Have you ever seen such a great display of grit, determination and perseverance?! Team Awesome was awesome at skating yesterday! If there was a gold medal given for perseverance and sheer grit, every member of Team Awesome would have received one yesterday. It made my heart sing to see the sheer determination from those new skaters on the ice. It also made me a little ashamed of my own lack of similar joyful determination when learning something new and difficult. Many of the children had never been on skates (as evidenced from the spaghetti legs and slapstick falls) and spent more time getting up than they did actually staying up. And some of those falls were hard- there might be bruises. But not one single child asked to have their skates taken off early. Not one of them complained or cried or whined. And every face had a beaming smile despite the difficulties some of them were having staying on their feet, much less actually moving. And a big thank you to those parents and family members who were able to come with us. It makes activities like this so much easier when there are extra adults to help out. I am so proud of Team Awesome!

• As usual, library books are due back for exchange by next Tuesday.
• Thank you for helping us on our skating field trip this week. We will be attending MacArthur arena again next week on Thursday, Jan. 31 at the same time for our last skating session this year. We look forward to seeing you there!
• February lunch orders were due to the office by today.
• BEST PAC is sponsoring a hot dog lunch and the order forms are due to the office by Monday, Jan. 28 with hot dogs delivered Friday, Feb. 1. 
• Jan 26-Feb. 2 is Unplug & Play week- encouraging children to reduce screen time and increase play time! A brochure/ tracking log came home this week with a great schedule of free events inside. I will also post it here.
• We have the privilege of hosting Lyle Thomas at BEST on the morning of Monday, Jan. 28. He will be sharing stories with the children to illustrate our theme of Respect.
• Kindergarten registration for BEST for the 2019 school year opens on Jan 28th. This registration is not first come, first served. See the school website for more information.
• We will be participating in Community Group activities the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 4.
• Friday, Feb. 8 is a Pro D day and Team Awesome will be staying home while I attend a workshop.
• Mrs. Villeneuve's class will be once again recycling batteries through the Calltorecycle program. If you have batteries at home that you would like to send in I will make sure they get them or you can drop them at the office.
• January sight words are: be, big, can, it, little, me, on, us, with, we . If a word comes up repeatedly in our studies we will sometimes add it to our words for the month. Please feel free to practice them at home.​
• BEST monthly newsletter can be found here.

Go forth and Be Awesome!!

Before lunch on Wednesday last week we took a walk outside to look for signs of winter. We used our senses to see, hear, smell and feel signs of winter and then compared them to the signs of fall we had seen. Although the children were willing to eat some snow/ ice to taste winter Miss Dowler and I assured them it wasn't necessary. I consider myself lucky to be reminded by the children on a daily basis how much joy there is in little things. They were all so thrilled to look at snow and describe how cold it was, to stomp on the ice and think about whether it was soft or hard, to run their hands over the ice and snow and to stand still for a minute to listen to what winter smells and sounds like. They were enthusiastic to be outside and breathing the cool air into their lungs and looking to see if it made clouds as we breathed it out. The next time you're outside, just for a second, appreciate some signs of winter and capture a bit of the pleasure we felt just being outdoors last week.