Welcome Back!!

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to Gilmore Sr. Out of School Care! Our awesome, fun-filled summer has come to a close and all of the staff are excited to get back into the swing of things. As the first few weeks roll out, we're looking forward to seeing all the familiar faces and we gladly welcome those who are new to Sr. OSC. If you have not had a chance to meet all of the staff, please do not hesitate to say “Hello!” and introduce yourself.

Getting back into the routine can sometimes be challenging, but here are a few friendly reminders of the important things that take place in our program:

•  Breakfast is served daily from 7:00am-8:00am: 
• Hot breakfast is served Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, with regular breakfast being offered throughout the week as well. 
• What we serve for breakfast may change throughout the week, however, there will always be cereal, bread, english muffins, oatmeal, and juice.
  
• Bus pick up times are as follows and we ask that your child be dropped off by the designated times, if they require transportation by us.
• If your child goes to Quilchena or Dixon, please arrive at Gilmore Sr. OSC no later than 8:00am.
• If you miss the designated time, please drop off your child directly at school as the bus does only one pick up in the morning.

• If your child is looking for something to do during the afternoons, feel free to encourage them to check out our daily activities. Each day a leader brings something new and exciting to try, and all your child needs to do is sign-up on our magnet board and go into it with a good attitude!

• If your child will NOT be coming to Gilmore Sr. OSC after school, please remember to give us a call at: 604.272.3661. This is the direct line for our program and during off hours we have a voicemail available. Please leave us a clear and detailed message, otherwise there is a good chance we will be hassling you until we know your child's whereabouts!
  

These are just some of the reminders from Gilmore Sr. OSC. In the mean time, we hope that you will join us in ushering in another awesome school year. We look forward to getting to know and/or catching up with everyone. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask any one of us.

Matt

Don’t Miss Summer West Fest!

Every year, the West Richmond Community Centre hosts West Fest; an end-of-summer free family event held on the last Wednesday in August. This western-themed event includes live entertainment, face painting, bouncy castles, pie eating contents, relays, BBQ concession, and a photo booth! At dusk, the crowd settles in for a screening of a feature-length film – this year we’ll be showing Big Hero 6. It’s a lovely way to spend a late summer evening.

The grass may be brown, but we are thinking green for this event! Arrive by bike or on foot to be entered into a draw, and refill your reusable water bottles at Save-On-Foods’ water refilling station!

EVENT DETAILS:

Date: Wednesday August 26

Time: 6:30-10:30pm (movie begins at dusk)
Location: West Richmond Community Centre (9180 No. 1 Road)

This event is free. BBQ concession available.

For more information, call the front desk at 604-238-8400

What's In My Cookie?

“Monica, can we make soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies? I like them better than the crunchy kind.”
 

“Ooh wait! Can we please make snickerdoodles?!”
 

“I’m not a big fan of milk chocolate...can we use white chocolate chips instead?”

These...are typically some of the questions I get when I offer the kids a baking session as an afternoon activity.

Baking with kids can be hard work (as I’m sure most of you know). They have their conflicting quirks and tastes, which can be rather problematic when we’ve only got one recipe. To combat this, I decided to try something new and present them with a cookie challenge. In this challenge, the children were paired up and given a basic cookie recipe. Then, they had to work together to follow the instructions carefully in order to make the dough.

Here comes the fun part.....

Once the groups had completed their dough, the dough was split in half among the two partners. From then on, they were given the opportunity to put anything they wanted in their cookies (with the ingredients I provided). They got to choose from marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate chips, sour gummies, shredded coconut, popcorn, oatmeal, cereal, wow butter, jam, cream cheese, cinnamon, caramel sauce, chocolate syrup, and Fudge-O’s.

I wanted them to get creative and let them go crazy with their cookies. It was fun to see what type of concoction they came up with (albeit, the kitchen was insanely messy after).  

Liam wanted to add everything.

Nathan and Ethan decided to go with the s’mores route (always a tasty choice).

Some of the kids wanted to add food colouring to give it more flair...Niko even added some popcorn in his!

The kids all worked really well together. It was messy, yet strangely cohesive. One thing was for sure; they all came up with some delicious looking cookies!

The activity was super fun and I would definitely do this again with some harder ingredients to give them more of a challenge. If you guys have any ideas, feel free to let me know!

Until next time,

Monica

Pool + Pokémon = Exciting May!

