Halloween Fun in Grade 1!

We have really enjoyed all of our Halloween activities the past couple of weeks!

We have been reading some non-fiction texts about Halloween and have some interesting history lessons about how Halloween started! Ask your kiddo about what they learned in these books!

• We learned that a Jack a long time ago, didn't make it to heaven so to help him find his way he carved a turnip and put coal inside to light his way. Now we have Jack o' Lanterns. 

• Halloween is celebrated on October 31 each year in Canada. (Mrs. Herbert)

• When you go trick-or-treating, kids in costumes trick people at the door because they won’t give them candy. (Oliver)

• On Halloween you move to other people's houses to get candy. (Hudson)

• On Halloween people dress up in Canada. (Maggie)

• In Mexico, people do not celebrate Halloween, but celebrate Day of the Dead. (Rose)

• The biggest pumpkin was 1,300 llbs. (Cohen)

• Pails and buckets are used on Halloween to collect candy. (Callen)

• You can wear whatever costume you want. (Shauna)

• A long time ago, people wore witch costumes and ghost costumes to protect themselves. (Jillian)

For DPA (Daily Physical Activity) this week, we enjoyed some Halloween dancing. Here is a little clip of our students dancing away to for our Halloween Dance Party! 

We did our October Estimate Jar today too! We have so much fun estimating, counting and seeing who our Estimate Jar winner is! Today, we practiced counting by 5's of our Halloween treats! We had a three way tie, with Logan, Colton and Aidan as our winners with only one number off our real total. Halloween marshmallows were shared with everyone since our friends had lots! These might have been enjoyed at lunch breaks today so you may not see them come home! 

We had some Halloween themed centers this week as well to enjoy as we finished up our other important work...the students don't know these were still learning centers...shhh...don't tell!!

We finished up our day with our empathy video about Spookley the Square Pumpkin!

Not to mention the treats we received today! Wow! Thank you for all the amazing things sent in from families that we got to enjoy today (& bring home!) Enjoy this special day full of Halloween fun! See you all on Monday after the time change!! 

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' Pumpkins, Govers Family Farm & Pumpkin Patch, Masse Pumpkins and St. Marys Canadian Tire 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 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  (Ms. Carlberg, Ms. Hyatt, Ms.Brecklemans, Ms. Ivanouski 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 are 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:

Art in Nature Outdoor Learning Workshop

This week is Take Me Outside Week! 

Thursday, we welcomed Julie from the ABCA (Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority) in Exeter. She has never been to South Perth and absolutely adored our amazing school yard for all the learning she could lead us in! We certainly lucked out with a beautiful fall day to enjoy our outdoor learning activities. We were exploring different concepts in art and finding fall tints and shades in nature, learning about symmetry in nature and the biggie, using nature to create the perfect 3D art! Check out our art we created on our Seesaw digital portfolios! We had some amazing master pieces that will come home as soon as they are dried!  

We want to thank the School Council's fundraising efforts to make these workshops possible for no cost to families. We definitely loved our visit and can't wait to see what else we can take outside for outdoor learning activities! Not all learning is done inside the school!  

Learning Buddies

We certainly get excited when our learning buddies come to hang out with us! Today, our big buddies were helping us with our Reading Practice Book. This has been a new activity that we jumped into last week. They were there to practice our fluency grid, our story and some got to highlighting all the words with the -all, -oll and -ull phonics rule we were learning about this week. We are lucky to have some big experts that come to visit and be our mentors!  

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:

• We celebrated the first Thanksgiving over 500 years ago. (Mrs. Herbert)
• We harvest crops (corn, apples, pumpkins, squash) (Maggie)
• I didn’t know that they came across from England to Canada - Nunavut (Rose)
• Some people spend their Thanksgiving with family and friends. (Colton)
• We could eat chicken and corn because they are ready at this time of year. (Tave)
• The Indigenious people taught the settlers how to grow the foods here in Canada.(Mrs Herbert)
• We have Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October as a special day. (Shauna)

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! Check out our student digital portfolios for our turkey super sentence and our I Am Thankful poems we created! 

