What’s going on in Mr. Pagacz’s Classroom!

Amazing Race

Mr. Pagacz’s grade two students love a challenge. In May the students took part in amazing race. They had to run all over the school yard looking for the clues. As part of the magnets unit, they needed to use a compass to help them in their journey. It was very exciting to see them work as a team to reach the finish line!

Science and Space

The students have discovered many books in the library that deal with space exploration. So one day they all decided to explore space on the iPad. They love reading facts about space and all the different planets we have in our solar system, and using technology is a great way to get engaged.

Young Authors

In the month of June the students experience “author month.” They learn to become little authors and write short stories with pictures depicting their story! The students LOVE Science Fiction, so all their stories have a unique scientific, action packed endings!

Cup Stackers!!!

Mr. Pagacz’s grade two’s took part in crazy fast speed stacking challenges. They first learned how to stack and unstack them, and memorized a specific 3-3-3 and 3-6-3 pattern. Once they learned those tricky patterns, they had to work together to get the fastest time. They also enjoyed competing against one another to see who was the fastest speed stacker! This challenge was a blast!

French Kids Eat Everything!

This is an introduction to a book by Karen Le Billon to help cure your children from being picky eaters.  It might even help an adult or two.

As I sat reading the Sunday paper and eating my oatmeal with bananas and coconut yogurt I came across an article in the books section.  It was titled, "Picky eaters? Mais non!  Working at a dual track immersion school and being the Teacher Wellness Champion I was curious as to what the article had to say.

Karen Le Billon is an American author married to a Frenchman from Northern France and a self confessed picky eater.  Like some dual cultural families they returned to her husband's home town to live for a year and found that her children's and her own eating habits stood out like a sore thumb.  Karen's French in laws took no time in passing on their traditional skill of training children to be "bien eduque."
That is to be well spoken, well mannered, and well behaved.  Part of the training involves the education of preparing and eating healthy food.  Listen to her book trailer from Amazon.com:

French Kids Eat Everything book trailer.

Le Billon's children learned to try new foods and enjoy them.  Many of the foods they learned to love came right off their school's cafeteria menu like, endive salad and blue cheese, mussels and muesli.  It doesn't sound much like the offerings at a North American school does it?  This article helped me believe that Monsignor William Irwin parents and staff are on the right path.  I was curious then to see where Canadians ranked versus Americans and the French in our fight on obesity.  I found some encouraging and astonishing information.

I found some stats from some 2005 research that ranked countries by the percentage of obese people.  The definition of obese are those individuals with a body mass index of 30 or greater.  The country with the highest number of obese people was, you guessed it...United States at 30.6%.  I looked for Canada who was ranked number 11 out of the 28 countries surveyed and found that we had substantially fewer obese people at 14.3%.  France came in at 9.1%, while Japan had the lowest number of obese individuals at 3.2%.  So the conclusion is... we are right in the middle.  Still time to help ourselves and our children.

I was also curious as to where Edmonton in particular stood on the health scene, especially since the BMI stats were from 2005.  I found a Health Canada site that gave specific statistics for not only provinces but cities.  Here is what I learned;
The number of overweight or obese males in Edmonton as of October 2011 was as staggering 60.8 percent of our population while 43.8 percent of women are found to be overweight.  The same information told that 27.8% men in our city were smokers and 19.5% of women still light up regularly.  The statistics even included information about heavy drinkers.  27.8% of male Edmontonians drank heavily while 11.1 % of women imbibed more than usual.  I also learned we still have a way to go to encourage  the consumption of fruits and vegetables of 5X or more each day.  36.2% men were able to consume adequate quantities of fruits and veg., while more women at 45% were able to meet the criteria of the Canada Food Guide.  The last interesting information regarding the health of people living in Edmonton to startle us into activity, was that 26.4% of male residents participated in limited physical activity while 31.7% women engaged in exercise on a regular basis.

If you or your children are picky eaters, there is a cure.  Karen Le Billon ends her story by saying, "In North America, many parents will simply shrug if their child refuses to eat well.  The French, meanwhile are thinking:  show me how your kids eat, and I'll now what kind of parent you are."

Kindergarten creates an Art Centre Piece in the Learning Piazza

Collaborative Kindergarten Glasswork Project

The Kindergarten students at Monsignor William Irwin love their school, and LOVE working together to create magnificent works of art.  After witnessing Mrs. Novak’s students working with glass, Miss Hart’s and Madame Carrie’s students became very interested in glass work and things that we could create using glass.   

In December, Miss Hart gathered her students in the Learning Piazza to draw our glasswork ideas.  We focused on drawing tall buildings.

