Pictures of Liam Colin!
Here are some pictures of Liam. There is also a little video for you! Enjoy and thank you for your prayers!
A New Addition To The Family
Ian, Deanne and Siena Hancock are proud to announce the birth of a beautiful baby boy. Liam Colin Hancock was born at 5:16 pm on Monday, March 30, weighing 8.8 and 20.5 inches long. Both baby and mother are doing wonderfully and the baby is very healthy and very confused with the new surroundings. We unfortunately can’t post pictures right now but we will as soon as we can.
Thank you for all your prayers and support,
Ian, Deanne and Siena Hancock
Reminders and A Special Note About the Easter Service!
Just wanted to send out a reminder to bring in your pictures from the Planetarium as soon as possible. However, if you are bringing in your camera or memory stick, please wait until I have returned from the Easter Break as I will most likely not be here for the rest of the week due to a possible new addition to the family! If you are just bringing in a CD or sending the photos by email, please do so as soon as possible.
If anything happens with the baby, I will be posting pictures and an announcement here on the blog! So keep checking it regularly for all the latest news!
On Thursday, there will be an Easter Service in the gym starting at 11:30. Parents and family are more than welcome to attend. During the service, there will be a special presentation of a highly edited portion from the “Passion”. We want to make all parents aware that we are showing a small and very edited clip. There will be no violence showed, but there will be images of Jesus on the cross and pictures of Jesus where it is evident that he has been beaten and hurt. If you are concerned, you can come and talk to the Office, Ms. Evans or you can choose to pick your children up before 11:30.
Help The Hancock Family Support Earth Hour Tonight!
If you didn’t know already, today is Earth Hour where people all around the world turn off their lights and electronic devices . . . anything that uses power for one hour. It is happening tonight and my family is planning on turning everything off and playing scrabble by candle light! Why don’t you join us tonight and turn everything off at your place for one hour! It will help the Earth and help to tell others about taking care of our Earth. In fact, why don’t you see if you can get your grandparents, cousins, friends, family, etc. involved too? Here is a video explaining the whole thing.
It all starts at 8:30 p.m.!!!!
A Successful Day!
It was wonderful to see the bus pull up to the school at the end of the day. The children all looked happy and tired from an exciting day! Ms. Stark said that the fieldtrip was apparently the best trip ever! I think that the ride had something to do with that! 🙂 I was very sorry that I did not get to go a long but I am sure that the students learned lots and brought back many great memories. I also hope that the trip helped to bring an excitement and curiosity for Space into their minds. I love Space. It has so many infinite possibilities and so much wonder. There is so much we know and yet we still can not even fathom the depths of the things we don’t know. Anyway, I am sure looking forward to seeing the photos that you all took of the trip. I am looking forward to taking them to the computer lab and using them in lots of creative ways. There are several ways you can get the photos to me. Please read below for instructions on how to get the photos to me:
Emailing:
Emailing the photos may be one of the easiest way to get the photos to me. If you have done this before without any problems, you can skip this part. However, there can be problems due to the size of the files. With photo files, if they are too big sometimes you end up having to send them one by one and sometimes, if it doesn’t work, you get an email saying that your email could not be sent. One way to solve that problem is to save them all to a new “zipped” folder on your computer which reduces the size. You can try sending that folder by email without doing anything following the steps below:
- Right-click a blank area on the desktop or in an open folder, point to New, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder.
- Type a name for the new compressed folder, and then press ENTER. Your new compressed folder is displayed as a folder icon with a zipper. Depending on your preferences, a .zip file name extension may also appear.
- You move files and folders to or from compressed folders exactly as you move them to or from uncompressed folders. For example, you can drag files or folders to the compressed folder. When you move a file or a folder to a compressed folder, that file is automatically compressed. A file that is moved from a compressed folder is automatically uncompressed.
If the file is still too big, you may have to use an online service to send it. Follow these steps to send it using Yousendit.com. When you have all the photos in one compressed folder, go to http://yousendit.com/. You may have to create a new account first. Once you are in, fill in the email information (our email is mrhclass@gmail.com), go to the “select a file” box, click browse and find the compressed folder you made. When you click open, it will insert itself as part of the email. Click “Send it” and you are done. I will get a link to the file to download it.
Burn to CD:
If you want, you can just burn the photos to a cd and bring that to school. I will reimburse you for the cd (bring you a blank cd in return).
Put the photos on a memory stick and bring that to school:
If you just put the photos on a memory stick and bring it to school, I will download them off the stick onto my computer.
Bring the camera back to school:
You can also bring the camera back to school and I will pop the card out and plug it into my computer and just take the photos directly off the camera.
Any of these ways works for me. It just depends on what is easiest for you. Please come talk to me about which way is easiest or if you need any help. Thank you again for allowing your students to bring their cameras. I believe that it was a success for the most part (though I haven’t seen the photos yet! 🙂 ) This may be the beginning of incorporating cameras more into what we do though more discussion on when to take photos may be needed apparently . . . 🙂
More Fieldtrip, Please!
Well, our fieldtrip is happening tomorrow! The kids thought it would never happen. But here it is!!! Just some final reminders for you before tomorrow.
- Time: We will be leaving at 8:30 sharp. Please have the students here before that so we don’t lose time on the road. I will be here from 8:00 on so anytime between 8:00 and 8:30 would be great! We will try to be back by 3:30 but it will depend on the traffic.
- Lunch: Please make sure that the students have a packed lunch.
- Money: Do not send money please!
- Uniforms: Please have students dressed in uniforms. It is not full dress but just the normal uniforms.
- Activities: Students can bring something to do on the bus. However, we are not allowing electronic games or music devices.
