1951 Estevan Road Principal: Jacquie Poulin
Nanaimo, B.C., V9S 3Y9 Secretary: Linda Cowling
Phone: 250-754-5442
Fax: 250-741-8310 Date: January 12, 2004
Welcome back and Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that it is January
already, and even harder to believe that it is already 2004. I hope everyone had a relaxing and fun break
in December and are feeling re-charged and ready to go once again.
After taking a brief glance at the calendar, it looks like we have another busy term coming up. Curricular overviews will either have gone home already, or will be arriving soon, from your child(ren)’s classroom teacher. These overviews are a great way to know what is happening in the classroom and can be great for starting a discussion with your son/daughter about their schoolwork.
One area that we continue to work on is behaviour on the playground. It has been rewarding to see children
developing their skills at problem-solving and conflict resolution as the year
has progressed. The staff has been
working together to help children understand when to seek help and then work
with children to come to a positive solution.
The skill of solving problems in peaceful ways is complex and
multi-levelled, and one that needs to be re-taught and re-enforced
continuously.
In the process of solving problems we use a form of
the following approach:
Ø Ensure all involved in the
conflict have an opportunity to state what happened from their perspective, and
encourage the others involved to actively listen to another person’s point of
view
Ø Discuss at what point the
conflict or problem started, and what
were the factors leading up to the problem
Ø Brainstorm what other
options each person had to prevent the conflict in the future
Ø Brainstorm what needs to be
done to ‘repair the damage’ done by this problem
Ø Choose the form of
restitution and the positive plan for the future
Ø Implement the plan
Ø Plan a time to review how the plan is working.
The extent to which all of these steps are followed is adjusted depending on the situation, the intensity of the problem, and the children involved. The ultimate goal each time is to have children learn from the situation and develop skills for problem solving in peaceful ways in the future.
We look forward to a positive and energetic second
term. Working together, we will make
2004 a great year!
Jacquie
Poulin
Even the cold weather and snow have not slowed down
many of our runners, who continue to get out there and do their laps during
class time, at recess, and at lunch breaks – way to go! Here are the students who received ribbons
in December:
25 km Runners – Cameron Moshuk, Kyle
Agbing, Mack McLellan, Tamika Bowers, Robin Tait, Spencer Grant, Hillary
Hertzberg, Sarah Latour, Spencer Walker, Paige Spencer, Amanda Chapman-Epton,
Sydney Creighton, Vernon Dawson, Mikaela Vipond, Micah Prince
50 km runners – Connor Robertson, Ieysha
Matthew, Kate Dunbar, Tyson Nahanee, Braedon Walsh, Levi Legault, Brice Brookes
75 km runners – Mitchell Vipond, Blake
Walsh
100 km runners – Rohit Nagi
Way to go everyone, keep on running! Special thanks to Mr. Shaw for organizing this club and ensuring that our students receive their ribbons throughout the year.
In light of our recent weather, and the fact that it
is still only January, it seemed like a good time to once again remind students
of some important safety considerations.
Please take the time to go over these items with your son/daughter
again:
Ø
Please
walk with care on the sidewalks and playground areas when the ground is icy.
Ø
Remember
that throwing of snowballs or any other objects is not permitted on school
grounds. Repeat offenders will be
suspended as per School District policy.
Ø
Report
to the office after school if your ride or person responsible for meeting you
does not show up within a reasonable amount of time . . . do not go off the
school grounds.
Ø
When
the bell rings, it means to immediately stop what you are doing and move
towards your classroom.
Thank you for your support with
these safety precautions
Our Virtues Program continues to expand and grow
throughout the year, as does our Virtue Tree.
Students have been working hard to learn, understand, and develop the
virtues that have been presented at the assemblies, discussed in class, and
chatted about throughout the day. The
most recent virtue presented in December was enthusiasm, a fun one to do during
December!
Many students have been recognized for a variety of
reasons throughout the month of December.