Exciting news everyone;

The Sr. OSC 2015 pool championship is finally here. The most exciting sports tournament at Sr. OSC is entering it's forth season. Max, last year's defending champion, won’t be here to defend his title due to his graduation from our program; opening up the door up for some new competitors. Several new faces have joined this year’s tournament, making things more diverse and electrifying!

After a long season of numerous pool games, the playoff series will be starting up in June. This year's final competitors will consist of Alexander, who has been dominating in this year’s season games. This will be his third playoff appearance with a perfect season record. Due to Alex’s excellent pool skills, he has earned the  nickname: “Russian Assassin”. His competition will be Adrian, the 2013 Grade 2 Champion, who will also be enjoying his third playoffs. Adrian’s outstanding pool talent and sportsmanship has made him a popular player in this tournament. The finals will be held on June 9^th, 2015 at Gilmore Elementary School. If you happen to be in the Sr. OSC, please feel free to read the bulletin board beside the pool table. It has all the details about this tournament.

Besides the pool championships, in the last week of May, Sr. OSC had a joint art activity with Jr. We organized a Pokémon Challenge to find out who is the real Pokémon master. In order to make the game fair, each Sr. contestant had to team up with a Jr. contestant.  After answering a series of challenge questions about Pokémon, Alden’s team beat out Tyler’s team by only 50 points to become the New Pokémon master!

With the end of the pool championship season and the Pokémon challenge, Sr. OSC has wrapped up an exciting May and we are ready for summer to commence!

Dennis

Earth Week Legacy Project

Hey families & friends,

Although Earth Week has been over for quite some time, Senior OSC made a point of creating a legacy to leave behind in honour of the special occasion. As a group, we were invited by West Richmond Community Centre to go over and help add some colour to the Hugh Boyd artificial turf area. Located around the perimeter of the field are several cement blocks plain in colour. It was our job to add a spark to the blocks and 'bring them to life'. The children paired up and were assign one side of the block to do whatever they'd like.

We got our creative juices flowing, our paint rollers at the ready and away...we...went....

The inspiration for the block
was drawn from a spectrum of different techniques including tape painting, abstract painting, splatter painting and even the 'X-men'.

Overall, the project was a great success and it was really awesome to be able to leave behind something the kids help create. Now every time they walk by the art block they can say "hey, I helped create that", and I personally think that's a really cool thing to be able to say!

 

Best Regards,

 

Matt

Taking Time to Hear From Tyler!

Hello everyone!!

I’ll start by introducing myself. My name is Tyler and I have been working at OSC since December. I just graduated Kwantlen University with a B.A in psychology and am looking forward to starting my practicum at UBC for elementary teaching in September.

With the wonderful weather we are having it seems more and more kids want to be outside. Many outdoor activities involve playing on the playground, kicking a soccer ball around, throwing a frisbee, or working on cartwheels. Recently the kids wanted me to play the game sandman. This game is like tag but you are not allowed on the playground until you tag someone. Once someone is tagged they give you a colour, which you are then able to go on. For example if someone gives you yellow and the monkey bars are yellow you are allowed to go one them. Once all the colours of the playground are given out then the next person who is tagged is ‘it’.

I look forward to many more fun activities outside with the kids for them to teach me.

Take care,

Tyler

Staff Retreat

Hello OSC Families!

What a beautiful weekend we have had!  

Lately, we have had many creative art activities, and a popular one from this week was Monica’s Beanie Buddies! Each child was able to design and create their own beanie using felt, cotton stuffing, googley eyes, and glitter. With Monica’s help, the beanies were formed and sealed with a hot glue gun. Many of the kids chose to create their own doughnuts, and I must say, they looked very delicious!

 

    

"A tasty chocolate doughnut with

vanilla glaze and sprinkles"!

This past weekend the OSC Staff travelled to beautiful Loon Lake for staff development and training. We were very lucky to have such fantastic weather, which only added to the incredibly positive experience. The development sessions we participated in have gotten us all very excited for summer!

 

 

Upon our arrival on Friday, we began our West Richmond specific training, and on Saturday we completed joint training with Cambie, South Arm, and Hamilton. After wrapping up Saturday’s training, we headed onto the lake for some canoeing!

 

Over the two days, we engaged in many fruitful discussions about how to create the best experiences possible during OSC and Summer Camps. We are all very excited to develop and expand upon our new ideas for programming in the future months!

 

 

We missed seeing you all on Friday, though we are very excited to share our new ideas from here on out!

 Cheers,

Tatiana