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Most of our slots for Tuesday package pick up are full. For those of you who have not yet replied, please consider a Wednesday or Thursday slot. If  Tuesday is your only option, I can extend the pick up time beyond 3. Thank you!

Learning at home for the week of April 6 – 10 

Special announcements: Happy Birthday to Kian on April 10! We hope you have a special day!

• MYSTERY DOUG LIVE EVENT: There is going to be a special live science show done by someone named Mystery Doug on Tuesday, April 7th  at 10am. He’s a science educator kids love. I’d love for you to help your child watch this. All you need to do is open this website link:

https://mysteryscience.com/live

• Here are some activity suggestions to try this week. You may want to try one or two of the suggested activities per day. We completely appreciate that your homes are busy places right now so please do not feel you must complete all of these activities by Friday. Add them to your schedule as best fits your household routine.
• I would recommend bookmarking any of your favourite webpages including our blog website so you can easily access it without entering through email first.
• Please note that my video links are large this week so it may take some time for them to upload onto your computer. I will try to make shorter videos next week!

 Check out these links for more ideas:

https://learning.burnabyschools.ca 

https://www.openschool.bc.ca/keeplearning/

Have fun learning at home! Remember to email pictures to me by Friday at noon!

Hello families,

We hope you are doing well and that you are finding creative ways to keep busy. Ms. Mah and I just finished a “virtual” staff meeting with our new administrator, Ms. Aujla. We want to share the following pieces of information that we learned today:

1. Our top priority is to ensure that all of our students and families are doing well. So, at this time, we want to connect with families. Please expect a call from myself or Ms. Mah tomorrow (Thursday, April 2). The call will appear from “caller unknown”  (according to district policy) so please answer the call as we would love to hear our students’ voices!
2. Over the next week, we will be working on how we will be able to provide learning opportunities for your child. We will be exploring a combination of online and offline learning activities. Thank you for your patience as this is an entirely new situation for all of us!
3. Teachers will be allowed to enter the school for short amounts of time over the next week to collect our resources and other things that we will require for future planning and teaching.

Mr. Gurney sent out a survey asking families to let us know what level of technology you have access to at home and what supplies are available for your child. We do not have the results of the survey yet, so we will be asking you similar questions during our phone calls tomorrow in order to guide our planning for upcoming lessons.

As you know, both of us have children at home, so we can relate to what your families are going through! We have found that making a lose schedule including outside time, meal time, creative activities like lego and art, a bit of math and literacy activities has been helpful for our families.

————

As we wait for further lessons, I want to share a few ideas that I am using with my son who is also in grade 1. These may be some ideas that will work well for your family:

–Daily 5 at home: explain to your child that you are going to start “Read to Self” from daily 5 at home. Create a graph like the photo below.  This graph is to document the number of minutes that your child reads independently each day. I suggest starting with a short amount of time (10 minutes). Ask your child to collect a few books, review the rules (Start right away, Read the whole time, and stay in one spot), start a timer for the specific amount of time. You will be amazed at how your child can read independently. When the timer sounds, stop and record the time on the graph. The goal is to keep it short so they can feel successful. You can add a minute or two to the timer each day.

Your child will be able to tell you that there are three ways to read a book: read the words, read the pictures, and re-tell the story. Your child is not expected to be able to read all of the words in the books. The goal is for them to read and look at books independently for a sustained period of time.  Ultimately, they should be able to read daily for 20-25 minutes.

-“Listen to reading” is another option my son enjoys. We use “tumblebooks” which can be accessed from our school library website or from the following link:

https://www.tumblebooklibrary.com/Home.aspx?categoryID=77

Look for books that have a “read online” option so your child can listen to the story being read.

Please take the time to make the most out of having your family around you during this unique time. When we reflect on this period of history, your child will not remember the schoolwork they completed, they will remember the special times spent with you! 

As always, thank you for your support and patience!

Looking forward to speaking to you tomorrow!

Ms. Mah and Ms. Capitanio

Hello everyone,

Ms. Mah and I hope you are all staying safe and healthy during this uncertain time. We hope you have been able to enjoy this time together. We have really missed seeing your faces and we have been thinking of you all the time! 

