Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1

Gr 1B Skating 11:15

Food Drive Begins

2 3

4 5 6

Gr 1A Skate

11:15

Kindergarten

Skate 2:00

7

Subway Day

Holiday Gift Shop

Kindergarten Skate

2:00

8

Holiday Gift Shop

9

No School

10

11 12

$1 Secret Candy

Cane Sale at

Lunch

13

$1 Secret Candy

Cane Sale at

Lunch

14

Band Concert 7pm

$1 Secret Candy

Cane Sale at Lunch

15

Christmas

Concert 7pm

Skating Gr 1B

11:15

16

Food Drive

Ends

17

18 19 20 21 22

Pizza Day

23

“Christmasy”

Day

24 Christ-

mas Eve

25 Christ-

mas

Day

26

Christmas

Break Begins!

27 28 29 30 31 General Delivery, Cremona AB, TOM ORO

Phone: 1 (403) 637-3856

Fax: 1 (403) 637 - 3830

E-mail: Cremona@chinooksedge.ab.ca

Website: www.cremonaschool.ca

Turning Today’s Learners Into Tomorrow’s Leaders

From the Principal’s Desk December is here with Christmas and holidays just around the corner. We are very excited to showcase our talented students with our two Christmas concerts. Our bands will be performing on Wednesday, December 14th and our K-4 students will be performing on Thursday, December 15th. We look forward to seeing you all here. We just finished our first fundraisers for the year. Thank you all for your continued support of our school and the extra-curricular activities we are able to offer through these fundraisers, as well as some added extras in and around the school. Communication continues to be one of our school goals. With this in mind, we are trying to send out reminders and notifications though our school messenger. We would ask that you check your spam account occasionally to check for any messages from Terry Goulet (Cooke). We do try to send out a quick notice to a cell phone as a text message to remind you to look for an email message. If you are not receiving school messages please contact Terry Goulet at the school to check on the email and cell number we have in PowerSchool for our school messenger. Further to our communication goal, we have activated our Cremona School Facebook page. Our aim is to post to the page something that is happening in and around our school frequently. We will also post reminders and events to our Facebook page. You can also check out our Crash Cougar page which is run by our student council; our CSES page which is run by the Cremona School Enhancement Society and the Cosmetology Facebook page run by our Cosmo class. As you are spending time reminiscing with family and friends this holiday season, please keep an eye out for past grad class photos. Due to the sun bleaching many of the grad class photos, we would like to upgrade them at the school. If you come across one of those photos and are able to bring in a colored copy of it we would love to update the picture. If you would like us to copy them we would be happy to do that too. Thank you again for your continued support for our school. We look forward to seeing you in and around the school. Best of the season, Joanna Harvey

Cremona School is thrilled to welcome two new teachers to our staff!

Hi. My name

is Sheryl Tunnell and I

am excited to be

teaching Kindergarten

for the remainder of the

year! I have been a

teacher for six years.

My husband and I lived

in Calgary for about 10

years. We moved three

years ago to Carstairs,

purchasing our first

home. We both grew up

in small towns, so it was a great transition for us. We also

have a 2 ½ year old boy who has enhanced our lives so

much!

My name is Kait Henry

and I will be taking over

Mrs. Day’s Grade 5 class

for the remainder of the

year. I am originally from

the Kitchener-Waterloo,

Ontario area but I have

been living in Calgary for

a little over a year now

where I have been work-

ing as a substitute teach-

er. Before moving to

Alberta I worked as an

educational assistant for almost 8 years. I am a small-

town girl at heart so coming to Cremona seemed like a

natural choice. I am excited to jump into my new role,

and look forward to becoming a part of the Cremona

School community.

Grad Bottle Drive

Grads will be having a bottle drive on Saturday

January 7. Please contact a graduate to have

your bottles picked up.

Leadership News

We would like to extend a special thank you to all that donated a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child, we collected 52 boxes!

This year we were able to volunteer at the Samaritan’s Purse warehouse, in Calgary, to help ship the boxes overseas, our boxes

will be going to the Ukraine, Haiti and 15 other countries. It truly was a wonderful and rewarding experience for us and we

would highly recommend it to all who want to give a helping hand this season.

Christmas always gives us so much joy and we want to spread it around. We have decided to carry on the tradition of hosting a

school wide holiday calendar, each day a new class gets to open a door as we count our way down to the Holiday break. We will

be running our annual food drive again this year, the classes with the most points will get hot chocolate and cookies in January.

Please check out the website for the points breakdown. We will also be selling Secret Candy Canes at lunch, for $1 which will be

delivered on December 23, this year all proceeds will be donated to Santa’s Anonymous.

Our leadership team has been promoting acts of kindness for a few years now, this Christmas, we are bringing the challenge to

you. Each class will have a tree assigned to them, which will be hung around the school. Each time you perform an act of kind-

ness, please fill out an ornament and hang it on your tree. Let’s see which class is going to make the season a little brighter!

