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| The Hamburger cake looked so real! |
November is always a great month here at preschool. Everyone has really settled into their routines and as I walk through the classrooms I see the children's confidence, sense of belonging, and creativity beginning to soar. November is also nice because after all the fun of Halloween and before the excitement and festivities of the Christmas season begin, we have a calm time in which we can focus entirely on what we do best, playing and learning with our friends.
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| Barbie Cakes are always so popular! |
This month we also had our annual Family Pizza Night and Cake Walk which was so much fun. Thank you to everyone who donated a cake to either the cake walk or silent cake auction, and for coming out on the evening and supporting us, we really appreciate it! In all we raised over $800 for the preschool which is fantastic!
Throughout this blog I will include pictures from the night of the Pizza Night and Cake Walk.
Cheryl and Marion have been working away at getting everything ready for the Christmas Services. Cheryl has been teaching all the children their songs and helping them to remember where they will be standing on the stage and Marion has been sewing, gluing and glittering all the beautiful props that will be used throughout the shows!
Discovery 2's Danielle, Estelle, Vibha, Gabi, Krystal, Karen, and Cheryl.
Wow! How time has flown. We have already finished 3 months of preschool and we are now heading for Christmas and the Holiday Season.
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| A very happy winner of a special cake! |
In the month of November we were very busy exploring the theme of "Transportation". The sounds of transportation are among some of the first sounds that children make. No matter what your level of language is, all the children can participate. The children also love the movement & motion that vehicles make, and this is represented in the toys and games they play with. We even incorporated cars into painting when they 'drove' the car into the paint and onto the paper. This was so much fun.
The children also roller painted car shapes, collaged cars, stamped car shapes and even painted their very own bus!
Circle time was very busy with books and songs about "Traffic Lights"," Zoom Zoom Zoom, we are going to the Moon" and the old favourite "The Wheels on the Bus".
We also spent some time talking about sharing with our friends and learning our friends names. Here is a great song we sing that incorporates both of those ideas:
Shake it, Baby
Shake it, baby, shake it
Shake it all you can,
Shake it like a milkshake
And pass it to a friend!
Please continue to send extra clothing as there are some very enthusiastic painters and children who enjoy water play. With the cold weather here, please remember to send warm coats and hats. Our playground is shaded and tends to be cooler earlier in the day.
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| A sweet picture and a sweet cake! |
We have also noticed that some children are having trouble walking up and down the stairs, so please encourage your child to use the stairs holding on to the railing when coming and leaving the preschool.
We would also really appreciate it if you could label your child's individual snack containers because there are often mix ups at the snack table, and then the children are unsure as to which snack was theirs to begin with. Thank you!
If you have any questions please feel free to speak to us.
301 Joanna, Sali and Karen
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| Yummy cakes! |
The children are settling well into the school routine. They are becoming more independent every day with getting their jackets on, going to the bathroom, finding their name at snack time and lining up!
For most of November, our theme was ‘Community helpers’. We talked about Firefighters, Police workers, Ambulance workers, Doctors and Nurses, Dentists, Teachers and Bakers!
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| The proud winner of a tasty cake! |
We watched a Fire Safety video with Fireman Dan and learned basic survival skills such as ‘Stop, Drop and Roll’ and ‘Crawl low under smoke’. We made a big Fire truck for our bulletin board, baked cookies just like ‘real Bakers’ and had fun wearing the Nurses hats we made.
We transformed the home corner into a Doctor’s office, Dentist’s office, Vet surgery, Fire station and Bakery!
Photo day went really well and all the children enjoyed the photographers’ funny jokes.
We have recently started talking about Christmas and the Nativity. We have created a Nativity scene on our bulletin board. We have also learned the songs for our Christmas service and are working hard practising every day so it will be great for our family and friends.
We really appreciate parents and caregivers continuing to work on self help skills at home such as dressing, putting on jackets and shoes and proper hand washing. Please remember to send three snack choices as the children are busy and hungry!
We are looking forward to the Christmas service and Christmas parties.
302 Stephanie, Rachel and Joanna
With all of the excitement of Halloween done with we decided to explore the theme of colours and shapes. We reviewed all of our colours and then we learned about what happens when we mix certain colours together. Each class experimented with two different colours and from that we learnt that red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, and red and blue make purple. The children were so amazed as they spread and mixed the two colours together and it turned into something different. During circle time we played many games that encouraged colour recognition which was a fun way for everyone to learn their colours.
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| We won a cake! |
For our topic on shapes, we used popsicle sticks to create houses and kites. The kite was in the shape of a diamond and the house had two shapes, which are the triangle and square put together. We also used cookie cutters and made shape prints using a square, triangle, and circle. We had lots of fun putting together a train using a variety of different shapes. Learning about shapes was so exciting because there are shapes all around us!
As the weather is getting colder, we would like to remind parents to dress your children in warm jackets as we will be going outside if it is not raining.
We would like to give a big thank you to Arwen (Chloe's mom) for collecting photo money for us.
We have quickly jumped into the holidays and everything will be about Christmas! We can't wait. There are going to be lots of exciting crafts and activities that we are going to be doing with the children.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to speak with any of the teachers.
303/403 Stephanie, Vibha and Sali
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| An awesome Dinosaur cake! |
Another month has come and gone. We have been very busy learning about all of the different animals that hibernate. We played matching games where we had to find which animal hibernates where. We also played games using numbers to find which number cave the bear was hiding in. We made learning about animals that hibernate so much fun and we could tell that the children enjoyed it just as much as we did.
