Our tree is here!

Last week our friends at Grelen Nursery brought and installed our new donated white oak.

You can see our new tree in the exterior courtyard by the side soccer field. We are looking forward to watching our tree grow over the next few years.

You can read more about our students' trip to Grelen to learn about trees and to pick this one out in this blog post.


Here are some pictures of our new tree!

Our students wrote notes to the tree to be buried as it was planted

Our students' notes before they were buried with the tree

Baker-Butler in the snow!

Our school looks beautiful in the snow. Check out these pictures!

Our Building Services crews are plowing our parking lots

This is our front entrance and car circle

Front soccer field and playground

Interior courtyard and student gardens

Exterior courtyard and our new white oak tree in the center

Back playground and basketball courts

Back playground and our new UVA Sculpture in the hill

Back soccer field

Our fantastic custodians shoveling and working hard to get us ready for students!

A special beginning to our Hoops & Jump Rope for Heart

This past Friday we had a very special beginning to our Hoops & Jump Rope for Heart. These are our annual fundraisers for the American Heart Association.

We welcomed back a former Baker-Butler student, Hannah, who is currently a student at Albemarle High School. Hannah is a Heart Hero as she is a survivor of several open heart surgeries. She spoke movingly about her personal journey, the importance of medical research, and why the Hoops & Jump Rope for Heart fundraisers are especially meaningful to her.

We begin preparing for our Hoops and Jump Rope for Heart this coming week. Thanks to Hannah as well as our great PE teachers for such an amazing day for our entire school.

Fairy Tales Project

Brilliant Fairy Tales

All of our second grade students wrote original fairy tales as a culmination to their fairy tale genre study.   Fourth grade mentors helped the younger students add lights to their fairy tale illustrations using copper tape, button batteries and tiny LED stickers.  The stickers lit up when circuits were added to back of the pictures. 

On December 17^th, all second grade students had a chance to tour the five 2nd grade classrooms to read and view the illuminated stories of their peers. 

The materials for the ‘Brilliant Fairy Tales’ were funded by a K-12 Education Partnership grant from the Dominion Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Dominion Resources.  Susan A. King, the Dominion Foundation External Affairs Representative for the Piedmont Region came to view and celebrate the projects with students.  

More information on circuit sticker projects and materials can be found at the Chibitronics site:  http://chibitronics.com/

BBES and the Hour of Code

The week of December 7-13, many Baker-Butler students joined in a global movement comprised of more than 100 million learners in 180 countries for the Hour of Code.  Students worked through tutorials that taught them to write lines of code, which made animated characters move and perform increasingly more complex tasks.  Some of our second graders worked in pairs, teams and as individuals to solve several levels of challenges during their Hour of Code.

The event was organized by a coalition of supporters— including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the College Board.  Find more information about the Hour of Code and access tutorials at:  https://code.org/learn.