Monday, October 3^rd, 2011

Dear parents and guardians,

Here we are officially in the fall season!  We have been blessed with beautiful weather in September and the outlook for October remains optimistic.   As the weather declines, just a friendly reminder to remind students to dress appropriately for the weather.  Students will remain outside before school, at recess and lunch until the weather cools down.  This newsletter will be a combined effort between the school, P.A.C. and the Environmental Club to keep you informed of the many activities that are occurring at the school.  We trust that the students are settling down nicely in to their classrooms and are looking forward to another productive month.

Recycled Book Fair: Thank you for all the students, staff and parents who supported our recycle book fair.  We have done an extensive weeding of the library collection and will use the funds raised from this book fair to purchase new materials for the library.  Thanks to your support, we raised $220.00 for new books.

Scholastic Book Fair:  The Scholastic Book Fair materials have arrived and the library will be sponsoring a book fair from Monday, October 17^th until Monday, October 24^th.  Students will have a chance to view books and materials, along with family members, beginning October 17^th.  Please feel free to drop by and look at the book fair during that week.  This is an excellent opportunity for parents and relatives to purchase materials for Christmas and celebrations.  The books are of good quality and it will be a very current selection.  We will order additional copies should we run out of the most popular titles.  The library would like to be open before school, at recess, lunch and after school for purchases.  If you are able to assist with this, please contact Mrs. Scheck through the office.  All proceeds from the book fair will go towards purchasing materials to use in classrooms and also titles for the library.  We thank you for your support in this fall book fair.

School Photos: Mountain West Studios will be here on Thursday, October 6th to take student portraits.  Students are reminded not to wear green or solid white on photo day as these colours do not lend themselves to a great picture.  Once the portraits are developed, students will receive colour proofs to take home.  Stop by the library if you would like your toddlers pictures taken as the photographer may have extra time slots.

Fire Safety Week:  The Fort St. John Fire Department will be promoting Fire Safety Week throughout the schools and the city.  This event takes place October 10^th-14^th.  We will have one scheduled fire drill and one un-scheduled fire drill that week.  The grade 3 students will also be involved in a Fire Prevention Workshop with the FSJ Fire Department on Friday, October 14^th.  This will provide the students with many opportunities to discuss safety and fire prevention.  Please join us if you would like to see this presentation.  The presentation will be held in the library from 1:00-2:30 p.m.

Upcoming Dates to remember:

Monday, October 10^th ~ School closed for Thanksgiving Day

Friday, October 21^st ~ School closed for a professional development day

Friday, November 11^th ~ School closed for Remembrance Day

Thank you to all parents for returning the variety of forms that have gone home this month.  If you have not sent back the verification forms, please do so at your earliest convenience.  Your child also brought home a School District 60 User Agreement form for computers.  These must be completed as soon as possible as students are not able to access computers without this form being completed.  Thank you to families who have paid for their school fees.

Inter-School Bowling League: Robert Ogilvie students have an opportunity to join the inter-school bowling league which runs from October 26^th –January 26^th.  This league operates on Wednesday and Thursdays.  Teams of 5 students can be entered.  We are looking for a bowling coach to sponsor this activity.  If we have a coach volunteer for the league (or one for each team would be better), we will submit teams in to the league.  Please contact Mrs. Scheck or Mr. Peterson if you are able to volunteer for this league.  A criminal records check will need to be completed for coaches who do not currently have one.

Supervision of Plagyground: There have been a few concerns regarding supervision on the playground while phase one of job action is happening.  Please be advised that the playground is being adequately supervised throughout the day.  Please see the message below that was posted on School District 60 website in regards to supervision:

Phase 1 of the teachers strike has been described by the BCTF as a “teach only” action. As such it is understood that schools will be open and measures will be in place to assure student safety. Teachers will be in their classrooms, performing all of the duties they feel relate directly to teaching children……………. Measures will be in place to ensure student safety both in the classroom and on the playgrounds. Attendance will be taken and transmitted to the office. Playground supervision schedules have been established, with administrators and exempt staff carrying the majority of the assignments. (www.prn.bc.ca)

We are fortunate to have Mr. Jarrod Bell, Principal of Technology joining Mr. Peterson and I to cover supervision in the morning and at recess time.  The school continues to have three paid lunch period monitors, along with Mrs. Peterson and me, to supervise students at lunch time.  We hope that this alleviates concern regarding playground supervision.  Please direct any concerns you may have about supervision to the office.  Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Strong Start/WOW Bus October Calendars: can be found at www.earlylearning.prn.bc.ca .  These calendars are also posted at all entrances of the school.  If you have children from 0-5 years old, please stop in and have a visit with the Strong Start Staff.  This is a wonderful opportunity for all children in our district to participate in.

Soccer: A big thank you to Mr. Peterson and Mr. Merwin for coaching the soccer teams this year and for taking the teams to the tournament.  It was a great and enjoyable day for the students to participate in.  Any parents wishing to volunteer for a community coach in the upcoming season of volleyball please contact Mr. Peterson.

On behalf of the staff at Robert Ogilvie Elementary School, we wish to thank you for your support in your child’s education.  We appreciate all the assistance in classrooms, the canteen, during noisy reading, volunteer time spent involved in P.A.C. and the Environmental Club.   Your assistance is greatly appreciated and encouraged.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Kathy Scheck                                        Mr. Karl Peterson

Principal                                                         Vice Principal

Robert Ogilvie School                                  Robert Ogilvie School

Calendar of Events

2011-2012

Robert Ogilvie Elementary School

October 2011

Return this portion of the newsletter by Monday, October 17^th to be entered in a prize draw.