Here are our Royal Recognitions for December:
Division 1:
Helpfulness
– recognized three times – Hillary
Hertzberg, Melanie
Ribicic
-
recognized twice – Casey Bock, Adrian
Choromanski, Jon Jones, Sarah Latour
-
recognized once – Kayla Balmer, Alyssia
Bell-Surette, Spencer Grant, Sam Hansl, Corey Henwood, Hayden Kirkpatrick, John
Lee, Liam Robertson, Robin Tait, Danny Tooke, Josh Wilton, Zac Wilton
Responsibility
– Rebecca Reilly, Robin Tait, Danny Tooke
Respect
– Casey Bock, Rebecca Reilly, Robin Tait, Danny Tooke
Co-operation
– Kayla Balmer, Sarah Latour
Enthusiasm
– Kyle Curtis, Kendra Howland, Taylor Mueller, Josh Wilton
Division 2:
Co-operation
– Julius Monague, Rohit Nagi
Helpfulness
– recognized twice – Martina Rye
-
recognized once – Josh Bell-Surette, Kate
Dunbar, Jewels Greenhough, Ieysha Matthew, Dylan Moore
Enthusiasm
– Josh Bell-Surette, Jewels Greenhough, Maggie Kellogg, Dylan Moore, Cameron
Moshuk, Rohit
Nagi,
Connor Robertson, Ayla Wagner, Katriana Tarala
Division 3:
Responsibility
– Carson Balmer, Maggi Benoit, Angus Brookes, Amanda Chapman-Epton, Sydney
Creighton,
Zach
Creighton, Emma Dunbar, Tori McKenzie, Eva Morgan, Michael Ribicic, Amber Ryan,
Quince Sholberg,, Jessica Sibley, Lisa Tran, Mikaela Vipond, Janus Agbing
Helpfulness
– Emma Dunbar, Alysha Nahanee, Jessica Sibley, Lisa Tran
Co-operation
– David Dagasso
Enthusiasm
– Vernon Dawson, Paige Spencer
Division 4:
Helpfulness
– Tanya Brunton, Nathan Dawson, Meleah Desjarlais
Truthfulness
– Daniel MacDonald
Enthusiasm
– Sydney Howlett, Arrom Lamoureux, Kate Mason-Betts
Congratulations
to all our students, a tremendous list of students recognized here once
again.
We have a new name to add to our Self-Managers
program. Effective January 1st,
the following student has become a self-manager at Princess Anne:
Maggi Benoit
Congratulations, Maggi. Any others wishing to be considered as new self-managers must
complete a form, have it signed by their parents and a staff member, then
return it to Mrs. Poulin by the end of each month.
Whether
or not your child earns straight A’s, s/he can be a winner if s/he masters
these three “A’s”
student
may not succeed if s/he doesn’t work
hard. Help your children learn
the importance of
work. Let them know that you
expect them to
try
their best.
Our School Planning Council will be meeting in
January to review the school goals as outlined in our growth plan. The council is responsible for ensuring that
both the goals and the supporting action plan are based on sound data and
achievable strategies. The council also plays an integral role in
the development of school organizational and budget plans. For more information on the School Planning
Councils or School Growth Plan please refer to the Ministry of Education
website or call Jacquie at school.
Princess
Anne is working towards the following goals this year:
Goal
1 – To
improve writing performance of students at Princess Anne Elementary.
Goal
2 – To
increase the socially responsible behaviour of students at Princess Anne
Elementary, with a special
focus
on solving problems in peaceful ways.
In
an earlier newsletter, students were invited to put their name in a draw for
tickets to a Clippers game throughout the year. Here are some of our lucky winners:
January
9th – Merenya Prince
January
25th – Carson Balmer
January
30th – Brig Stevenson
We
hope these students enjoy the games.
More names will be drawn in the coming weeks!
It was great to see a number of families out on
December 17th for our Family Craft Night. It was a fun, relaxing evening of visiting, doing crafts,
listening to carols, and enjoying some hot chocolate and cookies. Many thanks to the staff for organizing and
setting up the craft stations.
The next meeting of the Princess Anne Parent Group
will be on Wednesday, January 14th beginning at 7:00 pm. This meeting is open to all parents in the
Princess Anne community. We look
forward to seeing you on the 14th of January!
