MAGEE JUNIOR BAND

Today the students enjoyed music performed by the junior band from Magee. They played a wide variety of different types of music: march, folk song, jazz, children’s song, Canadian song. They also introduced many of the instruments. It was an excellent performance and was much enjoyed by our students.

CRITICAL THINKING – HOW TO SUPPORT YOUR CHILD     

What is the most important thing that we teach our children? Yes, we know that reading writing and math are the basics. However, for people to lead happy, productive and fulfilling lives thinking is important. What a fascinating exercise it is to debate what we mean by thinking. There are so many aspects to it including creative thinking, problem solving, evaluating, etc. This year and next our school goal is to focus on CRITICAL THINKING. As a staff we have many discussions about how to teach it, how to evaluate it. At the beginning of the year we had Dr. Roland Case from the Critical Thinking Consortium come to talk to us about this topic. On Wednesday April 30th   you can come to the library at 7:00 pm for a presentation by Cynthia Nichols of the Critical Thinking Consortium. This will give you ideas about how you can support critical thinking at home. Teachers are often asked to provide ideas for parent to work on at home. Here is a great opportunity for you to learn how to guide your children to be critical thinkers and learn to think for themselves. Baby sitting can be provided if you let us know on Monday that you will need it.

CONGRATULATIONS TO CORRIS TO

Corris is a student in Division 16. She won the All Round Gold P2 Tyro event at a recent BC Provincial Championship.  Congratulations to Corris for her hard work and and excellent results.

PLAY FIGHTING – WHY IT IS AGAINST OUR CODE OF CONDUCT

Recently we have had a number of incident where primary students have been involved in play fighting. It is important to realize that usually play fighting escalates into real fighting. At home, a rough and tumble with siblings or with dad or mum is in a controlled situation where an adult knows the boundaries needed to keep it safe and fun. At school we are not able to supervise closely enough and so we do not allow play fighting. If you think your child might be involved in something like this. please have a talk with them and explain why we do not allow play fighting at school. We would appreciate that.

VIRTUE OF THE MONTH – CARING

This month’s virtue is caring. It is valuable to help children understand that although we want them to obey the rules of society and school, we also want them to develop their own standards of behavior so that they can decide what is right for them to do. Questions they can ask themselves are, “Does this behavior show caring?” or “Is this action kind?”. This can help them to make a decision about whether something is right or wrong. Thank you for supporting your children in the development of the virtues in the virtues project.

10th Annual Spring Fair Friday, May 23 – Poster Contest

Entry forms are available at the office.  The deadline to drop off submissions to the office is before 3:00 pm on Wednesday May 7th, 2014.

Stuffed Animal Day

Student Council is sponsoring a stuffed animal day for Friday, May 2.  Bring in your favourites!

Destination Imagination

Hi, we’re the Art Invaders! We would like to tell you about the awesome experience that our team had with Destination Imagination. We participated in the Regional Tournament which was held at North Burnaby Secondary and we placed 3^rd. However, we lost a lot of points because of a silly mistake during our performance. We were motivated to redeem ourselves and prepared to try again at the Provincial Tournament which was held at RC Palmer Secondary in Richmond. Although the competition was tougher, we improved our solution considerably because we placed 3^rd in the province which earned us an invitation to the Global Tournament, a chance to represent BC and Canada in the world.

Destination Imagination was the best project that we’ve had in our whole school life. Destination Imagination led us to solve challenges using our imaginations. This project improved our teamwork skills, leadership skills and many other skills needed to collaborate, cooperate and problem-solve. We learned so many great things. We developed skills and knowledge that is required in the curriculum. We learned about different ways to solve problems and to make decisions which is found in the HACE curriculum. We learned how to and the importance of reading the instructions carefully and understanding them, which pertains to Language Arts. We even had to do Math when we were required to calculate our expenses and come up with a team budget. Drama is a huge part of DI, duh. It’s all about acting! Art and Science knowledge is also required to some extent depending on which challenge your team chose. Each team member learned and grew a great deal. Jenny changed the most as she started out very shy and quiet. But now, she speaks up more and shares her great ideas. Celena learned that being enthusiastic is important, but for good team work, she needed to be more patient with others. Melissa used to be more disorganized in her thoughts. During Instant Challenges, she would listen to the instructions and immediately respond with, “What?” instead of being thoughtful and making sense of the task. Melissa became the ‘organizer’ in the group. Hannah learned that it is important to understand all the rules and the instructions of the challenge before you begin. We all learned to think before we act. It was a great lesson for us because we were always starting right away without thinking and planning ahead.

Montessori Parent Committee Update

Direct Donation REMINDER:

If your child is in the Montessori program and you have not made your annual donation of $75/student, there is still time. We will accept cheques made payable to the Maple Grove PAC until May 31.

Our goal this year was to raise $9,700 and we have received $7,634.50 so far. That is 79% of our goal and the best result in over 5 years!!! Thank you so much to everyone that has supported our program through this fundraising campaign. Your donations are tax deductible and an official tax receipt will be issued by the Vancouver School Board.

Did you know that in addition to Parent & Teacher Education and maintaining our Montessori classrooms with specialized materials we also help fund fieldtrips and sponsored the St. John Ambulance Babysitting course to be held during the upcoming Pro-D day on April 28, 2014. There are still spots left for students aged 10 or older. Cost is $49/student & the course runs from 8:30 to 3:30 at the school.

If you have any questions, please contact the Committee Chair, Kelley Marlow, at 604-418-8272 or kelleymarlow@gmail.com.

Upcoming Montessori events:

April 28 during Pro-D day: St. John Ambulance Babysitting Course – 8:30 to 3:30 at Maple Grove Elementary.

May 14 at 7pm in the Library: Parent Education Night #2: Student led Demonstrations.

Maple Grove Garden Club

We are happy to announce that the Magee Envrionment Club will be talking to our garden club members about compost and soil on Tuesday, April 29th after school. If your child and you are interested, please join us in the garden at 3:10pm.

 Thunderbirds Summer Track and Field Camp

Please use this link for more information:  2014 Summer Camp Poster – Thunderbirds Track and Field Club.

Upcoming Events:

April 28th – Pro D Day – No School for Students

April 30th – PAC EVENING on CRITICAL THINKING with Cynthia Nichols

May 2 – Stuffed Animal Day

May 2 – Hot Lunch orders for May are due to the office

May 8 – The Big One at Two (District Wide Earthquake Drill)

May 16 – Volunteer Tea

May 19 – Victoria Day Holiday

May 23 – 10th Annual Spring Fair