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

Terry Fox

Last week we did some learning around Terry Fox and his amazing dedication to making a difference! Thanks 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 had been working hard all week to practice building their own abilities to run for a longer period of time, just like Terry! Last Tuesday, 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 Seesaw 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! 

Orange Shirt Day in Grade 1

Last week, we came together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools for younger students. 

We learned about the history behind Orange Shirt Day to honour just some of these stories of residential schools and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

The following day, we read this story to refresh our memories before we created our own Orange Shirts with our own message:

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting.

International Dot Day!

   

Tuesday, 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.

Today, 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!

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!

September's Reading Room

Here is our September virtual reading room! This contains some great books with themes we will be focusing on in September in our Busy Bee class:

• Back to School
• Growth Mindset
• Fall (Seasons)
• Respect

Click on the pdf with interactive links on the books to enjoy! 

Last Day of School Excitement!

What a great way to spend the last day of Grade 1/2 with some fun math, awards and gifts! We certainly were excited to finish up with a bee movie with a theme of ‘beeing’ yourself! Thank you to the families that sent in some surprise treats today as well! They were enjoyed with the movie! 

Have the best summer break, Busy Bees!

Summer Break Wishes From Mrs. Herbert

   

Wishing all the Grade 1/2 Busy Bee families a wonderful, safe, healthy, and rejuvenating summer break!! 

Thank you for all the wonderful work and support from home to build these little learners! It takes a village to raise such amazing little people! They have grown so much and in so many ways! You should be proud of your little one! 

To our 2025-2026 Busy Bees...Congratulations! You did it! I wish each and every one of you the very best and continued success next year!! Thank you for letting me be your teacher and learning with me. I am proud of you for all you have learned to do this school year and the wonderful character traits you are instilling in yourselves. I just know you will go on to do great things, when you put your mind to it! Have a great summer!! 

We welcome all our little learners back to school on Tuesday, September 8, 2026 for a fresh start to a new year!!

SPCS Play Day!

The weather cooperated so perfectly so we could participate in our school wide Play Day!! It was warm but we got to cool down with some great games organized by Mrs. Hobson and Mrs. Boyd with our 7/8 class to run stations and our 6/7 class as the team leaders. 

Also, we enjoyed a school wide picnic with a hot dog and cake lunch organized by School Council! Thank you to those wonderful parents that helped make that happen! 

We had a blast and finished up with some freezies as a treat! What a great way to end the day and prepare us for our last day of school tomorrow!

Learning Buddies Year End Celebration!

Today, we celebrated the end of the school year with our learning buddies! We wanted to say thank you to them with a special card we made and indulged in a little 'make your own' ice cream sundae party. 

We so greatly appreciate all the learning buddies have helped us do this year! We are a bunch of smarties thanks to them! 

Have a great summer to Mr. Glover & Mr. Steinmann's Grade 5/6 class!  

Penpal Video Conference Meet & Greet

Today, we had the pleasure of meeting our penpals from Little Falls Public School. We have been writing back and forth since Christmas time and having a blast getting mail from our new friends. We invited them to a video conference so we could see them in real life! We sent them a care package to open today with a treat for each of them! And we got a special delivery to have to open as well from them! It was fun to see our penpals and maybe one day we will get to meet in person! Thank you to Mrs. Brodhagen's 1B class for working with us to be better writers and make a friend along the way. 

South Perth's Steps for Seniors

We braved the wet weather to put some Steps in for Seniors!

ONE CARE provides a range of supportive care services that enable seniors and people with disabilities to enjoy better quality of life as they age at home. ONE CARE Home & Community Support Services is a community based, charitable, not-for-profit health organization providing supportive care to families in Huron and Perth Counties and surrounding area. All of the money you raise as part of Steps for Seniors 2026 will help raise funds to support the purchase of new vehicles for our transportation program in Huron and Perth Counties.

There is still time to donate to this link to contribute to a great cause! Thanks for all your support!

A little wind and rain didn't get our spirits down knowing we are helping those in our community!