Fantastic gymnastics!

We've been so blessed to have an incredibly talented, experienced, and caring Holy Redeemer parent volunteer to teach our energetic kids gymnastics! It is a class the students absolutely look forward to! Everyone is having loads of fun and is learning so much!

Here is a sneak peek into our latest class! Please enjoy the VIDEO CLIPS of our students tackling various balances, rolls, positions, jumps, and landings! Be sure to make it "full screen". 

Honoring Mary: Praying the Living Rosary

Throughout May, we not only honour our mothers, but take some extra special time to honor our Holy Mother, Mary. She said YES to God when she was faced with a challenging situation, and because of her willingness to trust in God's plan, she became the most Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ. 

Today we gathered as a school community to pray the rosary together. Our school is so blessed to have a beautifully painted giant rosary that we call our "living rosary". It stretches around the gym! 

Here is the gym set up prior to the celebration

This special rosary allows us to physically pick up the beads as we pray each prayer. Our class was responsible for the first decade. We led the school in the Hail Mary prayer 10 times. 

Because I was leading this celebration, along with Mrs. Haston and Mrs. Lemire, I was unable to take photos of our class. Sorry!

We have learned that prayer can happen anywhere, even on the bus or while we ride our bikes! Songs can also be a form of prayer, as well as the quiet time that we share with God. Turns out there are very few rules about praying and how we talk to God!

Please consider praying the Hail Mary with your family throughout the month of May. 

To the Ladies Who Love Us

As Mother's Day approached, the boys and girls took time this week to reflect on the most important lady in their lives! 

In the simple words of the boys and girls, here are some special messages in honor of Mother's Day:

We had so much fun working on our hand printed mugs, and truly feel you are "tea-riffic" ladies in our lives. Fingers crossed, all of the special hand painted mugs made it safely home in one piece. 

Absolutely use your mugs, as we baked the paint on so it will not wash away, but skip the dishwasher and hand wash instead. 

Ladies, may you be showered with blessings this weekend! Happy Mother's Day!

Tea-riffic Mug Tags from Happy Go Lucky. 

Drips, Drops, Stripes and Spots

Things we have plenty of in our classroom: 

• friends
• smiles
• silly jokes
• germs
• CREATIVITY!

We put our oodles of creativity to work this week and tackled an art project! 

We've all read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle, but have you ever really examined the illustrations?

Mr. Carle not only wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but he illustrated it, too! He has a unique method for making designed, textured paper and then cutting it into the pieces for his pictures. 

We followed Mr. Carle's paper-making technique. 

First, we painted our paper. We added drips, drops, stripes and spots in every colour!

See? No shortage of creativity in our class! Beautiful designs, boys and girls!

Mrs. Beliveau's mug even got some "creativity" on it too... 

Occupational hazard

We set our papers aside to dry overnight, and then tackled our next project ... clean up!

Thankfully, the boys and girls in our class are always willing to help out. Surprisingly, the art room was nearly sparkling in no time at all!

Could you come clean Mrs. Beliveau's house, please? Can anyone vacuum?

Once our paper had dried, we used tracers to cut out the shapes to make a butterfly. 

A little glue, and ta da! Colourful, Carle-inspired butterflies!

And just when we thought we had wrapped up with chicks ...

Welcome, little guy!

Eric Carle painting project inspired by Deep Space Sparkle. 

It's hard to say goodbye ...

Today was our last day with our sweet fluffy babies. Our egg angel came to gather the chicks today, and the incubator tomorrow. Sniff ... sniff, sniff. We snuck in every opportunity we could today to love them up, cuddling and holding during every spare minute!

We have learned so much in a week! Before the chicks arrived, we made a list of things we wanted to learn. Look, our chart is filled with so many answers!

As the children discovered answers to our questions,
they added their answer on a post it

We spent time recording our learning on little posters! We included a labeled diagram and three facts. We are working so hard at writing complete sentences with a capital letter, period, and all word wall words spelled correctly. 

We will use this same template when we research animals of our own choosing!

Brother Joe dropped in today, and we always love his visits! His humor and wisdom brightened our morning, and he always finds a way to challenge our thinking. Brother Joe spent time with us reflecting on the meaning of Easter. He asked us, "Why do we get chocolate eggs at Easter?"

Brother Joe reminded us what just hatched from our eggs ... new life! The chocolate eggs we get in our baskets represent new life, which reminds us of Jesus' resurrection and how we are reborn each Easter!

Not only have we learned scientific facts about chicks, but we have learned greater life lessons; respecting all things living, treasuring the precious gift of the resurrection, and finding joy in God's creations. 

The chicks are gone ... but as Mrs. Beliveau shut down her computer and headed out of the classroom for the day, from the incubator she heard "cheep, cheep, cheep!". Seriously!

Reading to our Chicks

This weekend was FILLED with chick drama! The Beliveau family was in several times monitoring the chicks and eggs. So far, we've hatched 11 chicks, and our egg angel has taken 9 of them home to her free-range farm. Two remain in our room, happily enjoying lots of company in their warm, cozy box. 

Chicks are a captive audience, and we jumped at the chance to read them our self-illustrated booklet "5 Little Chicks"! 

These booklets are beautifully illustrated, using torn paper to make cute little chicks! Look for this booklet in your child's Kanga today, and enjoy hearing your child read it!

Below is a recording of the students reading:

listen to ‘5 little chicks bk’ on audioBoom

They're so fluffy!

THEY'RE SO FLUFFY!!! 




And so Friday began, with a classroom full of little Agneses, thrilled to see our fluffy little chicks! (thankfully minus the extra tight "Agnes squeeze")

We wasted zero time and decided these little fluff balls needed some gentle cuddles! The boys and girls learned they needed to sit while holding a chick, and to keep a hand under their feet as well as lightly on their back. 

It was such a lovely day to snuggle with our new little miracles. Here are some warm memories we shared:

In between cuddles, we welcomed in countless visitors! Mr. Marshall came to read us one of his favourite stories, Too Many Chickens! It's about a class who is hatching chicks, but the farmer forgets to come pick up the chicks once they have arrived! We had lots of good laughs as he read! Thank you, Mr. Marshall!  We also welcomed in our "egg angel" herself, who is the wonderful lady providing us with eggs from her free-range farm. She is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate, and we loved picking her brain with our crazy questions.  We learned about the variety of breeds our "egg angel" has, some that are quite rare and even endangered. One fact that was of particular interest was that we had a very special little chick in our incubator. There is a special breed called the Partridge Chantecler, which is on the endangered list. By God's grace, her PC rooster and PC hen mated, and we were lucky enough to have a purebred Partridge Chantecler chick! Keeping the endangered breed alive! It has been an AMAZING week filled with loads of valuable science and language arts lessons. More importantly, however, are the lessons we have learned about new life, respect, patience, and compassion. God's work is truly amazing! While the five fluffy chicks went home to their new free-range farm, the incubator remains busy! Mrs. Beliveau and her brood are keeping careful watch over the new little chicks who are hatching over the weekend!  Please keep praying for us as we welcome more beautiful chicks into the world! Monday is sure to be exciting! Thank you, God, for blessing us with this experience! We are in truly in awe of your amazing work and beautiful creations!