We practised our cutting skills making hedgehogs and snakes from paper plates. We read a book call 'The Mitten' by Jan Brett and and incorporated that story into our artwork. We used paper mâché to make a rock and then made a snake to go under it and we used shaving cream and glue to make a muddy pond for the frog to hibernate in. We also spent a lot of time working on our plate project where we used many different materials. We used clay and natural materials then put our cinnamon bears and neon snakes in. The children were very engaged in this project and used their imaginations to create anything they liked.
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| Monster Truck!! |
We would like to say thank you to Tracey (Lulu's mom) for collecting photo money for the classes. We hope you all enjoyed your child's photo!
As the weather is getting colder, we would like to remind parents to dress your children in warm jackets because we will be going outside if it is not raining.
The children are getting so excited with the holidays coming up. We have been talking about Christmas and doing lots of crafts and activities related to this joyous holiday.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to talk to any of the teachers.
401 Rachel, Stephanie, and Krystal
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| We won! |
Now that all that excitement and fun leading up to Halloween is over, we started to talk about hibernation. In the beginning many of the children knew that the word hibernation meant bears going to sleep in the winter, but what they didn't know is that other animals hibernate too.
During circle we read stories and talked about all the different animals that hibernate and where they hibernate. It was amazing to find out how many animals actually hibernate in the winter time. We also learned why these animals need to sleep for such a long time while other animals don't. The children enjoyed playing with our interactive board in the classroom where they could place each animal in the spot where it is supposed to hibernate.
For our art activities we painted paper plates to look like mud and hid frogs in it, glued squirrels in tunnels and covered them in leaves to keep them warm, placed bears in caves, and painted skunks. We also explored a different material to make rocks. We mixed flour and water to make paper mâché. We covered plastic bowls with strips of newspaper dipped in it and then when it dried we painted it so it would resemble a rock. We then created snakes to sleep under the rocks.
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| The candy cane cake! |
We would like to remind parents to dress your children in warm clothes for outside because we will be going outside if it is not raining.
We would like to give a big thank you to Lauren (Sasha's mom) for collecting photo money.
The children are already getting very excited about our next holiday; Christmas! We have started to decorate our classroom and now have a gingerbread bakery in our home corner. We have many more exciting things to do around this special time of the year.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to speak to any of the teachers.
402 and 404 Libby, Permjit, Gabi and Joanna
Its been a very busy November Month. We finished talking about the amazing author Robert Munsch. We had so much fun and endless laughter while watching our socks being displayed on the washing line outside our classroom.
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| Beautiful Butterfly! |
Christmas being not so faraway it was time to explore the world of the Nutcracker. Some of us really loved the classical music that was associated with the Nutcracker and all the dances. We painted while listening to the Sugar plum fairy. There were three dances, one was the dance of tea. We used green tea leaves and green paint, to paint to the music of tea.
Then it was the dance to coffee, in which we gave the children real fresh coffee and brown paint. Some of the children pointed out to us that it smells like what mommy or daddy drinks. They got to smell all the different tea time drinks but our favourite was the dance to Chocolate! Not sure whether it was the fact we had real powdered hot chocolate to paint with or that we had hot chocolate to drink and ginger cookies to go with it afterwards as a treat!!
We used all sorts of implements to paint. Feathers, Q-tips, toothbrushes and sponges on pegs. We listened very carefully to the classical music and then painted accordingly. Sometimes if the music was fast we painted fast. Painting with feathers was really fun but at the same time a bit difficult.
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| Tha cake walk! |
Towards the end of November we started talking about the Nativity and why Christmas is celebrated. Children loved the story about Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. The felt story bought it to life and there were endless questions from the children.
During art we collaged and painted Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. We had so much fun making stars with sparkles everywhere. shepherds and woolly sheep came along next. This is just the beginning of our Christmas activities and we are looking forward to having so much more fun!
Santa has been leaving us letters because he needs our help in his workshop as the elves have been sick lately. We have started helping Santa with some of his work load by making candy canes, stars and Angels which has been fun. We are looking forward to seeing what he has for us in the following weeks leading up to Christmas!
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| We chose a butterfly cake! |
We are very busy bees and having so much fun with our friends!
Shalom Melissa and Delaney. We are looking forward to Melissa (Delaney's Mum) coming in to talk about Hanukkah.
We have been working very hard at our Christmas Service rehearsals and look forward to seeing everyone there. At the end of class if we seem a bit tired its because we are working so hard and at the same time having lots of fun with our friends and getting our classroom ready for Christmas.
Please do come and see us if you have any concerns or questions.
December Dates to Remember!
Tuesday December 11th. Last day to bring in Hamper donations.
Tuesday, December 11th at 6pm. 302, 402, and 404 Christmas Service.
Wednesday, December 12th at 6pm. 301, 401, 303, and 403 Christmas Service.
Wednesday, December 19th at 11am. 301, and 401 Christmas Party in the gym.
Wednesday, December 19th at 2:15pm. 303 and 403.
Friday December 21st last day of preschool before Christmas Break.
Monday, January 7th Back to preschool.
We are still accepting registration for 3's and 4's families who would like to add and extra day to their current preschool program. The program runs in the Treehouse Room, Mon-Fri from 12:15-2:45pm.
For more information or general inquiries or comments, please contact Jen or Tina in the office:
Tel: 604-980-1326
Fax: 604-980-9418
Email:
stcpre@telus.net
And don't forget to "Like" our facebook page "St. Catherine's Childcare Society" if you haven't already done so, thank you!
