Film Awards and Charlton winners

The PlaYR Video Festival and Awards were held last night in Newmarket.  We had a number of students in our Gr. 7/8 classes participate.  Here they are at the festival:

Two of these students won the videos they entered into competition.  Parnia S won for Best Experimental Film, and Richy R won for best Drama.

Congratulations to all of the students who participated in the PlayYR Awards !!

The Charlton Garden

Have you noticed our garden lately?

A small but mighty committee, including a recently retired Mr. Craig, along with parents Ms. Ellenbogen and Ms. Lai have been working with a number of students to weed, plant and spread soil to make our garden beautiful. Ms. Vaid has been instrumental in gathering donations of plants and gardening tools in order to support the committee.
I have seldom been to schools with a more beautiful front entrance.  The 'Garden Team' has done a fabulous job at making the front of our school attractive, increasing our 'curb appeal'.

Come take a look when you have time.  

Thanks to the entire Garden Team for making the front of the school so attractive!

Mental Health Week follow up activity

Yesterday, our Gr. 1 students did a follow up activity from the information shared with our Kindergarten and Grade 1 staff during Mental Health Week and our theme of reducing the stigma of mental health. The book 'How Are You Peeling', showing pictures of different fruits and vegetables and associating emotions with how they looked was used by these teachers.
Ms. Verri wrote:

I read the book to the class first and after we discussed the different emotions/moods people have. Then we brainstormed the different moods from the book and connected each mood they heard in the story to a particular colour, for example, red is angry or mad, blue is sad, etc. Next, I had the students close their eyes and think about how they felt today and one by one I called them to come up and check mark the mood they were feeling.

Then, I had the class view on YouTube "Art Attack Clay Faces". It teaches them how to shape clay, or in our case we are using model magic, to make different emotions on a face. After the video each student was given 2 small balls of model magic, one to use for the face and the other to use for the face features (eyes, eyebrows, mouth). They then coloured the model magic to match their emotion and created the face.

 
 Turned out great and the students enjoyed it.

Welcoming our new Kindergarten students

Last week we held our annual 'Welcome to Kindergarten' in which we invited all families of our newest students for September to come in, meet our staff (teaching staff, daycare staff, Early Years staff), and begin to become familiar with Charlton. There were many familiar faces of parents with students already at Charlton, and many new faces.  Students completed activities with their parents and went home with lots of supplies to continue those activities at home and get ready for school in September.  Our current Kindergartens wrote a note to the newcomers to welcome them.

We love to include our newest students into the Charlton family.  See you all again in September!

McMichael Art Gallery visit

  On Tuesday, May 19, the Gr.6, 7 and 8 students visited McMichael Art Gallery in  Kleinberg for a tour and workshop focussing on the themes of "wilderness" and "landscape". Students had the opportunity to learn about The Group of Seven (most famed Canadian landscape painters), and view their works including those of Emily Carr, a famous Canadian female artist. The workshop allowed students to sketch and colour with watercolour crayons, and apply the concepts of space (i.e. fore, middle and background), colour and value to their individual pieces (see photo below). We had a great day and hope to return again someday!

EQAO testing this year

A letter was sent home with students in Gr. 3 and Gr. 6 yesterday indicating that EQAO testing for this year will not occur at the scheduled time.  EQAO will not be sending materials to schools in which there is teacher job action, which includes all York Region District School Board elementary schools.
Normal school operations will continue, including the day to day teaching of all subjects.

May 20th - a busy day

Yesterday was a very busy day at Charlton.  Our Special Ed students went to their annual Track & Field event, we had a fire drill and a rooftop photo of the entire school population (the photographer was on the roof, not us!), and in the evening we had our Spring Fair.

Our Special ed students were extremely successful in their Track and Field events yesterday.  It was a sunny day, and not too hot...perfect weather for our athletes.  Here are two of our ribbon winners!

Our fire drill went off without a hitch!  We were able to evacuate the building in about 3 minutes, an improvement over our other drills this year.  If we ever have a fire, our kids know exactly what to do.

The rooftop photo is always a challenge.  Getting 300 students and 30 staff together for one photo went well, though.  The kids were very co-operative and our Kindergartens recited the longest "Chheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese" I have ever heard.  We will receive and post the photo in the coming weeks.

Our Spring Fair was a huge hit!!

Grade 7 and 8 students organized and ran the games, and worked with our School Council in order to sell food and distribute prizes.  We also had many ex-Charlton students visit, and some obtained volunteer hours by participating.  It's always good to see our ex-students and hear the successes they are having in Secondary School and beyond!

Oh, and did I mention that students had some fun?  Here is a shot of one of the pie eating contests.

 ...and finally, here's how you look (and feel) when you are the winner of that contest.

  Thanks to Mr. Kim, Ms. Rawji, Ms. Lai and School Council, Farco Entertainment and all the other people who made a special effort to make this a great experience for our families.

Music Monday

It was Music Monday at Charlton, and the band played some music for our community out on our lawn both before school and during the lunch hour. As well, supporters of the music program held up signs promoting both the music program and asking passing cars for support by honking their horns. Ex-students stopped by and remembered their music days at Charlton. The band played 'Mission Impossible', as well as many other tunes.  It was a great way to promote music and the music program within Charlton and beyond the school walls.  Thanks to Ms. Chan for all her work in our Music program, particularly on Music Monday.

Dance Performance

As advertised, Justin and his dance team led our students - yes, ALL of them - through their paces for an enthusiastic crowd in our gym at the end of their dance sessions with all of our classes.  He had not only the students but the whole crowd involved in dancing and moving to his music.  Our parents and grandparents got just a taste of what it was like to experience the energy of Justin and his Kreative Dance Kids team.  Attached is a photo of the many who attended the dance performance...it was one to remember!