A big goodbye and thank you to our Japanese exchange student Nanari, who will be leaving our team, in December, to go back

home, we will miss you!

Merry Christmas everyone!

COUNSELLOR’S CORNER

GRADE 11 and 12 PARENTS: It’s so hard for a student to choose a post-secondary if he/she has never been on cam-

pus but if the Open House or our tour was missed, just take your teenager for a coffee on campus or I can help you to

arrange a tour! They can also attend “student for a day” classes to get an idea of what programs have to offer.

The University of Calgary is here on November 29th and Red Deer College will present to the Grade 11s and interested

12s on Thursday December 8th during flex.

The Grade 12s went on our career site, myblueprint, and the government “ALIS” site with me last week. They offer

endless information on careers, schools, money, and jobs! The ALIS site is open to anyone and is free – check it out!

Parents, another way to help your teenager is to assist with the scholarship search. The ALIS website, studenta-

wards.com or myblueprint.ca have many listed. Each school offers money, does your employer give scholarships?

Your Gas Company? UFA? Your daughter/son was given information in June, please ask for it as it has many scholar-

ships included! I also handed out this information at the first Grad Meeting in September. Rutherford scholarships

are applied for on the ALIS web-site but the summer before post-secondary is the time to do it.

GRADE 10 AND 11 PARENTS AND STUDENTS: All post-secondary schools are currently looking at GRADE 11 marks for

admission to university, so Grade 11s, work hard!!!

GRADE 9 PARENTS: I will be finished with French with your teenager at the end of January. Second semester I will

have them once a week for career planning! We will complete a working resume, check out careers, do online per-

sonality surveys, interest surveys, and general career development.

Ruth Dougherty

Parent Council Update:

The Holiday Gift Shop event is quickly approaching! Would you have a couple of hours to volunteer on Dec. 7th or 8th at the school to help young students fill their Christmas lists? If you do or if you'd like more information, please contact Shera Scott at sherascott@live.ca. Thank you! There will be no December meeting for Parent Council, but please mark your calendars for the January 10th meeting! At the January meeting, Ms. Robbin Alexander, School and Family Wellness Worker will be presenting information. Ms. Alexander is privy to non-academic factors such as social/psychological issues in the student population. She has observations of a student's experience and challenges at school and those issues which may hamper academic progress. Some of the common challenges right now facing our students include anxiety in children, social interac-tions and friendship issues. This is important information of which parents should be aware. Please join us! Looking ahead to February, what school information would you like to have? Over the last few months School Admin-istration and Parent Council have been working to incorporate ways to keep communication open and flowing. One of the suggestions is to have round table discussions in February. Two of the topics thus far are Options Classes and Concession. What are Options Classes? How are they paired? Do you have feedback that you'd like to share regard-ing Concession? Please let us know what other items you might like to have discussed. Please note that due to the conflict with Valentine's Day, the February meeting will be held on February 7th. Comments, questions, agenda suggestions and round table discussion items can be emailed to Gerard at soilsrus@cciwireless.ca or Michael at sunergy@velocitynetworks.ca. See you on Tuesday, January 10th, 7pm in the Library! Happy Holidays!

Band Society News: Young talent is welcome to partake in the Cremona Community Christmas Concert (December 11). You do not have to be a Band student to perform. The school Band Christmas concert will be held on Wednesday, December 14 at 7:00 pm in the gym. Band meetings have moved to the 1st Wednesday of the month. The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, December 7th at 7:30 pm in the Library. Please note the January meeting will be on the 11th due to the conflict with Christmas break. At this meeting we will be discussing options for trips. We would love your input and attendance!

Proud of the active global citizens in our schools

A message from the Superintendent

During this year of life-changing challenges in the world around us, our Chinook’s Edge school communities have responded with an outpouring of generosity and goodwill that fills us with pride. When Fort McMurray faced the wildfire situation, our students, families and staff quickly got to work, organizing fundraising events and coordinating efforts to help ease the strife. This kindness continued in the months following, when some students were relocated into our schools to ensure their learn-ing could continue.

At the same time, some of our school communities were also welcoming Syrian refugees and many of our Chinook’s Edge families were making personal commitments to showing these newcomers what safe and caring looks like. All the while we were helping each other, sharing acts of kindness large and small to support our neighbours, colleagues and students who continue to be impacted by the economic challenges closer to home. Thank you for your many displays of caring and compas-sion. We wish everyone in our Chinook’s Edge school communities a deep measure of peace this holiday season.

Kurt Sacher

Superintendent of Schools

Question for your Superintendent…

At Chinook’s Edge School Division, we pride ourselves on transparent communication and service to all of our stakeholders. If you have a question for Superintendent Kurt Sacher, we have set up a link on our website to reach him directly. The ‘Parents Matter Question Box’ link is available under the ‘Board’ tab on our website at www.cesd73.ca. (The Question Box is not meant to replace the regular communications protocols at the school level. Thank you.)

