Jump Rope for Heart

It has been a little challenging this year to try to do school-wide activities, so it was such a relief and so much fun to do our Jump Rope for Heart activity last Friday. We met as a committee to plan the event and one of the main things we wanted to have happen this year is that kids got into the gym in multi-age groups to skip and shoot hoops. I worked with one of our teachers and our two UBC teacher candidates who had some great ideas about what to do and it was so nice to sit and talk about what our plans are.

We had 3 classes at a time go into the gym to run through 7 stations over a 45 minute period. That all sounds pretty straight forward and not that exciting, but once we got the kids into the gym, explained what they had to do and turned on the music (loud), the real fun began.
The older students played and helped the younger students and the younger students learned some new skills. In the picture to the right, you can see Ramon, Grade 7 and Karen, Kindergarten doing buddy jumping, so great!!!

The kids left the gym sweaty, smiling, happy and I hope proud of themselves for working together as teams of kids. What this morning showed me is that despite what's going on in the political arena, school's are still lively places with teachers involved in making school be about more than just a great math lesson; they are places where students are having fun with each other and with their teachers. This year will pass and I am hopeful that we will be left with mostly the memories of kids smiling, jumping and laughing.

The Tigers that Live in My Office

It's been ages since my last post and I'm determined to keep up with this blog-thing, so here we go again. There was Spring Break and Easter which interrupted things, but that really is no excuse.
In the picture to the left are my tigers; these are the tigers that live in my office. It's really not as scary as it sounds because as you can tell most of them are small and all of them are not real. A few of them have stories and all of them are big attractions in my office. First I want to tell you about the small one to the right of the group. This tiger came to me a few years ago by way of Trinity. At the time, Trinity was in Grade 1 and she gave me this tiger for Valentine's Day. It used to have a homemade heart-shaped tag around it's neck that said, "Happy Valentine's Day", but that has long since disappeared. I love this tiger for a few reasons; first, it came from Trinity who found it at a garage sale and thought I might like it, so she brought it to school. Secondly, it's legs move, so when I have some spare time I can actually play with the tiger and have him pose, third and most important, the tiger has a small button on it's neck that when you press it, it roars. And it's a pretty good roar, so good that I have at least one child stop by my office each day to ask if they can press the tiger and make it roar.
The big tiger (Tom) came with the office, which is kind of the end of its story except that each day, a boy in Grade 3, Jamal, comes to visit the big tiger (and to press the button on the small tiger). This started a few months ago when Jamal decided that visiting my office needed to be part of his daily routine (lucky me!). Jamal comes to my door with his EA and he knows to ask to come in (which he does), asks if he can hold my tiger and then spends a few minutes cuddling with the tiger and chatting to his EA and me about the latest video game he has been playing. I have to admit that I love when he shows up at my door for his visit. Whatever seemingly important thing I had been working on screeches to a halt and my attention goes to him. Today, he brought me a new tiger for my collection, the one beside Tigger. This tiger came from Room 2 where Jamal spends some time each day and we thought new tiger might be more comfortable with some friends. Jamal arranged all the tigers so they would be close and cosy; I added the plastic one on the right for my blog photoshoot.
The other two tigers just came from home when we were cleaning out the stuffy bin. But I bet in a few years they will have stories of their own! Oh, I think I forgot to mention that we are the Thompson Tigers, which is the real reason I have tigers in my office!