The last day before Christmas Break we had a full and busy day!  We began with our Pancake Breakfast where we enjoyed the wonderful pancakes made by our parent volunteers.  We were also lucky to have a visit by Santa and his Elf who gave the students goodie bags.

On Friday, October 31st students – and staff – arrived at school in a wide variety of costumes.  We had our Costume Parade after Recess.  This year we did our parade to the accompaniment of Mr. Olson and his musical marching band.

In the afternoon we enjoyed a ‘ghostly’ craft, ate some treats, and played with friends during Centres time.

This morning I heard all about the students’ fun during Hallowe’en evening, and their weekend.  I am very happy to hear that all were safe – and dry!!  We were very lucky with the weather this year.

On Thursday, October 30th we got together with our big buddies and carved pumpkins in our school-wide event.

It was a great afternoon!  We met our new big buddies, had fun with messy vegetables, and then got to eat the seeds – after the parent volunteers cleaned and roasted them, of course.

Even with our school year starting late this year, we still managed to get our learning in about Terry Fox.  In our class we discussed his life and what he accomplished in that short life.  We had a talk about cancer and how, because of the awareness that Terry brought to this serious disease, more and more people are surviving than did in the past.

As next Spring is the 35th anniversary of when Terry began his Marathon of Hope, we are focusing our major fundraising efforts for then.  We will also be doing our big run then, as well.  We had planned to do our regular run two weeks ago – and then a more involved one next Spring – but the weather was rather inclement that day.  We had a short assembly followed by our (indoor) corn roast instead.  With the students we talked about how Terry ran in all sorts of weather (fair or foul) but he was an adult and could make that choice for himself.  We didn’t think it was a good choice for our young students.

In our class we did write, on special sticker forms, for whom we were going to be running.  We will use these next Spring.  Today, as a part of one of our Fin’s Friends (Canucks’ character building programme) we discussed ‘perseverence’.  Naturally Terry was again discussed as I cannot think of anyone better suited as a role model for not giving up – no matter how difficult something is.  Students seemed to really understand what it means to persevere and will, hopefully, be able to incorporate that trait into their lives.