Our drawings were magnificent, and we were very excited to turn them into glass work!  Here is an example of one of the designs that we decided to transform with glass:

Next, we became busy glass workers!  Each of the six Kindergarten classes created buildings and houses out of glass – all were designed by the students!  The greatest part of this project is that we worked together, and each student contributed to these works of art.

Here are some pictures from Miss Hart’s class, and some her Kindergarten students talking about the glass work process:

Joshua:  “It’s kinda like a mind thing, like, because we need to figure out and use our mind how which piece goes where and how it fits together.”

Olivia:  “We did it with glass, we put the pieces of glass on the other glass with glue.  My favourite part was gluing it on the glass, it was like putting it together like a puzzle.  We worked with each other!”

The Kindergarten teachers and students decided that our Learning Piazza was the perfect place to display our glass work so that everyone who visits can enjoy it!  Next time you walk by the Learning Piazza, take a moment to enjoy the collaborative Kindergarten glass work project!

William:  “Our work went in the Piazza!  Everyone can look at it now!”

Mrs. Novak's Class Experiments with Freezing and Melting

Typically, ice cream is the last thing that you think of eating in the winter.  Maybe it was the unusually warm weather that we have been experiencing or maybe it was experimenting with freezing and melting that led us to wanting to make ice cream in kindergarten, but whatever the reason, we had fun!

We talked a lot about the kinds of foods that help to make our bones strong.  We looked in our snacks each day and identified the foods that help us to build strong bones and teeth. 

We made ice cream by putting milk and syrup into a small ziploc baggie.  We put course salt and ice into a large baggie.  We placed the small bag inside the large bag and swished it back and forth for about 5 minutes.  We were amazed by how our milk turned to ice cream.  It tasted delicious!  Who knew that it could be so yummy to give our bones calcium?

We made ice cream cones for the birds too.  We mixed birdseed and lard together and scooped it into ice cream cones.  We put hangers on them and hung them on a tree.   Now the birds will be well fed too!















Bone Health in Grade 5

The grade 5 class has spent the last few weeks learning about Bone health.  They have discovered that the easiest way to help their bones is to include bone building foods in their meals and snacks.  Good choices include milk, cheese and yogurt.  Adding milk instead of water to recipes is one quick and easy way to increase the intake of bone-building foods.

This is a PSA that the grade fives made to encourage bone health.

Grade 5's building bone health.

Hopping and jumping strengthen your bones.

The Grade Ones Experience Science through their 5 Senses.

On December 7^th, the four Grade 1 classes put on their hand made green tie-dye shirts and went on an excursion to the Telus World of Science.  They spent the whole day exercising their brains making predictions and testing their educated guesses with hands on experiments.  They attending workshops on two different themes: Mixing Colours and The 5 Senses.

The students listen attentively at the Mixing Colour workshop.

At The 5 Senses workshop, they learned about sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell.  Here a boy gets to hear what it would be like to have a hearing aid.

Here are a couple of reflections from Mme. Chepelsky's french grade one students:

This educational excursion concluded the Grade One unit of colours.   In the upcoming term, they will continue to explore their senses.



Madame Brassard's Grade 2 Students: Growing Our Spirits

In 2B, we have the tradition of taking the time as a classroom family to wind down at the end of a week of hard work! Armed with the essentials to have physical comfort, the students take the time to tap into their spirits and fill their inner needs. Our Friday afternoon meditations are a time when we each go onto our inner sacred spaces and spend time with our Lord.

We start by finding ourselves a private place to relax in the classroom. Each student has their little nook or favourite spot, whether it be beside a friend, under a desk, or in a corner of the classroom.

These girls like to meditate under their desks.

Bringing things from home help these children to relax.

We begin to calm ourselves down as we close our eyes and take a few breaths.  Next, the students are guided into the rest of the meditation as they visualise their own meeting place with God and spend some time sharing our thoughts and feelings with Him.

Special friends are welcome to meditate too.

Spending time with God can happen anywhere.

Here’s what a few of our students have to say about meditation:

“Meditation is good for settling down when you feel stressed.”

“It’s really relaxing, and it feels good to be with God.”

“It’s a place where you get to think about God.”

“It makes you feel good.”

Grade 4's Strengthen their Mind and Body through Social Studies and Science Curriculum!

