- Newsletters
- Review the school's newsletters
- Book Club
- Information on the Blue Spruce and Silver Birch book clubs.
- Frank B. Edwards Visit
- Some background information about Frank B. Edwards.
- Interesting Articles
- Links to various interesting articles.
- Lunchtime Ideas
- Links to sites regarding lunchtime
Newsletters
Interesting Articles
- Research reports from the Kids Help Phone.
- April newsletter from the iamsafe.ca website.
- Information on Safe Schools published by the Ministry of Education and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
- March newsletter from the iamsafe.ca website.
- 8 Ways Parents Can Promote Reading at Home
- Target The Problem! - a handout describing the five components of reading and difficulties that kids experience within each area.- February 3, 2009
- www.internet101.ca - a collection of safety tips, helpful presentations and resources to help kids and parents surf safely.
- Special Edition newsletter from iamsafe.ca on Cyberbullying.
Blue Spruce/Silver Birch Book Clubs
Book Club exchange times are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (or library time) at 10:15 before heading outside for Activity Break. As soon as a book is read, don't forget to fill in a Book Worm circle and watch our Book Worm grow! So far, 121 students have read at least one book in the club - a grand total at the end of January for all books read is 254! Great Job!
- Book Worm Tail UpdateFebruary 4, 2010
- Our Book Worm's tail is growing like crazy! His tail is all the way down the hall and back - each circle has the name of each student/book read from the OLA's reading lists for Blue Spruce and Silver Birch Books. Out of our 121 Book Club readers, over 250 books have been read thus far. Way to go, MPS!
Frank B. Edwards
Mr. Edwards and his cartoonist, John Biachi have created 38 children's books together and have more than two million books in print. Their very first book was The Bungalo Boys: Last of the Tree Ranchers. It became a national bestseller in spite of the fact that it was about cowboys who rode trees and the beaver gang that stole them. Their company, Bungalo Books' motto was: Reading for the Fun of It. Mr. Edwards is also known for his Mooner series of books such as Mortimer Mooner Stopped Taking a Bath! He has also written juvenile novels such as Bug and Frogger (nominated for Silver Birch Award 2001).
Of course, Frank B. Edwards works on many other publishing and editorial projects, designs curriculum based programs/lesson plans and has written scripts and speeches. However, each year Mr. Edwards visits over 50 schools across North America and he enjoys talking about creative writing - how stories are built on ideas and using his own books as examples, explains the need for colourful characters, interesting problems/solutions about the importance of careful editing. He also shows how the author and illustrator work together.
Parents/teachers/students can visit http://bungalobooks.com and http://www.pokeweed.com for more information.
Lunchtime Ideas
- Peanut Butter-Less Lunch and Snack Ideas
- Waste Free Lunches
- Take the Canadian Health Network Healthy Lunches tour and see how easy healthy lunches can be.
- Boomerang Lunches.
The following information was provided by the North Gower Public School Boomerang Lunch Program.
"We started the program during Earth Week. We started out thinking we would only be doing it for one week. During the week the custodians noted that we went from 10 bags of garbage a day down to 1 bag of garbage a day. This was extrememly noteworthy. The other discovery was how much food was being sent back home that previously had been thrown out. After the week was up, we presented this information to the parent council. They felt that it was important that the student population be aware of the need to take care of the environment and that families needed to be aware of the amount of food their child was actually consuming. We decided to continue with the program and have since made it a natural part of the new school year.
We do offer composting....each classroom has a compost bucket and at the end of the school day a classroom monitor delivers it to one large bucket that is taken home by one of our teachers who has a farm...she puts it on her own compost pile.
We recycle all items that can be recycled at school. The students are encouraged to rinse out all recyclables and all items that will be taken home in their lunch kits. We also did a presentation to each class about how to take home their garbage. Most students bring either a sandwich container or baggie. We explained that the messy garbage could be placed in these containers to reduce the mess in their lunch kits. We also talked about how there are other options for the snacks that produce these messes ie: yogurt tubes - yogurt in reusable containers. The students are still working on recognizing the packages that can be recycled so it is still a work in progress and there are some classes that are better at it than others. Our younger grades are very good at it since it is what they are use to. The older students still struggle with it. During Earth Week we had made up lids for the garbage cans that resembled the earth. Every garbage can in the school had a lid and it was to help the students think about what they were about to throw away and decide if it was "school based garbage". We have made sure the students realize that any garbage created at school is okay. Hot lunch days we have additional garbage.
We had a few parent raise concerns about garbage going home. We tried to give a few clear messages.
- We were offered a boomerang lunch program not a litterless lunch program. We did not suggest that there could not be any garbage, just that it was a family's choice and if they chose to produce garbage the responsiblity was theirs to dispose of the garbage. Our hope was that individual families would start using some reusable containers and that some garbage would be reduced.
- The students were offered suggestions on how to take the "garbage" home and that families could encourage this process and the messes would be minimized.
- A usual complaint was that whether the garbage was at school or home, it was still producing garbage so what was the difference. Again, the message we sent home was that it was an individual families choice to make garbage and therefore, it was their responsiblity to dispose of it.
- We wanted the families to know what their child was choosing to eat during the day.
Our biggest sell to families was the fact that we produced only 5 bags of garbage a week versus 50 bags a week. We made it as positive as possible and thanked everyone for supporting the program and coming up with their own unique solutions and ideas to produce less garbage. We built it up into a "wonderful" program that our families were supporting. It was important to get parent council on board. The newspaper article was another way of sending a message to our families...get the media involved!
Our program is not perfect, but a work in progress. There will always be some families that will not support the program, so don't take it to heart too much. If the administration and parent council are behind you, it is workable. We are in the process of creatilng a group of students who will be working as an Envirnomental Team. This should assist also."