January 17th, 2020
January 17th, 2019
BI-WEEKLY UPDATES
What’s happening in the January:
- French Immersion Registration Open Online until Friday January 31st
- Monday, January 13th – Kindergarten Registration Open Online
- Thursday, January 23rd – Winter Concert – CANCELLED
- Thursday, January 23rd – Chamber Orchestra 11:30 am
- Friday, January 24th – PA Day
Did You Know?
ABC Family Literacy Day Family Literacy Day® is a national awareness initiative created by ABC Life Literacy Canada in 1999 and held annually on January 27 to raise awareness of the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy-related activities as a family.
A new decade is upon us, making this year’s New Year’s Resolutions extra special. Most will aim to lose weight, exercise more or save more money, but ABC Life Literacy Canada has another idea – make family learning a daily habit. Join us we challenge families to Take 20 in 2020!
Here are 20 tips for families to do during 2020 to keep your literacy skills sharp:
- Plan a Day Trip: Go online together to find fun (and free) places to go in your city for your next family day trip.
- Sing it to Me: Play a song and then pause it. Ask your family to sing the next line – do they know it?
- Pop-up Kitchen: Follow a recipe together – a yummy way to practice math and reading.
- Aqua Adventure: Visit an aquarium (or aquarium store) to learn about nature and the environment (see cool fish too!)
- #TTYL: Keep in touch with teens and impress them with your amazing texting skills (like using popular hashtags while using full sentences.)
- Weekend Hike: Enjoy the great outdoors and learn about nature – why not make it a scavenger hunt!
- Shop Till you Drop: Shopping together can be fun if you’re prepared (no really.) Write a list together of what you need and take turns finding the items on your list.
- Hopscotch Count: Make a giant hopscotch calculator, ask math questions and hop to the answers!
- Reverso Story: Tell your favourite story, backwards – start with the ending. Can your family guess the story?
- Library Passport: Use your library card at the library as your passport to travel the world. Where will you go and what will you learn?
- FGN: Start an FGN (Family Game Night) with your family and friends, and switch houses each week.
- Picture Maker: Make pictures out of modelling clay to go with your story. Get inspired by Family Literacy Day Honourary Chair Barbara Reid (have you seen what she can do with modeling clay? WOW!)
- Tell it 2 Me: Write a secret message with numbers and do math to solve it.
- Animal Walk: Read street names and think of animals that begin with the same first letter of each street.
- Eat Your Words: Play with your food and write words with alphabet cereal and soup (we like cookie letters too!)
- Story Switch-A-Roo: Take turns reading a bedtime story together, kids and adults each read one sentence at a time.
- WOW Palindromes: Find words that are spelled the same way forwards and backwards. How many can you find? (Some to get your started: wow, mom, dad, radar.)
- Abracadabra: Find cool card tricks from the library or by going online with your family. Practice and show your friends – can they figure out the tricks?
- Word Dynamo: Say a word and ask kids to say a new word that begins with the last letter of the word you just said (apple, eat, tidy, yawn.)
- Watch a Book: Read a book then watch the movie together. Talk about which version you liked the best.
Taking time every day to read or do a learning activity with children is crucial to a child’s development, improving a child’s literacy skills dramatically, and can help a parent improve their skills as well. For more information please feel free to visit the ABC Life Literacy Canada website:
https://abclifeliteracy.ca/family-literacy
FRENCH IMMERSION REGISTRATION
Grade 1 French Immersion registration for the 2020-2021 school year is now open. Registration is done online and registration closes on January 31, 2020. For questions, please call 519-570-0003 x4277.
To learn more about our French program options.
KINDERGARTEN REGISTRATION
Kindergarten registration for the 2020-2021 school year is now open. We are excited to welcome all our friends born in 2016 to Kindergarten! Registration is done online, followed by a short appointment at the school to finish off the registration process.
CHALLENGE UPDATES
A huge thank you to all our students for your help in the Golden Boot and Golden Recycling Bin Challenges! We are noticing huge improvements in keeping our hallways tidy and safe! We have also noticed a reduction in the amount of paper being added to the recycling bins as you find new ways to repurpose, reuse and reduce. Great job Suns!!
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Did you know?
The Sandhills School Council has an Ontario Gaming Licence and have a monthly Monday night commitment at the K-W Gaming Centre running the BINGO. Regular members of School Council and some of our Sandhills staff members have been volunteering for these spots since June 2019. These efforts have raised a lot of money to be put back into whole school activities, events and guests for our school.
Council needs your help!
We are looking for more volunteers to help out at the Monday BINGO nights or we risk losing our Gaming licence and therefore losing a significant amount of money for our students.
If you are interested in volunteering to help out and would like more information, please contact the school. We appreciate your support!