By Sharon Fischer
Spring is in full swing just as swimming lessons are for our Grade 1-3 students. The students have been heading off to the pool twice per week and come back reporting that they are learning many great skills and having lots of fun doing so.
Our students also had lots of great fun participating in the Music Festival, and the classes, along with individual students performed very well and scored highly. Our Grade 2 students in 2DB once again were recommended for provincials in Edmonton and will once again be participating. This year provincials are being held on May 30, so we wish our students the very best on that day.
In order to allow all of the classes to see each other’s performances we held a Festival Highlights Concert in the gym for students in kindergarten to Grade 4 to enjoy on May 8. Then the following couple of days, students were able to eat their lunches in the drama room or gymnasium to watch the choral speech performances during these “dinner theatre” times.
On May 9 our primary-aged students were able to take part in a very entertaining Robert Munch puppet show. As well, all staff and students in the school wore a hat in support of mental health on that same day. Other activities in support of mental health included taking time to Stop, Drop and Dance, as well as wearing green on the Tuesday, “chalking about it” – where students wrote positive messages in chalk on the sidewalk entering the school, and students in Grades 5 and 6 participated in “Brain School” and a Mini-Wellness Fair held in our gymnasium. There were several very good messages that came from taking part in all of these mental health activities. They not only brought positive attention to this very important matter, but our students had fun and learned a great deal from it as well.
On May 11 our kindergarten students held a very special celebration honouring their mothers. The kindergarten students sang songs, taught their mom a song/dance (Turkey Tango, One Green Jelly Bean and Tooty Ta), gave their moms a very special gift they had made in class, and posed for a photo with their mothers during this very special time spent together.
Also on May 11, the Grade 2 students in 2SG dressed up in costumes to perform three fairy tales for their parents. Mrs. Geddes’ Grade 2 class had been learning about fairy tales for about six weeks as part of their Language Arts program, so in order to practice reading with expression, they thought it would be fun to perform fairy tales for their parents. These young students worked hard to memorize their lines and actions and that Friday they were able to impress their parents with these new skills. On May 14 they performed one more time for the kindergarten and Grade 1 students. It was a lot of fun for everyone.
On May 14, we also had Sigmund Brower travel to Stettler Elementary School to talk to our students about his many books and to encourage them with their own writing. It was a very inspiring presentation and our students learned a great deal from this Alberta author. He shared how he gets his ideas for writing his books and the students had a chance to ask some really tough questions as well.
3EP has also been pretty inspirational in their recent activities. While learning about India and its incredible culture, this class has also been discussing its struggles with illiteracy and poverty. Because they are taking their roles as global citizens seriously, the students were desperate to help, so they created a campaign called, Chores for Change (the class chose this little pun on coins/making a difference quite deliberately). The intent of this campaign was to earn money (by doing chores) to help the poverty stricken nation that they have been studying. This Grade 3 class was able to raise enough money to purchase “Clean Water for Life for 1 Individual” and “1 School Kit” for a student to attend school. Pretty great work, Grade 3s.
There truly has been so much going on throughout the school and in each of the classrooms, but we just can’t cover everything in this article. I am so proud of all of our students (and their teachers too), and I know our “global citizens” are learning so much more than all that is in the curriculums that we follow. Our kindergarten students are excited to participate in Bird House Building with their dads May 23 and 24 in the evening in the Wm. E. Hay Stettler Secondary School wood workshop. Both students and dads are bound to learn much during these two evenings.
Then on May 25, our students are looking forward to “Beginning With The End In Mind” as they watch, high five and congratulate the Grade 12 students as they walk through our halls. We are excited that these Wm. E. Hay graduates are going to share their exciting day with us again this year, and we feel that it is an amazing opportunity for a students to look ahead to what their future will hold in just a few short years.
It is hard to believe that we are nearly entering the month of June already. As we reflect back through this school year there have been so very many great things to celebrate, yet many more still ahead before this year rapidly draws to a close. Enjoy the rest of this month and the great weather that we are having.
