Music Night Raffle HCI

Students have been selling raffle tickets during HCI’s Music Nights. What a truly wonderful evening with amazing talented young people. The students sing, and play all sorts of instruments extremely well! They are just inspiring these incredibly talented music students. Sadly, phones and photos are not allowed during performances (much like a Prince show) so there's nothing to post. Just trust us, it was AMAZING!

The raffles sales went very well and all the wonderful donations were sought after! Two teachers, Ms Maguire (who organized the raffle) and Ms. McPhee are seriously competing to win several of the prizes up for grabs! We had to lock all of the tickets in the safe to ensure there was no tampering with the tickets mostly because of these two (of course we are kidding).
We will be drawing winning tickets tomorrow afternoon. We wanted to give HCI teachers one last chance to purchase tickets during our staff “goodies day” luncheon.
Good luck everyone! Even Ms. McPhee!

Books, books and more books

Books were collected today from classrooms throughout Humberside CI to be sorted before being shipped to Cross Lake. We have gotten some amazing donations include brand new classroom sets of books (thanks Sarah and Kate).
We have gotten started sorting the books, but there are a lot of wonderful books. This just might take a few sessions as everyone has been so generous with their donations!

Thanks, everyone for helping to sort through everything. We will have a few boxes for Otter Nelson River School as well, which is the elementary school in Cross Lake. 

Author donates kids books

We were so thrilled to have author Veronica Martenova Charles donate her books to Otter Nelson River School in Cross Lake. We have been gather books from the book drive at Humberside when her husband saw us sorting books. He told his wife the author and the next day these lovely signed books were hand delivered. Very thoughtful and kind.

If you would like to help please visit our GoFundMe page:
https://www.gofundme.com/CrossLake3D

Music Night Raffle for Mikisew! One last hooray!

Students at Humberside have been busy asking local business for donations to be raffled off during Humberside C.I.'s magical music nights to raise funds for our trip to Mikisew School in Cross Lake, MB next week! On Wednesday, April 25 and Thursday, April 26 audience members will have the opportunity to win a variety of amazing prizes that have been very generously donated by these amazing businesses: 

Joel Hunt - Artist: J​oelehunt.com 

T-shirts available at: b​uzzthreads.com

Studio Po Yoga

1 Wiltshire Ave. Unit J.

studiopoyoga.com

Tamborine Fashions

www.instagram.com/shoptambourine

Simple Kitchen

73 RONCESVALLES AVENUE

simplekitchento.com

 

Another Book Story

315 Roncesvalles Ave.

anotherstory.ca

Barque Smokehouse

299 Roncesvalles Ave

barque.ca

 The Good Fork

2432 Bloor St. West

goodfork.ca

Cobbs Bakery

2204 Bloor St W

Cobsbread.com

Delight Chocolate 

delightchocolate.ca

People’s Pint

90 Cawthra Avenue

peoplespint.com

SVP Sports 

svpsports.ca

System Fitness

2100 Bloor St W.

highpark.systemfitness.ca

 Cineplex

Parts N Labour

1566 Queen St. W.

partsandlabour.ca

 Willem and Jools Flowers

125 Roncesvalles Avenue

willemandjools.com

Mabel’s Bakery

323 Roncesvalles Avenue

Artisan Ring

Packing snow shoes is tricky

It looks like we got this! Only need to find room for two more pairs of snow shoes, and my clothes for a week. Priorities! Who needs clothing, at least the snow shoes will make it!

Now to see about shipping the extra luggage. We are really hoping that WestJet can give us a break on this, as we are already in need of a few more donations to cover the students travel costs. Fingers crossed!

And there's still a surprise coming too! 

We love MEC!

A HUGE thank you to Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) for their generous donation of 17 pairs of snow shoes for Mikisew High School in Cross Lake, MB. We are thrilled to be able to take these snow shoes up to Mikisew School next week when we travel to the community with 12 students from Toronto. Thank you Jim Adams and Sean McSweeney for making this happen. It's always amazing the connections people have to Cross Lake. How likely is it that Jim Adams working at Mountain at MEC has been to Cross Lake!

Now, we just need to figure out how to pack them?

They are all different sizes which is amazing! Again, we can't thank you enough! 

We wanted to include a photo of Jim Adams with all of these wonderful snow shoes, but he declined. In his words, "I'm shy, like most of my people, Cree people." 

Thank you again MEC, this is truly amazing. We are hoping to be able to check them in large duffle bags and bring them with us next week. 

Downsview Messages for Cross Lake

This week staff and students at Downsview Secondary School will be signing this wonderful artwork created by Mr. Chapman for Mikisew High School. Donations will be excepted as students can sign and send there greets from the 6ix! 

Games & Movie night at Humberside C.I.

