Leaf Attack!

Do any of you remember the show “Art Attack”? That was one of my favourite shows as a kid. It was fun to see the artist use different components to

make one impressive piece of artwork.

The other day, our group had the opportunity to participate in a similar experience.

Tatiana, one of our leaders, has always wanted to do an “art attack” type of afternoon activity with the kids, where little pieces of art could come together to cohesively make a large picture. With the changing of seasons and leaves falling, she thought it would be fun to do a fall themed “Leaf Attack” with the kids, which entails collecting leaves and painting them onto a large blank canvas to make a giant mural. 

With a mission in mind, Tatiana, along with a small group of budding artists (which consists of Annette, Livia, and Keira). The girls took their time to gather different types and shapes of leaves. Then, as a group, they decided on a larger image they wanted to create.  They wanted to create an image of a sunset with the word “OSC” in it.  Afterwards, they painted and stamped the leaves on. The girls had a ton of fun seeing the intricate parts come together to form a large picture. Check out their awesome artwork!

Until next time!

Monica

Friday's Pro-D Day

On Friday, September 25^th, kids from Gilmore and Quilchena had a Pro-D Day so we had an In-Day together with Junior Out of School Care. The Junior kids came over to Gilmore and we planned a full day of exciting activities for all of our kids. We paired a Junior child and a Senior child together, with the intention of giving our Senior kids some more responsibility and to help the Junior kids adapt to a different environment. The partnerships went really well, and I am proud to say that our Senior kids did a fantastic job of being good role models. The theme for our day was “Around the World”, and all of our kids had a blast. We played Jeopardy, with trivia questions about different countries to challenge the kids. One question was “What is Canadian bacon?” We received answers like “beef”, “ham”, and “thick bacon”. It was so great to see young minds at work. We also played “Across the Grand Canyon” in the gym, a game where you must run from one side of the “canyon” to the other without getting hit by a dodge ball.

After lunch, each kid got to make his or her own country. This was completely their own creation, so they were able to customize everything about their country. From designing the landscape, to naming their country, to setting the population size, to declaring a national flower and animal. It was cool to see how unique each country turned out. We posted all their creations on a giant ocean, and our “OSC-Landia” was born. The creativity shown by our kids was incredible to see, and they all had fun doing it.

All the best,

Ryan

The OSC Times - First Edition

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