Sweater Day for Wildlife

On Friday the whole school is wearing sweaters to raise awareness of climate change. We are hoping to turn down the heat in the school to save energy. Sweater Day was an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund and now has been taken on by Broadview's HELP club, who do various things to benefit the community. Wear your sweater with an animal on it, with natural colours or pictures or your tackiest sweater. Join in!!

Wear Pink on Wednesday!!

Wednesday is Pink Day across Canada, an Anti-Bullying project. We will be reading a few stories about the subject and having a short discussion. If the children have anything pink they would like to wear that is another way to participate in the day. Anything pink will do! We will also make a pink craft so that everyone can have some pink to wear in case some don't get this note in time.

What Comes After Zed?

 We have finished our Letter A Day and now have begun our next unit, which is Fairytales!

We will be reading stories about castles,

                                                 enchanted animals,

and all your favourite characters.

So there's a lot that happens after the Zed!   

Preparing Valentine Cards

This is the weekend to get ready for Valentine's day. How to address the valentine cards? We ask that the children just put From and not To as it makes delivering the 400 plus valentines much less of a chore. The children can just put to my friend, or leave that part blank, and put from and their name, eg. From Gregory. They will each have a turn to put their valentines in all the bags, but we will not have to spend hours helping them read them all and finding all the names that match. We can do some other activities to learn to read and write their friend's names, but it's much better to keep their cards simple. Thank you for your help to make this a fun day of friendship!

Happy Chinese (Lunar) New Year! The Year of the Horse!!

Happy Year of the Horse! We are celebrating in room 23 with paper lanterns, golden fish kites, art and lots of treats. Thank you to Russell Shen (Tim's dad) for bringing in dumplings for us to try. Yum!! He also taught us how to write Spring Festival in Chinese characters. Thank you also to Miranda Yu (Mark's mom) who sent in gorgeous red and gold decorations and lots and lots of yummy treats; oranges, cookies, chocolate coins and red envelopes with lucky money! Today we had a visit from our Cultural Liason Officer, Ming Wang. She told us about the holiday and showed us a slide show of its history. We got to taste spring rolls! Still to come are pomelo tasting, tea tasting and chicken dumplings. Of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, the children in this class are born either in the year of the rat or of the ox.

•Positive Character Traits: Charming and ambitious •Negative Character Traits: Short-tempered and sometimes sneaky •Most Compatible With: Dragon, Monkey, Ox

•Positive Character Traits: Dependable, trustworthy, patient •Negative Character Traits: Stubborn, hot-tempered •Most Compatible With: Snake, Rooster, Rat.

Here are some dragons. The dragon symbolizes the coming spring.



Here is a sample of a Chinese New Year card that people would send to each other. You can see the lanterns, the fireworks and the lucky red colour everywhere. The children are wearing the new clothes they receive as part of the celebrations. They might also have had a haircut!

These are dumplings which would be part of the big family dinner that everyone would eat together. They come in many shapes. These look a little like purses full of money. One of the wishes for the new year is prosperity. We had some fried dumplings to sample the other day at school and will try steamed dumplings soon.

 Here is a dragon for the Dragon Dance. On New Year's Day there will be many dragon dances for people to see. We are having a little one here, with lots of noise- makers to scare away any bad luck.

Here is another great Chinese dragon, this one on the top of  a beautiful building. Happy New Year!