February 1, 2022
Dear Botha School Parents and Guardians;
I hope this finds everyone healthy and warm. Yesterday was a crazy day with the wind and the snow. The staff were able to meet and have professional development. We have had a busy month of January and have had lots of exciting activities and learning. The grade 1-2 and the Grade 3-4 spent the month skating and getting great use of our amazing Botha rink. Thank you to the BCC and Chris for all their support.
The school was able to have a zoom presentation by Agriculture Alberta and Farm Safety. This was enjoyed by all students.
The school also enjoyed a presentation by Constance Brissenden. She is an author and storyteller. She was able to give the kids pointers about writing and creating interesting stories. This presentation was sponsored by YABS: Young Alberta Book Society.
We have had several new students in the past month or so. We welcomed back Gabe and Ella to grade 1 and 5 as well as Thomas in playschool, and Lexus in grade 3! Welcome to Botha School! We are so excited to have you in our school this year.
Please remember that if your child is not feeling well, to keep them home to evaluate them. If you need more at home rapid tests, just call the school and we can get you more. The staff appreciate the work being completed when students stay home.
Monday, February 14th is Valentines’ Day. Each class will be celebrating with a small class party. Classroom teachers will be sending home student lists for making Valentines and food lists if there's food at their party. Keep an eye out for this information coming home.
The Spirit Squad was busy this past month. They were able to give the school a wonderful FunFriday Float on January 28th. All the students and staff enjoyed their ice cream float. Great team effort by the grade 5-6 getting everything organized.
Hot lunch forms were sent out last week. A big thank you to all the parents who picked up food from our many different restaurants. It is greatly appreciated. Thank you to the hard working Botha School Society that researched and worked to get the restaurants on board.
Feb. 2- Club Cafe
Feb. 9- Jacked Up
Feb. 16 - Halkirk Hotel
Feb. 23 - Hockey Day - hot dogs for everyone(free)
Teachers will be engaged in professional learning when they have their annual Convention on Thursday, February 17th and Friday, February 18th. There will be no school for students. Enjoy your long weekend. Monday, February 21, 2022 is the Family Day holiday. Students will have an extended break until Tuesday, February 22, 2022.
HOCKEY DAY IN BOTHA
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 will be our Annual Hockey Day in Botha. Many different fun activities and special guests will be part of this exciting day. Remember to bring your skates for the day. Hot dogs will be served to every student and staff courtesy of Botha School Society.
The Annual PINK SHIRT DAY is going to be recognized on Wednesday, February 23, 2022. This is the same day as Hockey Day but we will use the beginning part of the day to recognize Pink Shirt Day. Botha School has Pink Shirts for the students to wear that day. If you choose to wear a shirt from home that is perfectly fine too.
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Botha Parent Council will be having their monthly meeting on Tuesday, February 15th, 2022 starting at 7:00. At this time, this meeting will be a zoom meeting. If anything changes, we will send out a school messenger to inform you. Everyone is welcome to attend these meetings.
Playschool - Start Right:
Wow!...January just flew by! I hope February brings a little warmer weather so we can get back outside more often. This month we will finish up our penguin fun with a few nice and messy crafts. We will talk about feelings, and Valentine’s Day. The class will have a party and exchange cards on February 15th. We had a new student join our class in January. Welcome Thomas! The kids are so excited to have a new friend to play with.
Kindergarten:
In February there are hearts everywhere. Kindergarteners are working with different paint techniques and new materials such as metallics, feathers and fabrics and experimenting with glues and tape and staples.
Every day we work on letters of the alphabet, individually as well as the whole group. Sometimes we sing the alphabet backwards but we have a chart to help. We will continue to work with word families this month as well as indicating the main idea in what we have read.
February will see us finishing sorting and patterning and going back to review numbers again.
In between the skating and the Valentines we hope to try some new Winter Nature activities outdoors. The best way to check on us is the Botha School facebook page. Mrs. Martin posts lots of great pictures there.
Grade 1-2
L.A.: We are working on creating sentences with more detail. Also, working on our reading skills.
Math: Grade One skip counting and money while grade two will work on skip counting and estimating.
Social: We are starting a new unit about the community Meteghan.
Science: We will be starting a new unit on exploring liquids.
We celebrate 100th Day Feb 11, Valentine's Day Feb. 14 and Hockey day on the 23rd.
Grade 3-4
In math both grades three and four are working on multi digit addition and subtraction this month. We will be starting multiplication next. In ELA we are working on reading comprehension strategies of visualizing, predicting, questioning, making connections and are focusing on summarizing.
We are continuing with Hearing and Sound in Science and we are looking at how speaking works and how we hear, and hearing safety so it’s a bit of a health class too.
In Social we will be assessing chapters 2 & 3, culture and access to services. Then we’ll begin to look at how communities work with leadership and helping out.
We are planning to do broomball in February; the first few Mondays and Fridays - Feb 4, 7, 11 & 14. Please see the permission form and return that to school.
Also on the 14th we will have a small Valentine’s celebration in the last hour of the day to exchange Valentines and play a couple games. Hockey Day is scheduled for Feb 23. Broomball! Valentine’s! Hockey day! Fun February!
Grade 5-6:
The grade 5-6 class will be having a student teacher with Mrs. Martin for the next 9 weeks. Her name is Ms. Katelyn Imbery and she is originally from the Stettler area. We welcome her to our class as well as Botha School.
Grade 5-6 have been busy learning about Athenian Democracy and will continue next month learning about the Iroquois Confederacy and its impact on Democracy. We will compare these two great civilizations and discuss their importance.
The grades 5-6 have been working on finding the main ideas and writing better paragraphs and sentences using details. We are preparing for the writing of the PAT exam.
We continue to have fun playing boomwhackers in our music class and studying the 7 Sacred Teachings in our Indigenous Studies class. Mrs. Martin
January went by way too fast. Unfortunately all the "Snow" days fell on my days so we are still working on the hands on portion of the Flight & Aerodynamic Unit. We are enjoying trying different experiments so we can understand the basic concepts of flight. We are doing great at keeping up with all the Math Units. Grade 5 & 6 are both working on Motion Geometry. In Art we are focusing on feathers and texture. We just finished drawing our own feathers, next we are going to paint actual feathers. So we are busy planning different designs and pictures to paint on our own feathers. Gym is a mixture of basketball and skating. When it is too cold to skate we revert back to basketball in the gym. The students are loving being back in the rink. Ms. Burton
If you have any questions, please call the school at 403-742-5187. Remember to check out our Facebook page for lots of photos as well as our new and improved school website.
Mrs. Martin
Principal
Botha School