Thunder News Flash – June 12-16

The PFA would like to send a very big ‘Thank You’ to all of the families who came out to our Pub Night, and helped to make the event a success.  When families come out to fundraisers it helps immensely with enhancing our school, and our children benefit directly.

We would also like to send out a huge thank you to our donors, who were very generous to our school.  Thank you to:  Abbotsford International Airshow; Ann Marie’s Cafe; Bow & Stern; Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm & Meadery; Canadian Tire; Castle Fun Park; Cobblestone Kitchenware; Fraserglen Golf Course; Greek Islands Restaurant; Ice Clothing & Lips Boutique; K&M Farms; Lepp’s Farm Market; Maan Farms; Mastermind Toys; Mr. Home Inspector; Mt. Lehman Winery; Old Spaghetti Factory; Sevenoaks Shopping Centre; Shear Performance; Sticky’s Candy; Tasha Mijinke; The Charbonneau Family; The Esposito Family; The Grapevine; Vi-La Palace.

Have a wonderful summer and we hope to see more of you at next year’s events!

A letter containing your Parent Participation assignment for the 2017/18 school year will be coming home on Friday, June 16th.  Please look out for that envelope in your child’s agenda.  Parent Participation for 2017/18 starts on July 1st.

Just one last reminder that the deadline for completing and entering your Parent Participation hours online for this year is June 15th.  If you have any question, please contact the Parent Participation Administrator by email at participation@stjameselementary.ca or you can also click here.

Once again we will not be including letter grades on the student Progress Reports for the third term.  However, parents of students in Grades 5 – 7 will have the opportunity to request letter grades for their children.  Please click here to access the Request for Letter Grades form.  Please print this form, fill it out and submit it to your child’s teacher no later than Friday, June 23rd.  The form will then be completed by your child’s teacher and included in their Progress Report folder that comes home on the last day of school.

In the Parent Handbook it states that students in Grades 5 – 7 may walk to their parent’s car after school, and they do not require an adult to accompany them.  However, this refers to when their parent’s car is parked in the parent parking lot off of Gardner Ave., and it seems that there must be some confusion about this.  It has come to our attention that the afternoon dismissal of students is quite chaotic, with a number of older students walking or running through the staff parking lot to get to SJB to meet their parents or older siblings, or running through the St. James parishioners’ parking lot to meet their parents who are parked there.  Both of these situations are quite unsafe, and we would ask your cooperation to ensure this does not continue.  Our school parents should be parking in our parent parking lot, not in the St. James parishioners’ parking lot, as there is no supervision or crossing guard in this gravel lot.  In addition, if there are students who need to go to SJB to either meet their parents or older siblings, they should be walking over to SJB with the bus students, as there is adult supervision, and students walk in a safe and orderly fashion.  The safety of our students is our primary concern, and therefore we expect that if there are any students who have to walk over to SJB to meet their ride, they must meet with the bus students at 2:35pm daily, and walk with this group.

It seems that the latest fad right now is fidget toys, particularly spinners, which a number of students have been bringing to school.  Fidget toys are a great way for students who struggle with attention issues to focus when they are working, but for other students they are simply a distraction and are causing issues in many of the classrooms.  Unless parents have been specifically told by the Classroom Teacher, or one of our Learning Resource Teachers, that their child requires a fidget toy to focus on their work, students should not be bringing these to school, or they should remain in their backpacks during the school day.

We will once again be entertaining our school volunteers at the Volunteer Tea with a Talent Show on Tuesday, June 27th.  We encourage students in Grades 4 – 7 to audition and hopefully earn a spot in this great show.  There will be one final opportunity for students in Grades 4 – 7 to audition on Tuesday, June 13th at lunch if they were unable to audition on either June 2nd or June 5th, but then auditions will be closed after June 13th.  Good luck to everyone!

On Monday, June 12th the school staff will gather for our annual Planning Day, where we will be discussing and planning many aspects of the 2017-2018 school year.  Please note there is no school for students on this day – school will reopen for students on Tuesday, June 13th.

The long process of going through each pledge sheet and counting all monies raised for Walkathon 2017 is finally done!  All individual Walkathon prizes will be handed out to students this coming Friday, June 16th.  Thank you to everyone who raised money this year!

We are excited to report that ALL grades raised at least $2,000 for Walkathon 2017 and so on Friday afternoon June 16th all students will be treated to the movie Trolls on the big screen as well as popcorn made from the school’s brand new industrial-sized popcorn maker, thanks to a generous donation from the McKinnon family.

The WALKATHON GRAND TOTAL will also be announced before the movie starts… Did we make our goal of $25,000?  Stay tuned…