Greetings, all! I cannot believe how quickly January has been flying by and how fast the half way mark of our academic year is approaching. I am very thankful for each and every one of you and for how intentional you have been in staying up to date with what is going on in our classroom. As it stands everyone’s milk orders have exhausted. If you would like to order milk for the following month you may send it in with our weekly hot lunch orders.

Reading skills: As we are nearing the half way mark we are seeing lots of improvement in each student’s reading skills. Due in part to your intentional reading at home. Reading at home married with reading at school can drastically improve your child’s reading fluency. We encourage everyone to continue to partner with us in helping develop reading confidence throughout this intentional practice.

Morning snack: Every morning before first recess we have time allotted towards a morning snack to keep our students energized until lunch. Please be consistent in sending snacks with your child every day of the week even when they have ordered hot lunch.

Cheer Announcement: All the elementry cheerleaders will be cheering at ICS Tuesday for our girls basketball game. They are to be at ICS for 3:30 as the game will start at 4pm. The girls are asked to wear their cheer shirt, black leggings, and sneakers.

School Cancellations & Delays

When announcements are made for a delay or closure, GCS follows the PEI Public Schools Branch.  Alternatively, sometimes only certain schools will be delayed or closed and will be announced by “family of schools”; GCS follows the Bluefield Family, Colonel Gray Family, and Charlottetown Rural Family of schools.  If any of these are delayed or canceled, GCS will be also.

In the case of a “one hour delay”, school will begin at 10:00am, while a “school closure” or “system wide shutdown” results in no school at all for the day.

There are a number of ways to know if there is a school delay or closure; they are as follows:

  1. We will post on the GCS Facebook (Grace Christian School – Prince Edward Island), Twitter (@gcs_pei), and Instagram (gcspei) accounts.
  2. Each PEI radio station regularly announces delays/closures (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  3. The CBC Stormcentre website (http://www.cbc.ca/stormcentre/pei/) (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  4. The PEI radio station websites also post delays/closures on their sites (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  5. Families can opt in to a GCS text message notification.  If school is delayed or canceled, a text message can be sent from GCS to one cell phone in the family to notify of the delay/closure.  This is an OPT-IN ONLY program.  If you would like to use this option, please email Jordan Ellis (jellis@gcspei.ca) with the cell phone number that you want to have the text message notification be sent to.  If you opted in last year and still have the same cell phone number, it is already still in the system.

We strongly encourage you to follow us on one of our social media platforms and to register for our text message system for cancellations if you haven’t already. Please note that if school is closed (not simply delayed), any after-school or extra-curricular activities will also be cancelled (such as sports, after school care, clubs, etc).

Quizzes This Week:

Wednesday: Phonics

Thursday: Math

Friday: Spelling

Important Dates

Feb 2 – Professional Development Day
Feb 8 – Parent Teacher Conferences (pm)
Feb 9 – Parent Teacher Conferences (am) – No Class
Feb 19 – Islander Day – No Class

Ms. Jenkins