Yearbooks Available

2015-2016 Yearbooks have been distributed. If you didn't order one, it's not too late! There are extra copies for purchase. See Mrs. Paige Murphy with $25 to get your copy before they're gone!

Bouquets and Celebrations

Thanks to Gerard Kulscar for donating mulch for the flower beds in front of the school, we look forward

to fewer weeds to pull come next spring!

Thanks to Miss Frank and Miss Shepard’s class for baking pumpkin pie and sharing with the teachers, it

was delicious!

Thanks to our amazing community for raising $2018 for our Annual Terry Fox Run!

The Water Valley Community Association would like to thank all of the Cremona School students who

volunteered at our Kids’ Halloween Party as well as all the community members and local businesses

who donated candy and cash. We could not do this party every year without a community so generous

with their time and money.

Thanks to Mr. Youngs for all the help setting up for the Remembrance Day Ceremony

The elementary music classes did a great job singing at the Remembrance Day Ceremony - the Legion

members thoroughly enjoyed their performances.

Thanks to Shauna Ward for running the Remembrance Day Ceremony

A big thank you to the parents, grandparents, aunts, Shelby& Wes Cummings for tying skates and being

on ice helpers for the Kindergarten & Grade one skating classes. Thanks also to the Cremona & District

AG Society for giving us the opportunity to use the Cremona Arena.

I would like to thank my Jr A Girls' volleyball for a great season! This group, Calla, Kennedy, Xian,

Megan, Madi, Shayla, Hannah, Aly, Hailey, and Emily were extremely talented, respectful, and a lot of

fun! Also thanks to the support from the parents and again to Shera and Dave Scott for filling in for

me! And finally, thank you parents for the gift cards, I will be using them very soon! Ruth Dougherty

A huge thank you to my Sr. Girls’ volleyball team for an amazing season! My girls have been extremely

supportive and patient throughout my first year as a coach, and it was extremely heartwarming to see the-

se girls come together as a team as the season progressed! A big thank you also to the support of all of the

parents, it was lovely to see you cheering for our girls at each game and tournament! Miss Young

A giant thank you to Dawn Armstrong and Gerard Kulscar, my two amazing assistant coaches! I could

not have made it through this season without you, your support, and your expertise! Thank you for taking

over when I had to miss games or tournaments, and thank you for all of your support and encouragement

along the way! Miss Young

Last Thursday I took 44 Grade 6-12 volleyball players to the University

of Calgary to watch the "Crowchild Classic" against Mt Royal

Cougars! We stopped off at Macdonald's and then took in the

game! What great students we have in our school....they thanked me

about a thousand times and their behaviour was perfect on the bus, at the

restaurant and on campus! Thanks to Mr. Lerbekmo for chaperoning

and to Mrs. Harvey for driving the bus! R. Dougherty

SUM-

PLEASE CALL 403-337-4277 OR EMAIL: coordinator@cremonaces.com to register for any of these classes.

FRESH CHRISTMAS SWAG

Join Dawn to make a fresh Christmas swag for your door or wall. Instructions with pictures, all the fresh greens, berries and cones

are supplied for this course.

DATE: Thursday, December 1, 2016 TIME: 6:00—9:00 pm COST:$65/person

TEA & TRAVEL– Lunch—CHRISTMAS IN MEXICO

DATE: Tuesday, December 13th TIME: 12:00 to 2:00 pm COST: Free Deadline to register is December 6th

CHRISTMAS STAINED GLASS LANTERN

Come and enjoy a day being creative. Cristina will teach us the technique to make a beautiful winter themed glass lantern. Supplies

included in the price. Class size limited to 10.

DATE: Thursday, December 8th TIME: 11 AM—3 PM COST: $80 / person Please bring a bag lunch, twee-

zers, apron and patience. Deadline to register: December 1st Only 3 spots left!

2016 Cremona & District Santa’s

Anonymous

Confidential Telephone No. 403-816-0644! Santa’s Anonymous is a program in our community for families in need of

gifts during the Christmas season. The areas covered by this program in-

clude: Cremona and the rural districts of Water Valley, Fallen Timber, Big

Prairie, Elkton, Dog Pound, Madden and West of Carstairs.

Our mission “is to prepare gifts for children from infancy to 18 years of age

(that reside in your home)”!

This program starts November 14, 2016 and operates until our cut-off date of

December 12, 2016 (we require this early cut-off date in order for the prepara-

tion and distribution of these gifts). Please call the CONFIDENTIAL telephone

number of 403-816-0644 to make a SELF- REFERRAL

We place donation tubs around our community for “new items”, donation tins

for cash donations (plus we have a bank account at the Mountain View Credit

Union for donations)!

Water Valley Community Building Fundraiser

Christmas Concert

Wood Smoke and Oranges

featuring

choral waves

and musician ensemble

Sunday, December 4th, 2016

Water valley community hall

3 p.m.- 4:30 p.m.

tickets $10- Children under 12 free

tickets available at the at the water valley General Store

and at the door

refreshments following concert