Choose Not To Use Challenge Wrap Up Day

This past month, the whole school had been challenged to 'choose not to use' as part of way to understand how to positively support our mental health and wellbeing. The school's Mental Health and Wellbeing Team challenged each class to take the pledge and choose not to use devices (as much) as it impacts our body in many different ways. We learned some pretty interesting facts on how screen time impacts our heart, lungs, eyes and brain! We made a commitment and hope at home, we can be held to our promise to reduce the amount of time on devices. We discussed other ways to spend our time and engaged in some really great activities at electives and with some activities planned and ran by the school's Mental Health and Wellbeing group. 

Today, we wrapped up our month long challenge and enjoyed some outside time together as a whole school with some additional play time and a treat! What a beautiful day to enjoy our successes with our challenge! We challenge you to keep it up and make a conscious effort to continue to choose other activities that are better for your mind and body than screens! 

 

Dairy Educator Presentation

  

We welcomed Ms. Garrett today to share with us about the concepts of liquids and solids with relation to dairy products. We had so much fun talking about dairy products and even participated in a cool experiment where we took cream (a liquid) and turned it into butter (a solid) with some hard work! We even got to sample our results! Ms. Garrett was so great about answering all our questions about her dairy cows and all the dairy products! What a great, hands on learning experience! Thanks for coming, Ms. Garrett!  

Humane Society Presentation

Today, we had the pleasure of having a presentation from The Humane Society of Stratford. The topic was all about how animals communicate so we know about animal safety. We were learning about:

• When dogs or cats lift up their leg or paw, it could mean that their legs are hurt. (Liam)
• When cats have their backs up, that means they are scared. (Jack)
• When cats are calm, they purr. (Madelyn)
• When dogs bow, that means they want to play. (Raiden)
• When dogs mouths are open and they are panting, it could mean they are hot. (Olivia F)
• When you can see dogs teeth, that means they are mad. (Tom D)
• When cats are scared, they put their tail behind their legs. (Ella)
• When cats are mad, they stick their fur up. (Bellamy)

We want to be safe around pets but also around wildlife and farm animals. We want to thank our presenter for sharing some good info with us. We also got to make some puppy treat bags for our friends that are at the Humane Society. We hope they enjoy their treats!!  

 

Grade 2 River Safety Presentation

On Monday, January 26th, Grade 2 students participated in the ‘River Safety Program’. The program was held here at the school by an educational staff member of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. This presentation was all about river safety and the Thames River watershed (how creeks and small streams are part of the Thames River Watershed, water pollution and animal habitats). This hands-on, interactive presentation allowed students to be engaged in different activities including given a wooden puzzle piece to add to a collaborative puzzle, have played water safety bingo, and looked for fictional characters ‘Splish and Splash’ in a river safety read-aloud to identify safe water activities (always with an adult) and dangerous water activities (getting too close to open water). We were given the challenge to remember two new interesting facts they learned to share with family and friends. Hint hint: There may be some ideas in the river safety activity book they brought home! See what your Grade 2 can recall! 

Special thanks to the Optimist Club for sponsoring this event each year for our presenters to come and provide this wealth of information to our Grade 2 students! We appreciate the community support to make education happen!

Jump Rope for Heart

We sure did luck out today for our Jump Rope for Heart event! It was a perfect afternoon to enjoy getting out and doing some activities to get our bodies moving! Thanks to all those that donated to this very worthwhile cause and thanks to Mrs. Hodgins and to Mrs. Hobson for all the organzing to make this all happen. These are memories the students keep for a lifetime!  

Dairy Educator Presentation

 

We welcomed Mrs. Danen on Friday to share with us about the concepts of liquids and solids with relation to dairy products. We had so much fun talking about dairy products and even participated in a cool experiment where we took cream (a liquid) and turned it into butter (a solid) with some hard work! We even got to sample our results! Mrs. Danen was so great about answering all our questions about her dairy cows and all the dairy products! What a great, hands on learning experience! Thanks for coming, Mrs. Danen!  

Jump Rope for Heart

We sure did luck out today for our Jump Rope for Heart event! It was a perfect afternoon to enjoy getting out and doing some activities to get our bodies moving! Thanks to all those that donated to this very worthwhile cause and thanks to Mrs. Hodgins for all the organzing to make this all happen. These are memories the students keep for a lifetime!  

Zones of Regulation

The Grade 1 Busy Bees are learning all about self regulation which is a way to help us to be ready to learn! This process helps us to name our feelings and apply various strategies to deal with those feelings through the zones of regulation.

Exploring feelings, beyond the simple 'happy or sad' responses, helps children really understand what specific feelings can do to our bodies and how to deal with them. Being able to express our feelings with 'I statements' will be a starting point for our wee bees. For example, we will be working on 'I feel _______ because _____________________.' 

Here are some various emotions, we may be exploring...

We are understanding that our emotions impact our body. Sometimes we have difficulty controlling our bodies as a result of those feelings. The Zones of Regulation help us to really organize those feelings.

The next thing we will be working on, are the strategies to help us feel ready to learn again. We call these our Cookie Monster Strategies. After having watched this video, earlier in the school year, we understand that sometimes, it is hard to deal with our emotions. Sometimes we want things right now, just like Cookie Monster. He offered up some strategies for us to help us in these situations.  

We have made a list of these strategies and posted them in our classroom. One of them, is our recently introduced 'Calming Buckets'. These have some special activities to do to help us get back into the green zone. We have been using them with the whole class during a quiet time to get us ready to learn, especially after transition times. While they are a little bit of a noveltly right at the moment, we will be exploring these to see what may or may not work for us to help us focus, be calm and good to go! 

Stay tuned to our learnings as we explore more about this topic and hopefully see a different in our self-regulation.