Life in the elementary is an adventure! From exploring, discovering, and hands-on learning, our students embrace learning to its fullest. Looking back on this school year, we saw God’s goodness and wonder on a daily basis and for this, we are so thankful!

We asked the elementary staff to share their favourite memories of the year. Here is what they shared:

THIS YEAR’S FAVOURITE MOMENTS BY OUR ELEMENTARY STAFF:

1.While doing a theme on “Saving the Bees,” the grade 2’s were excited to share their learning and this important message to others in the school! One boy excitedly said, “We’re going to be famous!” Nancy Worsley-Brown

2.A kindergarten student told me that I’m his best friend and was even invited to his birthday party—multiple times. He even requested a selfie together (he’s been very good for my self-esteem!).  Joy Saathof

3.Every Thursday I had lunch time supervision. I always brought a salad to eat because it was easy to eat while walking around outside. My students thought it was the funniest thing and always looked forward to seeing me with my salad. One boy would shake his lunch kit to copy me when I was shaking my salad container to mix it all up and we came up with a sort of shaking dance to do. And two of my girls insisted on not eating all their lunch so they could bring some of it outside so they could walk around with me and eat with me, so I had two lunchtime buddies who hung out with me during the entire recess.  Evangeline Stewart

4.A highlight this year is seeing the excitement that our reading challenge and Scholastic Book Fair brings to our school. Seeing the students gather in front of the bulletin board in front of the library is always fun. The classes get so competitive to see who read the most minutes! Kerry Schwenneker

5.One of the spelling words in class was “vulture.” All the students had to write a sentence on their whiteboards about the word. One student wrote, “I have a pet vulture!” Anita de Bruin

6.In 4B, our weekly walks were a personal highlight for me! We would chatter away about all the topics that interested the kids while we headed for the creek. Once we were there, students found indigenous plants, scramble up embankments, explore the creek, and just thrive in the natural setting. Cheryl Mulder

7.One of my favourite memories is how intensely invested our students are in being able to celebrate their birthdays as a part of the school community. Karin and I deliver a birthday button, pass on a blessing, and share a gift from the birthday box for each student. Around early April, we often hear murmurings from students wondering, “What about my summer birthday?” The tension around this question mounts as the end of year approaches, so the office has sent birthday cards to all summer (July & August) celebrating students, inviting them to visit the office sometime before June 23 to claim their gift. Without fail, many students state, “I was afraid you would forget about me this year!” Seeing their relief and joy reminds me of how important it is that each person is recognized and celebrated at ACS.  Seth Bakker

8.One of my favourite memories in kindergarten was when a munchkin saw me outside of the school and said with a look of absolute shock on their face, “They let you out?!” Apparently, they believed me when I said that I live in my classroom. Measha Thompson

9.When a teacher was discussing the plagues of Egypt, one student commented that one of the plagues was a plague of mosquitoes! Anita de Bruin

10.A student was sent to my office after falling on the gravel outside bleeding on both knees. As you may or may not know, I am also the school nurse 😉 He is hysterically crying, and I am not reacting, as I did not want to feed into any of his hysterics. I am calmly cleaning him up and the student pipes up, “Tell me the truth….how bad is it?” I am quite a sarcastic person, so I stopped myself from what I normally would love to say, “Actually it’s bad and we are going to have to remove both legs” and said what I needed to say to this student, “Not bad at all, it happened to a guy yesterday.” Better to make sure you say those things in your head.  Jessica Schuurman

11.My grade 3s this year loved to dance, so we turned our end-of-the-day clean-up into an opportunity to bust a move and show off our dance moves while also cleaning our classroom and, of course, I joined in too! They wrote down song requests and then eagerly awaited the end of the day to see which song it would be. I definitely learned some new dance moves this year from them: the griddy, the sturdy, the dab, etc… Evangeline Stewart

12.A highlight for me is handing out birthday buttons to the students on their birthday and having an opportunity to connect one on one and hear of their birthday plans and often so much more! Karin Riemer

13.A highlight this year for me has been seeing the resiliency of so many of our students. Watching kids go through difficulties—whether they were health or family or friendship issues—and bringing those struggles to God during our prayer time continues to be a reminder for me of “childlike faith” in a God who sees and listens to all.  Hilda deWolde

14.This year most of my students’ favourite subject was Bible, not recess or PE, Bible! That’s any teacher’s dream to hear! When I asked them why they liked Bible so much, their answers were “because it’s so interesting” “I love learning about the Bible characters and realizing they are just like me and God still chooses them”, “…because you read the stories in funny voices and make them fun to listen to”, “because they are such cool stories but they are also real so that makes them cooler!” Evangeline Stewart

15.After Easter, I introduced a little place value to help my class understand ways to represent numbers to 50. For the number 30 and saw that we had three full groups of 10 and 0 left over, which is why it’s the number 30. One of my students said, “Ms. Yan, that is a VERY good way of teaching math. I like that.” Grade 2 teachers, you have some students coming who are very excited about place value!  Jillian Yan

16.The joy is in the little things that happen over a day, a month, a year… when the children:

  • giggle over a silly word or a “whoopsie” mistake when printing
  • look with awe at a wriggly worm or notice the strange foot of a slow snail
  • tell endless stories and jokes that build our class family connections
  • delight in accomplishing a task, such as a number train puzzle or building a super tall tower of blocks together
  • pray with sweet trust to Jesus, thanking Him for inviting us to His heavenly party because He died on the cross for our sins and rose again as King.
  • learn from one another little tricks for how to put on our snowpants or fasten our shoes
  • create art, do experiments, and go on forest walks & field trips with parent helpers
  • problem solve and forgive one another
  • sing worship and silly songs together as kindergarten classes- oh the joy of those voices!
  • read together with increased fluency and expression
  • listen attentively to the Bible stories and react with excitement, “I know that story! I have it at home in my Bible!” Christine Beugelink

17.Having a student who has dealt with significant medical issues this year, still coming to school with a huge smile and every day having a new crazy animal fact that started with, “Mrs. deWolde, did you know that a cockroach can survive a week without its head?” Inevitably it was a fact about an animal that I had never heard of and that made it even better. You would think he might run out of crazy facts, but he assured me, “God sure made a lot of cool and weird animals so I have lots of facts to tell you!” Hilda deWolde

18. Student led chapels and being taught by children about God’s world and how to live out “act justly, walk humbly, love mercy. Karin Riemer