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Robert Ogilvie PAC NEWS

Thank you to our parents who came to the September PAC meeting ~ it was great to see you there.  The following parents are now our PAC Executive for the

2011-2012 year:
President: Bonnie Anderson

Vice President: Amy Plemel

Treasurer: Lynnett Rotlisberger

Secretary:  Brandy Utz

DPAC Rep: Jerri-Lynn Peterson

Gaming Applications Chair: Logan Fischer

Fundraising Chair: Breann Bucholz & Jennifer Merwin

Garden Club Chaiperson: Brandy MacDonald
We have lots of exciting things happening this year!  Thank you to all who will be contributing and already have contributed to our PAC this year!

Thank you for your support in the PAC hot lunch fundraiser as this money is going towards our playground updates!  The playground has had additions to it with the igloo and the curly slide.  The students seem to be having lots of fun on the equipment which is great to see!  More swings will be hanging soon as we get our gravel.  This month we are combining all of the hot lunches on one order form so the dates are as follows:

Subway: October 12^th

Spaghetti and Meat Sauce: October 17^th

Pizza Day: October 26^th

Chicken Noodle Vegetable Soup: October 28th.

We are also now offering gluten-free option so if you have a child that needs to be gluten free you can now order some of the lunches for them as there is a place on our order form for this.  Please have all the orders in by the morning of Thursday, October 6^th.
As you probably know there is going to be a fundraising magic show that we are hosting at the Lido Theatre on Tuesday, October 18th!  There will be two shows: one at 4:00 p.m. and one at 8:00 p.m.  Advance tickets are priced at $10.00 and the tickets at the door will be $15.00.  We will be selling these tickets in many different ways: the pre-order form sent home, advance tickets at the Lido Theatre and at the Visitor Information Center or you can email us at robertogilviepac@gmail.com.  Also we will be having parents selling tickets at the school on Tuesday, October 4^th and Thursday, October 6^th from 2:30 – 3:30 and Tuesday, October 11^th and Thursday, October 13^th from 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.  The last day tickets will be available at the school is Monday, October 17^th from 2:30-3:30 p.m.  We will be selling the tickets at the primary doors as well as in the office hallway.  If you pay by check, please make the check out to Robert Ogilvie PAC.

We are also looking for donations of new items for our draws at the shows!  We are doing up some baskets so if there is anyone who would be willing to donate baskets, items or funds for these please email us robertogilviepac@gmail.com or talk to any one of our PAC parents or the office and they will get you in touch with one of us.  We are doing up two each of the following baskets:  coffee/tea/hot chocolate basket, soaps/lotions/spa basket, kids basket of indoor activities, chocolates/nuts/snacks basket.  If you can contribute to these themes, it would be greatly appreciated.

Our next PAC meeting is being held at the Library on Tuesday, October 11^th at 7:00 p.m. Thank you to all of the parents that were at the last PAC meeting.  We look forward to seeing you there again.  If you haven’t attended, please join us!

Bonnie Anderson

Robert Ogilvie PAC President   2011-2012

RO Garden Club

This is the 3rd year that our Garden club has been running and we are pleased to say that our garden has produced some vegetables, some wonderful flowers along with some herbs. The Garden club hired a student to look after our garden over the summer. She did a wonderful job and kept things looking great.

For anyone who bought our Caesar salad this past month we were able to use some of our own lettuce in that salad. This was one of our goals early on and although we were not able to use all our own lettuce it is a great start. We also had a student contribution of lettuce to our Caesar salad. Mason MacDonald grew his own lettuce at home and had a bumper crop that he donated to the school and that was topped up with lettuce from Safeway to have enough to fill our orders for the salad. Thanks Mason and the Anderson Family for all your gardening help.

Anyone interested in being a part of the club or if you have ideas that you would like to share please email bmacdonald@prn.bc.ca Please take a peek out in the front of the school and check out what is growing.

RO Environmental Club

This is a new club this year that is open to all students, parents and teachers. Our goal is to educate the students on how to care for our environment. One way is to Recycle. RO has already been actively recycling juice boxes, paper and cardboard along with ink cartridges.  The school also collected compost all last year. We are going to be starting a full recycling program at the school in the next few weeks. There were 25 students that attended our first meeting on Wednesday, September 28th! We talked about the different items that our school can recycle.  Some of them included: paper, plastic, tin (tinfoil), glass, cardboard, box board and compost.  The Environmental club students will be the ones that are going to be collecting the recycling on a regular basis. Two of our classes are going to have compost worm bins!

Some of your children who attended the first meeting may have brought home a TD Friends of the Environment and Earth Day “Art” contest registration form. This is a contest where the student must draw a picture of’ “My favourite part of nature”.   It can be anything in nature. Please have these pictures attached to the registration form and handed into their teacher by Wednesday, October 12th in order to be entered into the contest.  Students will have a chance to have their artwork featured on TD Friends of the Environment Foundation’s reusable bag plus a $7500 environmental grant for their school or in the 2012-13 EcoKids calendar and more! So let’s get drawing!!! If you need another form or are interested in helping with the club please email bmacdonald@prn.bc.ca.

The last three days September 27th, September 28th and September 29^th, we have been collecting all the garbage in the school and weighing it. Thank you to our Custodians for their support.  We will have the results at the assembly on Monday, October 3rd.  Our reason for doing this is to find out how much of an impact we can have on the amount of waste that goes out of our school as compared to the number of items that can be recycled.  After we incorporate a full recycling program and do another 3 day weigh in at the end of November,  we will hope to find less waste than in September and we could use that information to enter our school into a Contest sponsored by Staples. The grand prize is a $25, 000.00 computer lab!

Please check out our bulletin board near the office for information on the club and environmental news.

Thank you to Mrs.Vaskic for helping get the students motivated in recycling in June of last year. We appreciate her support and look forward to working along side her, the custodians and the rest of our school community while we make RO an even Greener School!