My Visit with Roanne and Baby Mathis

A little while ago I was lucky to have a visit with Roanne and Baby Mathis.  They are in their new home.  Both are healthy and doing well.  Mathis, now 14 weeks old (I think) is behaving as he should in terms of development.  He is beautiful.

Roanne was very happy to receive the booklet and banner the students made.  (Until our visit, she had only seen them in a photo in an email.)  She read each student note aloud and tried to figure out who had completed which parts of the banner.  She misses the children as we all miss her.

The children have seen pictures, and they think Mathis is pretty cute.   Roanne has promised to bring him to visit us soon!  We are looking forward to that.

A Fur Trading Post

Students were divided into teams.  Some played the part of 1st Nations traders and some were Europeans.  Using cards representing trading items (fur pelts, pots, guns, biscuits etc.), the object was to get the best price for their goods and to sell everything they brought with them.  In the first round they were not allowed to speak.  This was to simulate trading without knowing each others'  languages.  In the 2nd round they were allowed to use a few words of Chinook jargon - actual words used when the 1st Nations and Europeans started sharing a common language.  The students agreed that role playing is a fun and effective way to learn.

Poisson d'avril

For April Fool’s Day in France, children try to stick a fish picture on their friends’ backs. When the joke is discovered, they shout “poisson d’avril !”

Division 6 students pranked Mr. Earland's class with poisson d'avril stickies all over his class.  At the end of the day I discovered the stickies were recycled and were stuck all over my car. Fortunately, good-hearted Division 6 students helped me remove them.