Thunder News Flash – October 10-14

This course consists of five sessions designed to equip those parenting 0 to 10-year olds with long-term strategies to build a healthy family life.  Drawing on their own experience of bringing up four children and having talked to thousands of parents over the years on their parenting courses, Nicky and Sila Lee bring fresh insights and time-tested values to the task of parenting.  The DVDs in the course include advice from parenting experts and of parents and children sharing their own experiences.  The cost is $20 per person (a one-time fee) and includes a meal each night and the course manual.  The course will run from 6:30-9:00pm for five consecutive Fridays at St. Ann’s Parish, starting October 14th.  Please note it is all right if you are unable to attend all the sessions.  All the material is covered in the guest manual.  To register please click here.

During the week of October 11th – 14th the newly elected Leadership Team is encouraging students to bring in donations of non-perishable, vegetarian food items for the Poor Clares.  These items will be collected in each class and delivered to the Poor Clares in Mission the following week.  Your donations help to support this group of cloistered Religious Sisters who work tirelessly for others, and spend their lives praying for the Church and all those in need.  Your donations will be greatly appreciated!

This is just a reminder that there is a Work Bee coming up on Saturday, October 15th.  If you have been assigned to help at this Work Bee your attendance is very important and we appreciate all the work that you do for the school.  Please bring work gloves and gardening tools if possible.

There are a variety of excellent workshops and events taking place in the Vancouver Archdiocese over the next few months.  Some of these include:

• Making Sense of Anxiety in Children and Youth
• Positive Parenting Workshops
• Parenting the Anxious Child

There are many other events and workshops that you may also be interested in.  For more information or to register, please click here and look at the tab called “News and Events”.

Fire Prevention Week is taking place from October 9th – 15th.  There will be Fire Hall Open Houses on Wednesday, October 12th from 6:00-8:00pm at various fire halls throughout Abbotsford.  Join them for fun for the whole family where you can meet the firefighters, tour the fire hall, see the fire trucks, play fire safety games and try some tasty treats.  This is also a good time to remind ourselves that smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years!

As you know, on Monday, October 31st we will be allowing students to come to school dressed in their Halloween costumes.  While this seems like it is far away, it will be here before we know it, and as you begin to plan what your child will wear for Halloween we wanted to ensure that you are aware of what our expectations are regarding costumes.  We are looking for students to come to school dressed in creative costumes, or costumes that highlight a hero, career, fairy tale character, etc.  Students may not be dressed in costumes that are scary, violent, or show any kind of blood or gore, and masks are not allowed.  If you have any questions about whether your child’s costume is appropriate or not, feel free to speak to your child’s teacher, or come to the office directly.

Please note that students must come to school in their “winter” or “regular” school uniform as of Tuesday, October 11th after the Thanksgiving long weekend.  This means that sweaters will now be required for school Masses, Hymn Sing and assemblies, and the skorts and shorts must be put away for the winter.  The Grade 7 students will be required to have their hoodie with them once they are ordered and arrive, as this replaces the school sweater for the Grade 7s only.

At Fun Night the prized Reserved Parking Spot in the school parking lot was auctioned off and the successful bidder for this year was the Chow Family.  This spot is reserved for them from 8:00am-8:00pm, Monday through Friday until September 30, 2017.  This includes all school special events as well (Fun Night, Movie Nights, Christmas Musical, etc.).  As the Chow family has paid for the use of this spot, please respect that and do not park in this space, no matter how brief you intend to be.  Thank you very much.

Most if not all Parent Participation (P.P.) Task Groups are in full swing by now and so each school family should be well on their way to accumulating at least 10 of their 20 P.P. task group hours before the end of January (not including their fundraiser commitment).  Please remember it is up to each family to log these hours as soon as they are done on the school’s website to receive credit.  No hours recorded = no hours credited = P.P. cheques cashed.

The Education Committee would just like to remind all school families that parent participation task group and fundraiser helpers must be at least 16 years of age to be able to earn hours for the purposes of Parent Participation.  Children who are under the age of 16 are not eligible to earn hours for Parent Participation.

If you are still unsure of which task group you are with or have any questions, please contact the Parent Participation Administrator – Shannon Maddalozzo Tou by sending an email to as soon as possible.

In keeping with our theme, Care For Our Common Home, we want to encourage as much as possible the use of reusable food and drink containers rather than ones that are disposable.  However, if your children do bring juice boxes or drink bottles that are recyclable, please remind them of a few important practices:

• containers need to be empty before they are added into our recycling containers in the hallway
• straws should be removed from drink boxes
• NO DAIRY containers may be put into the recycling containers in the hallway

We will review these important rules with the students in the classrooms, but would appreciate your help by reinforcing these rules as well.  It is a very messy job to empty out the hallway recycling containers, and it is made much worse when the wrong things or half-full juice boxes are thrown in as well.  Thank you in advance for your assistance with this!

We would like to take this opportunity to wish each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  We hope you have the opportunity to spend time with family and friends, and enjoy some delicious food.  Not everyone is as lucky as we are, though, so we would also encourage all the children to take some time to be really thankful for the many gifts they have, and to pray for those who are less fortunate. 

Dear St. James & St. Ann’s Families:

• Come and see FINDING DORY on our big 16×9 screen!  Friday, October 14, 2016
• Doors and concession open at 6:00pm and the movie starts at 6:30pm
• We are looking for Movie Night Sponsors.  If you or your business is interested, please take a look at the Sponsorship page in the Movie Night Information Package or please click here
• ENTER TO WIN THE VIP MOVIE NIGHT PACKAGE – more information is in the Movie Night package or please click here

Hope to see you there!

The Parent Fundraising Association