Social Studies - History of Alberta
The grade 4's have been participating in many activities to learn about personal responsibility in keeping our earth healthy and protecting our natural resources.  On a beautiful September afternoon, we imagined that we were European immigrants who settled in Alberta over 100 years ago.  We had to carry water from the nearby pond to our home (aka...our school) for cooking and bathing.  Well, the pond was waaaaaaaayyy farther from the school than it seemed and when some water accidentally spilled from our buckets on the way back, it was a catastrophe!  Everyone was hot and sweaty by the time we were done hauling water to fill up our buckets.  Not only did we find out how hard that lifestyle was, but we developed an appreciation for our easily accessible and endless supply of clean, hot water. 

Fetching water isn't as easy as it sounds!

Science - Waste in Our World
We've also made plant-compost teabags, created our own classroom compost bin, planted radishes in compost rich soil and best of all, each student got to have a pile of worms on their desk to handle and explore!  They found egg sacs to babies to teenagers to pregnant adults.

Composting in the classroom.

Red wiggler compost worms.  Cool and gross at the same time!

  This week we are carrying the weight of our garbage with us for a whole 24 hours so that we can educate people about the amount of waste we each create in one day.

Rainbow Lunch is Back!

We are participating in the Rainbow Lunch activity earlier this year.  Our hope was to get the students to begin the school year with a knowledge of what should be in their lunches.   This activity will be over three weeks instead of two this year.  Yes, you are correct, that means over Halloween! 

Include one milk and one meat or alternative from the Canada Food Guide

and

Include one fruit or vegetable and a grain product to complete your "Rainbow Lunch".

Don't forget to pack two snacks in addition to your lunch for morning and afternoon recess.  It seems that the two most frequent items absent from a healthy lunch are adequate quantiites of vegetables and an appropriate amount of protien.

For more information on portion sizes please see the attached link to The Canada Food Guide

Good Luck Students.  Remember your class could win a free trip to the Terwilliger Recreation Centre and an afternoon off school!

Snack Time in Madame Carrie's French Kindergarten Class is F-U-N!

A regular part of the day for every Kindergarten student is snack time. 

An attractive table is always inviting.

Inspired by theT.V. shows ‘The Ocean Room’ and “The Jungle Room’, snack time has changed in Madame Carrie’s classroom.  On most Fridays, snack time has some or all of the students responsible for bringing a grocery item to contribute to the communal snack.  The recipe or snack choice is often linked with what has been happening in the classroom throughout the week.  The recipes have also been designed to allow students the ability to build their snack themselves, allowing them to choose how much or which items they would like to try.  There is only one rule, you must try one bite.

Taking just one bite!

Snack time is a great time for gathering as a community and sharing knowledge about food and healthy eating.  Some of the less adventurous eaters are learning that there are items that maybe aren’t as “yucky” as they thought.  As one Kindergarten student said after taking a few bites of her snack,“Wow, this is delicious!  I think it’s delicious because I made it." 

Helping to prepare and serve themselves engages children in the fun of snack time.

The children have also been gaining other skills such as building their fine motor skills as they have to serve themselves and prepare their own plate.  Learning to be responsible for the clean up is also a part of this new routine.   Each child must scrape their own plate and place it in the sink when they are done.  Furthermore, the students have also learned many new French vocabulary words! 

The Fixings for a school bus shaped snack.

So far, this experimental project has been a great success! We have made ‘Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom’ trees, cracker school buses, rainbow fruit salad and apple sauce.  Each week holds new adventures, new recipes, and new learning opportunities. 

Mmmh!  Rainbow fruit salad.

Congratulation to the Breakfast Poster Winner!

Congratulations to Lola Belanger in Grade 1

for winning the draw after entering

the Healthy Breakfast Poster Contest

 Lola won a gift certificate to take her family to the Terwilliger Recreation Complex.

Welcome back to a new school Year!

BUILDING A BETTER BREAKFAST

The lazy days of summer are now behind us and our routine of getting up early and heading off to school are back. Father Bill's Kitchen would like to help remind you on the A, B, C's of a healthy breakfast.  It is really quite easy.  Simply pick an item from at least three of the four food groups each morning to be part of your fast breaking. Vary the foods you combine to make interesting and nutritious morning meals that never get boring.

Here is one of Monsignor William Irwin teacher's, Mrs. Flanagan's, favorite breakfast.

The Breakfast Sundae

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of rolled oats

1/4 cup of water

1 tbsp. of peanut butter

1/2 cup of fresh fruit

3 heaping tbsp. of yogurt

a few walnuts to garnish

Combine the oats and water into a microwavable dish and cook for 1 minute and 20 seconds on high.  Stir when you remove the oatmeal from the microwave.  Scoop out a tablespoon of peanut butter and insert it into the hot oatmeal covering it over.  Put your fresh cut fruit on top of the oatmeal, and top with the yogurt, garnishing with the walnuts.