- Cameras: If you are okay with sending your digital camera with your child, that would be great. We will have a conversation about proper use of the camera before the students leave on the bus and I will ask the parent helpers to try and make sure to ask if everyone has their cameras before moving from activity to activity.
Thank you to the parent helpers who are coming. We have lots which is wonderful!!! It should be a great time tomorrow!
Details on the Fieldtrip on Thursday and a Question for Everyone!
As you may have already heard from the excited chatter of the students talking, we will be going on our long delayed field-trip to the planetarium. The field-trip will be this Thursday with the bus leaving at 8:30 in the morning. We are planning on returning by 3:30 but with traffic always an issue it could be later. Students have an exciting day planned. We will be watching a presentation in the star theatre, taking a ride in the simulated rocket machine, watching a demonstration of life in the Space Station and learning about the moon’s orbit around the Earth and the order of the planets in our Solar System. Lots of fun packed into a shirt amount of time.
To help us, here are some items to remember. Students will be eating lunch in the planetarium. Please have them bring their lunches with them. There will be no lunch service there or time to stop at the gift shop at the planetarium so students do not need to bring any money at all. For the bus ride, students can bring an activity for the journey. However, we are not allowing any electronic devices at all as we do not want them to be stolen, lost or damaged.
Question:
Having said that, I am wondering about the possibility of the students bringing a digital camera if families have one available. Digital cameras can be a great way to capture important events like field-trips. Students can then use the images to create presentations on their learning from the field-trips. It would be very cool to take the images taken from the field-trip and combine them into a folder to use in the computer. Students could then create animotos or voicethreads or other types of presentations using the images. However, I wanted to get some feedback from parents as to what your thoughts were on this idea. I realize that there may be issues with making sure they don’t get lost or left behind. As to proper use, that is something that we can talk about prior to them leaving; i.e. using the strap at all times when you are holding it, checking to make sure that you have it with you when you move from place to place, when to take photos and when not to take photos.
Anyway, if you have any thoughts, positive or negative, please let me know either in person or as a comment on the blog. Thanks!
Still Here!
It has been a wonderful week and the students have all been working very hard even with all the distractions with the weather and the bookfair competing for their attention.
In Language Arts, students have finished looking at the organization of a story and have started their second story with this focus. We have discussed and worked through what makes an exciting beginning, how we use things like time to organize our middle and how to end a story so that the reader is left with a feeling of satisfaction. Talking about it is one thing, though. Actually, doing it is another. So students have been practicing these things in their stories. Our latest story is an adventure with a leprechaun which goes with our recent St. Patrick’s day theme. With that story, we did a lot of brainstorming with ways to keep our leprechaun from getting away and we also did a lot of brainstorming of ways to start our story. We are working on and practicing these concepts with the goal of creating a storybook about the adventures of Bob, my evil twin brother. Each child will get to write about one of his adventures which we will then compile into a storybook. We have also connected with a group of classes around the States to create a story with each class taking a section of the story. We are the second class in the list so we are just waiting for the first class to write the beginning before we can add our piece.
The students were very excited for today! No. Not just because it is a half day. It was because the students had their first chance to go to the computer lab. Starting today, we will going to the computer lab on Fridays after first recess. Students will be doing a variety of activities including writing stories, doing art, working with maps and other fun activities. It was really fun and the students did a fantastic job of listening and watching for what they needed to do. I had already worked with a group of “helpers” who had already practiced the techniques for logging on, etc so that when we did go to the lab, they were able to help out those students who were having problems. They did a fantastic and were extremely helpful!!! We also used a new website (start.io/mrhancock) as a way for students to quickly find the resources they need without having to worry about typing in long addresses or searching for websites. It was great fun.
What do you think of when someone says properties of matter to you? If you said, “What’s the matter?” then you need to swing by our classroom at Science time! Students have been learning about the properties of matter as part of our Science unit. If you don’t recall, matter comes in three different forms: solid, liquid and gas. So far we have been looking at different types of liquids and how they react when they mix. We will be doing lots of experiments in this unit and learning lots of things. Here is a cute video to get you up to speed on your properties of matter.
Spelling List For The Week And A Surprise
Well, it is one week closer to our due date (our baby is due on the 23rd!) and nothing yet. The excitement is mounting!!
We are going to do one more Review List before taking a break to work on some of the rules for spelling in our Learning Logs. Here is the spelling list for this week:
Don’t forget to do our Spelling City with lots of fun games and a test you can take to help you practice. You can also bring in your completed test for an extra mark on the spelling test on Friday!
It has been a little while since I uploaded something fun on the blog. So as a fun surprise, here is a new video for you. It is really neat how they built the contraption to use in the video.
My Trip Away, Spelling and Spelling City
Well, I hope you all had a great weekend. If you did not know, I was alway at a fantastic convention last Thursday and Friday in Seattle. Ms.Couse, Mr. Loewen and myself were at the Northwest Council for Technology Educators and, oh, was there a lot of technology! My, oh, my! There was so much technology in the air, it was like the air was shimmering with energy!
Seriously, though. It was a fantastic conference and a lot of fun with lots and lots of learning mixed in. It was overwhelming at times hearing things like Grade 1 classes blogging on their own blogs, Google maps with stories embedded in them and all sorts of other things. I definitely learned a lot and I was very thankful for the opportunity to attend this major conference.
This week we are continuing with our review of our spelling words. Here is the spelling list with the link to Spelling City after it.
Here is the link to Spelling City. Remember, if you complete the test correctly, print out the results or certificate and bring it to school to receive a bonus point on your spelling test!