We had a super fun student run fundraiser at Humberside C.I. We ended up having between 50-60 students out to play board games. Our student council president was spinning the Twister game, and teachers were getting quite competitive at JENGA.

Everyone had a really fun time, and the sweet treats and pizza were a great bonus! Ms. de Jersey made her first introductions to HCI students by way of her delicious cookies - which were a huge hit!

As teachers do, they also played a very competitive game of Scrabble with Mr. Dingwall taking the win!

* Staff and students wore jerseys and green/yellow to honour and remember those killed and hurt the the tragic Humboldt hockey team bus crash. We are deeply sorry for the loss to this community. We also signed a large banner that we will be sending to Humboldt C.I. next week. 

The night before we hosted a parent/guardian information night for the students who are going to be travelling to Cross Lake. The first was at Downsview at 5pm followed by Humberside at 7pm. One of the parents was so nice they even brought cookies to the meeting. It's going to be such an amazing journey! We can not wait to see our friends in Cross Lake again soon.

Downsview Students of the Week

Did you know, that Downsview staff and students were so moved by the wonderful quilt given to Downsview S.S. by Mikisew School staff and students when they visited in April 2017, that Downsview now takes most of their "student of the week" photos in front of it. 

To be student of the week takes love, truth, respect, humility, knowledge and strength all of which are highlighted on this beautiful blanket that hangs in the front of the office. It is one of the first things people see when they walk into Downsview Secondary School. 

Mr. Berto congratulates DSS student on his accomplishments as student of the week. 

http://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/downsview/Student-of-the-Week/Week-2

Game and Movie Night Fundraiser

Students at Humberside C.I. are getting excited about their movie and game night this Thursday, April 12 for Mikisew School. Should be a great night with lots of fun games to choose from. We'll have a wide selection with everything from Twister to Settlers of Catan and Mario Kart to Jenga!  The cost is $4 for entry with all money going to help offset the cost of student travel from Toronto to Cross Lake, and to help get the school some cross country skis. Snacks will be provided. We are hoping to play RISE! by Michelle Latimer as the feature film. And Twilight Dancers featuring Cross Lake's own!

http://www.cbc.ca/shortdocs/shorts/twilight-dancers

http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/rise-up-director-and-producer-michelle-latimer-speaks-about-vices-indigenou

This amazing student has some serious design skills! The event is sure to sell out with this kind of superb marketing!

The skis on display were generously donated for display purposes only by Ms. Pulford-Thorpe. We're hoping everyone pitches in so we can get new cross country skis. 

Unleashing Learning - 3D printing

On Tuesday, April 8 we set up a display during MarketPlace (a fair that showcases projects throughout the schools in the Toronto District School Board) during the Unleashing Learning Conference at the CNE grounds.
We were fortunate enough to have a display set up highlighting the 3D printing we've been doing between Downsview, Humberside and Mikisew. Technology is the best sometimes. It makes it so easy to connect. Using Google Hangouts our Skype we can all chat, using 3D printing we can create solutions and easily share them electronically to print in another community and using our social skills we can fundraise:
https://www.gofundme.com/CrossLake3D

Here are a few tips and resources regarding 3D printing: 

For resources Thingiverse is a great place to share designs, and get ideas for class projects: 

https://www.thingiverse.com

This is a great article that covers a bunch of ground to help you get started: 

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-free-resources-for-getting-started-with-3d-pri-1774721138

If you don't have a 3D printer (like most teachers and students) check out the Toronto Library! There's a small fee to print models, but it's very reasonable: 

https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/using-the-library/computer-services/innovation-spaces/3D-design-print.jsp

As for printers I'm personally a big fan of the MakerBot because it's very easy to use, and fix if something goes wrong. The Lulzbot is also very good and inexpensive. 

And a few videos about the journey: 

Here is a video that tells some of our stories: 

https://vimeo.com/191823783/d79ee2229e

https://vimeo.com/218083654

Thanks to our Mikisew Trivia Sponsors!

Trivia night would not have been the success it was without our sponsors. Thank you so much and please everyone support these amazing small businesses!

A huge thank you to all of our sponsors who donated amazing prizes:

Mandala Design 

Henderson Brewing Co 

ChocoSol 

Joel Hunt - artist 

MayFlowers 

De La Mer Fresh Fish Market (St. Clair) 

DeSotos 

Mindful BodyWorks Yoga Studio 

Blood Brothers Brewing 

Yellow Gazebo Natural Health Care 

Propel Physiotherapy 

Moksha Yoga St Clair West 

Cirque-ability 

Ceol Kids 2018  - http://www.ceolkids.com

Leap Importing 

Havana Cafe

Wallace Espresso Ltd. (coming soon to St. Clair West! We're so excited!!!) 

Spin Master Global 

 and of course 

Earlscourt BBQ By PorkNinjas  - Such a great restaurant with super friendly staff!