about fiction and non fiction books with our Thankgiving theme. Ask our little friends about some of the differences as we read our own books. 

 

We did some art this week of a turkey after we read our stories We were focusing on following orally instructions as we listened to 'How to Draw a Thanksgiving Turkey'. Here are some of our finished art pieces. They have also been posted to our SpacesEDU Digital Portfolios. 

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. This weekend, for their Home Activity, students will be filling in what they are thankful for to make their own little Thanksgiving poem.

Lots of Thanksgiving themed activities this week and more to come next week after we have celebrated this weekend! 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Pumpkin Donations & Pumpkin Carving Volunteers

Our Grade 1 class, and many classes in the school, will be decorating &/or carving pumpkins coming up later in the month with our learning buddies for a special Halloween activity. If your family (or a family/farm nearby) has an abundance of pumpkins you are willing to donate to the school, please reach out to Ms. King. We have a large donation from Switzers Sweet Corn & Pumpkins already for the majority of the classes and just filling in the last few that we may need. 

We will be seeking donation commitments by the end of next week BUT we will not be gathering the pumpkins until closer to the end of October. We do not have a place for them to be stored at school to prevent frost damage or out of the way for safety reasons.  

Also, we are looking for some volunteers to assist with carving pumpkins with our learning buddies to have some extra hands to dig in and get dirty to support our wee artists. If you are able to volunteer your time, we would love some extra hands. We are hoping that all plans work out to carve on Friday, October 27 in the morning and wrapping up at first break. However, we are awaiting some details from School Council for a possible event that may be using our pumpkins for. So the date is not confirmed at this time. A current police check/declaration is required to be filed in the office. Please let Ms. King know if you would be able to assist (and understand if a date change is needed that you may or may not be able to assist). 

Thanks so very much!

International Dot Day!

   

Friday, September 15

The Busy Bees have joined over 21 million children and adults around the globe in 196 countries to celebrate International Dot Day – a grass roots “creativity and courage” movement, started in 2009 by a teacher in Iowa. Inspired by New York Times best-selling author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds’ classic storybook for all ages The Dot. Exploring the themes of creativity, bravery and self-expression, The Dot is a story of a perceptive and caring teacher who reaches a reluctant student who thinks she can’t draw by encouraging her be brave enough to “just make a mark and see where it takes you.” What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and sharing, which has gone on to inspire countless children and adults around the globe to just give something a try.

Friday of last week, we celebrated The Dot by reading the story and discussing the author's message. Then we went on to make our mark and created our own dots to show how we are all unique and special. It is ok to try your best and your best is all we are asking for! This has been our message as we start Grade 1...a growth mindset with our Cupcake Work and continuing to try our best with positivity and risk taking in what we attempt to do as we learn.

The author also created a little song to go along with the book and we listened while we worked.

Here are some of our own dots from our activity today!

Let's all give it a go and try our best in Grade 1!

You never know what may happen from just a little dot!

Grade 1 Self Portraits

We worked some 'magic' last week and completed a self portrait (with some special assistance from what we called MAGIC paper in Grade 1). Students completed these amazing drawings of themselves and we have them up at school. Can you guess who is who?

The Terry Fox Run

This past week we have done some learning around Terry Fox and his amazing dedication to making a difference! Thank to all our students, families and staff for a marvelous week carrying on Terry Fox’s legacy to raise money for cancer research!

We have read books, watched a Terry Fox video and even listened to a song about Terry. From that song, we illustrated a class book. We have created a video sharing our work:

Students have been working hard all week to practice building their own abilities to run for a longer period of time, just like Terry! On Thursday, we ran for the longest time yet and set goals for ourselves to see how many 'laps' we could do to make Terry proud. Here are a few pics from our school wide event!

We also wrote about why we do the Terry Fox run. We have posted these on our All About Me digital portfolios but here are a few examples of super sentences about the Terry Fox run. 

We know we can make a difference when we try our best. Thanks Terry for teaching us a very important lesson and we hope we have helped to make a difference too!

Stream of Dreams

On Monday of this week, we participated in an amazing project with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority called the Stream of Dreams! Here is some information about it and some pictures from our project! 

We want to thank all the parents that volunteered, in advance, for coming in to help the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority staff with installing the fish on the schoolyard! What an amazing project this has been for our school! Our Grade 1 students were so amazing at understanding the need to protect our water! Way to go, Busy Bees!