We hope you have received an update from the Burnaby School District and that you are aware that students will not be attending school indefinitely.  We will be speaking with Mr. Gurney on Monday morning to learn how we will best support students’ learning at home. At this time, we are not exactly sure what that will look like. As we get answers, we will update you as soon as we can.

For now, we have a couple of things to ask of you:

1. Please reply to this email so we know which families are receiving this information. 
2. In the reply email, please simply indicate “confirmed” OR describe a special activity that your child did during Spring Break.
3.  If you are able to go for a walk in the community, we would love to hear how our daffodil bulbs are doing. How tall are they? Have they bloomed? How many can you count?

Stay safe and stay healthy!

Looking forward to getting responses from you,

Take care, from your teachers,

xoxo Ms. Mah and Ms. Capitanio

Thank you very much to all of our families for coming to our open house last week. We truly appreciate your dedication to your child’s learning. Looking at these beautiful photos reminds us just how fortunate we are that we get to be a part of their learning every day!

One family is missing…we will add them when we return!

Happy Spring break!

I hope you are all settling into our break from school nicely.  The current situation leaves all of us with a lot of unknowns about the upcoming days and weeks. I really hope you are able to build some structure into your days to provide stability for the kids. I wanted to provide you with some links and ideas to keep your kids’ minds active over our break. Here are a few of my favourites:

Mystery science: This link will provide you with some great science activities and lessons. (copy and paste the site below)

https://mysteryscience.com/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmysteryscience.com%2Fschool-closure-planning&uuid=b1c78e8d-6519-4a90-aef0-17918a15b1c3

Reading A to Z: You can sign up for a free trial which will allow you access to hundreds of leveled readers. This is the site where I get our home reading books from so the students will be familiar with the format. Most books can be read online or printed.

www.readinga-z.com

Art for kids hub (youtube): Our class loves learning how to draw following these lessons. Thanks to Damian for introducing this site to us! My own kids love it too!

Gardening Project: Later in the Spring, our class will be learning about mason bees and their connection to the environment. Our class will be researching which plants are classified as “pollinators” to attract the bees.  If you have the opportunity to research which flowers attract bees and then plant pollinating seeds at home, this would give our pollinator garden a wonderful head start.  We would then plant the seedlings in our school garden when the weather improves.

Most of all, enjoy the sunshine!

Hello families! I hope you are enjoying this gorgeous weather!

For those of you who returned your purple “Open House” form, please find your time below. For those of you who are not listed below please let me know which one of the time slots you are able to join us. Please remember that “open house” is a time for your child to share their learning with you. Your child’s Term 2 report card will be sent home on Thursday.

Dismissal is at 1:50 on Wednesday!!!

2:00 – 2:30 – Jessica, Autumn, Anthea  

2:30 – 3:00 – Kian, Jayden, Eric  

3:00 – 3:30 – Gavin, Amanda, Hazel, Doha

3:30 – 4:30 CLOSED

4:30 – 5:00 Daniel, Mikayla

5:00 – 5:30 – Hridaan, Isaac, Angelika

5:30 – 6:00 – Roman, Perry

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

During the week of Monday, March 9 to Friday, March 13, we will be celebrating “Literacy Week” at Brantford. 

One of the activities for literacy week will be a “book swap”. This is an opportunity to clean out books from your home that could be better loved in a new home. We will keep track of the number of books that your child brings to school so your child can then choose that many books at the book swap. Please send in your books so Mrs. Dias can prepare the books for the swap!

Here is a list of the activities for Literacy Week:

-Monday – assembly

-Tuesday – Wear any clothing that has letters or words on it and guest author, Nancy Duarte, will visit our class

-Wednesday – Book swap and Open House, early dismissal at 1:50 pm, Mrs. Mah will send home your confirmed slot to visit our class

-Thursday – dress as your favourtite character day – Ms. Mah will have the class create a simple costume at school so no need to create something at home (unless you really want to!)

-Friday – Cozy reading day. Students can wear PJ’s, bring stuffies and cozy blankets to have for special reading times throughout the day.

Looking forward to seeing you next week!