Also, a special thanks to Pat Hall, the Parent
Group, and all the parent volunteers who worked at the Christmas Craft Fair and
Tree Sale. It was a great day, lots of
fun, very festive, and a huge success all around. Way to go Princess Anne parents!!
Come one, come all, to this neat performance on Sunday,
January 18th. Two of our
Princess Anne students, Sydney Howlett and Ian Farrow, will be performing “The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, put on by the Nanaimo Conservatory of
Music’s junior drama group. There will
be two shows, 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm, at the Malaspina University-College
Theatre. Cost of the tickets will be
$5.00 for adults and $4.00 for children, students, and seniors. All the money from the sale of the tickets
goes to the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music for the cost of renting Malaspina
Theatre. Anyone interested can call
754-4611 or 754-1664.
Thank you,
Shelley Howlett
DAILY PHYSICAL
ACTIVITY
AND HEALTHY
EATING
Welcome back and happy new
year! Hopefully everyone had a good
winter break, enjoyed time with family and friends, and are now re-charged and
ready to head into 2004! What a great
time to make some changes in the area of daily physical activity and healthy
eating.
Once again we have some
articles, written by members of the community, to include in our newsletter,
helping to promote daily physical activity and healthy eating at home, at
school, and in the community. Hope you
enjoy!
STRIVE FOR
5 A DAY p.3
By : Jeri Manley, RDN,
Community Nutritionist,
Nanaimo Health Centre
Imagine an ad stating
“Take this food and decrease your risk for chronic disease, aid your digestion,
increase your antioxidant vitamin intake and much more”. Would you eat it? Better still, would you eat it several times a day? The “wonder food” described is fruits and
vegetables.
Perhaps they need the
assistance of ad men to get this information into the mainstream of our
lives. The produce section of supermarkets
is, in my eyes, one of the most attractive.
What’s missing are the proclamations like “no cholesterol”, “no fat”,
(except for avocadoes), “high fiber”, “low calorie” that would allow this
section to be taken more seriously. If
these 4 labels were placed on a cardboard box for cereal or snacks, we’d grab
them up as a “health food”. Because
veggies and fruits don’t have labels, we may not be giving them due attention
in our grocery cart.
Scientists debate
about many issues, but there is agreement that increasing your intake of fruits
and vegetables can help prevent heart disease, certain types of cancer, and
other chronic diseases. Yet surveys
show that few of us eat even the recommended minimum – five daily servings of
fruits and vegetables. Why don’t we go
for these foods? We all have many
excuses for under using fruits and veggies.
The list includes dislike of preparing or cleaning the fresh stuff,
letting high fat or sugar foods rise above veggies and fruits as a snack
choice, and probably a concern with things becoming limp and even slimy in the
crispers of the fridge.
For every excuse or
barrier there is a solution. Perhaps a
first step is to think of the fruit and vegetable choices that you like and
load up these “Flavourite things” in your cart. Here are some tips for upping your servings per day:
1.
Start your day with fruits, in addition to
whole-grain bread, cereal, or some other form of grain. Have citrus fruit or juice, and maybe a
banana or some cantaloupe, mango, or apple.
Keep prunes, raisins and other dried fruits on hand for variety.
2.
Look at convenience products. Purchase packages of pre-washed baby carrots
and spinach, salad, and stirfry packages and veggie and fruit snack packs. Use vegetable storage bags to keep vegetables
in sight and fresh in the fridge.
3.
Surprise yourself and choose veggies and low-fat dip
over a bag of “chips” as a snack. These foods may help fill the gap while
waiting to get the rest of the meal on the table. Keep a “crunch bowl” happening in the fridge, accessible to all
snackers.
4.
The fruit bowl has been a traditional strategy for
household snacking. Fruit salads are an
easy dessert made by combining fresh, canned and/or frozen fruits. To provide flavour and a sauce mix in frozen
concentrate orange juice to taste, or dress with yogurt and a sprinkle of
granola on the top.
Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death
in Canada. Evidence links certain risk factors
in children with accelerated atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries). It is therefore imperative to achieve a
healthy, active lifestyle in childhood.
I will present a series of articles that will provide strategies for
promoting lifelong cardiovascular health in children and adults.
The health benefits
associated with a physically active lifestyle include weight control, lower
blood pressure, improved self-esteem (psychological well being), and increased
physical activity in adulthood. The
amount of physical activity that Canadian children participate in has reduced
over the years for a number of reasons:
Ø Children are
driven to school, after-school activities, and friends’ homes rather than walk
or bike;
Ø Significant
increase in sedentary entertainment including television, video games, and
computers, along with a trend away from active leisure pursuits and
recreational sports;
Ø Participation in
physical activity greatly diminishes in teenage boys, and especially, in teenage girls;
Ø Lack of safe
outdoor play areas;
Ø Tightening school
budgets have led to changes in curriculum priorities de-emphasizing regular
physical education;
Ø Change in family
makeup (increasing numbers of single parents or two working parents) limits the ability of parents to encourage
participation and provide access to after school activities.
What can you do?
1.
Increase the amount of time spent walking, bicycling, and in backyard
play;
2.
Use stairs instead of elevators;
3.
Walk or bike instead of drive;
4.
Encourage more informal
“pick-up” games;
5.
Encourage sports that can be enjoyed throughout life;
6.
Participate in household chores;
7.
Increase the number of family outings that involve walking, hiking,
cycling, swimming, or other recreational activities;
8.
As a parent/caregiver/teacher become a positive role model by improving
your physical activity;
9.
Establish time limits for sedentary activities (TV watching, playing
video games, and computer use)
10. Use planned activities as the family’s reward system for positive accomplishments.
Maintenance of a physically
active lifestyle helps prevent the development of obesity, elevated blood
pressure, insulin resistance, and elevated cholesterol levels, all of which are
risk factors for cardiovascular disease that frequently are present as early as
childhood or adolescence.
INTRAMURALS
AND LUNCHTIME ACTIVITIES
Starting by mid-January, students will have the opportunity to be involved in some organized fun and games at lunch in the gym. We will be starting off with Beachball Volleyball for students in Grades 4-7. Sign-up sheets are out this week and we are looking forward to some great games in the gym. Also, we will have a Skipping Club gym for all students, twice a week in the gym. Be sure to encourage your son/daughter to get involved in these activities and/or stop by the gym at lunch to see what is happening.
DATES TO
REMEMBER:
- Wednesday, January 14 – 7:00 pm – PAPG meeting
- Wednesday, January 21 – Business Committee
meeting – small school closure on agenda
- Wednesday, January 28 – Board meeting – small
school closure on agenda
- Friday, February 6 – Gr. 4 – 7 go to Jazzfest, thanks
to sponsorship by our Parent Group
- Friday, January 23 – Gr. 4 – 7 swimming
- Friday, February 13 – Primary – Valentine’s Day
Tea
- Friday, February 20 – Gr. 4 – 7 swimming
- Monday, February 23 – Pro-d Day – no school for
students
- Tuesday, February 24 – Program Implementation
Day – no school for students
- Thursday, March 4 – Gr. 4 – 7 Ski Trip
- Friday, March 5 – Fine Arts Performance at Cilaire
School – ‘SWARM’
- Wednesday, March 10 – Second Term Reports out
- Friday, March 12 – Last day of classes before Spring
Break – dismissal at 1:55 p.m. as usual
- Monday, March 22 – students return from Spring
Break
In a safe place
people are kind.
Sarcasm, fighting,
and name-calling are exceptions rather than the rule.
Kindness and
consideration and forgiveness are the usual way of life.
In a safe place
there is laughter.
Not just the
canned laughter of radio and television,
but real laughter
that comes from sharing meaningful work and play.
In a safe place
there are rules.
The rules are few
and fair and are made by the people
who live and work
there, including the children.
In a safe place
people listen to each other.
They care about
each other and show that they do, with words and also with
body language.
In a safe place the
adults are the models for the others.
- Mary MacCracken, ’Turnabout Children’