New Contributors to the blog:

In the upcoming issues of Father Bill's Kitchen you can look forward to the contributions from different teachers on how their classes are demonstrating and participating in our Wellness Goals pertaining to the  Mind, Body and Spirit.  Look forward to photos and posts that will include your children and what they are doing in their classrooms. 

Remember, if you see something you like to make a comment.  We would love to hear from you!

Healthy Bake Sale Recipes

On May 4th the Grade 3 students with the help of their parents, put on a healthy bake sale.  They made and brought one of two items, a light candy apple or healthy chocolate puffed wheat squares.  The students went classroom to classroom before one of the recess' to sell their wares to the delight of the students.  Here are the recipes they used:

Healthy Chocolate Puffed Wheat Squares:

5 cups puffed wheat cereal

3 ounces dark chocolate 70%

1/4 cup chocolate protein powder

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup unsweetened  apple sauce

1 teaspoon vanilla

1)  Grease a 9x9 inch pan.

2 ) Measure out the puffed wheat into a large bowl.

3)  In a medium saucepan on low heat, melt and mix the remaining ingredients.

4 ) Pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl of puffed wheat and stir.

5 ) Press the chocolate puffed wheat mixture into the greased pan and refrigerate for a couple hours before cutting into squares.

Light Candy Apples

Your favorite variety of apple, Gala, Ambrosia, Granny Smiths all work well

Popsicle sticks

Dark chocolate

Caramels

1) Remove the stem and push the Popsicle sticks in far enough that you can pick up the apple.

2) Melt the chocolate and/or caramels in a double boiler (separately if using both) until it runs off the spoon.

3) place the apples on wax paper and drizzle the chocolate then the caramel over the apple to make a pretty pattern.  Before the drizzle cools stick several M& M plain candies into the drizzle around the apple.  When cool and dry wrap the apples in saran wrap and  tie with a ribbon.

The students make over $300.00 to purchase the supplies to buy and make healthy lunches for an inner city school that has had their Thursday lunch program funding cut.  Good work Grade 3's!

Cidney's Hairy Tale Adventure!

Once upon a time in a Towne called Terwilliger, there lived a brave little princess named Cidney.  Cidney was a cheerful happy girl with long golden locks of hair and a sparkly crown.  She was unlike most little princess as she was very grateful for all the things she had in her life and wanted to help others less fortunate than herself.  Cidney was particularly sad about children who were sick, especially with cancer.  It just so happens that Cidney had never cut her hair, not even once since she was born.  She had heard that sometimes people who suffer with cancer go bald during their treatments and needed to wear a wig.  One day she asked her mother and father, Queen Christina and King Ken if she could donate some of her long hair to make a wig for them.  They were very proud of their daughter and immediately went about to find out how they could do this. 

 On a beautiful spring day Cidney called her royal hairdresser and had her cut her hair in front of all her subjects to set a fine example of giving. 

Cidney did not flinch, even once as the royal hairdresser braided her hair and set about to cut it off. 

In, fact she had the biggest smile of all when she saw the gorgeous braid she was to donate. 

All her royal subjects cheered and clapped to show their approval and love for their princess. 

Even some local scribes came to record the event in the Kingdom's Big Book of History.  Not only did Cidney give away her hair, but she found her loyal subjects so moved by her generosity that they donated over 800 gold pieces to help the healers to find a cure.

The moral of the story is; Save lives by giving to cancer research.

( This is based on a true story of a student at Ecole Monsignor William Irwin who raised money for the Stollery Children's Hospital by cutting her hair and donating it to make a wig.  She is five years old and made over $800.00 in donations to the Hospital)

Easter Celebration and New Life!

Easter Alter

On April 26, 2011 Ecole Monsignor William Irwin School celebrated the most cherished time in the Catholic liturgical calendar, Easter.  Easter is the most important liturgical season as it reaffirms our belief in everlasting life.  It teaches us that Jesus died for our sins, like the scriptures said and He was buried and He rose to life on the third day.  Soon after He went to heaven to be with His Father.

Spring Tree in Atrium


Through out the entire school there are signs embracing new life during this Easter season from artwork to baby chicks being born. 

 These are photos taken of Mrs. Novak's English Kindergarten's chicks hatching:

A small crack in the egg.

The crack gets bigger.

The crack is almost all the way around the egg.

The wet chick begins to emerge from the egg.

There's the head!

The fluffy new born chicks in their cage.

Many grades celebrated the melting of the snow and warmer temperatures by creating wonderful floral works of art!  Take a look at some of the beautiful examples from around the school!

A construction paper collage.

A water colour cut out collage.

Tissue paper flowers.