JUNE 2023 is our LAST MONTH OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!
We have made it to the LAST MONTH of the school year and it was ONE GREAT YEAR! We have done a lot of fun things and we learned a lot as well!
The children strengthened their bonds with their old friends and also made new friends. Learning to meet new friends is a GREAT skill for children to learn.
Children also learned some fabulous Self Help skills like walking down the stairs on their own, taking off their own backpacks, taking out their snacks, and of course, the best learned skill...putting on, taking off and hanging up their own coats!! (For some reason, when parents drop off and pick up at the classroom door they end up doing all these things for their children!!?!)
This summer, the best thing you can give your child is YOUR TIME. Put away your cellphone and play.
Do things with your child that you enjoyed doing when you were young, and tell your children your stories of the past. Get out into nature and try to leave the screens turned off as much as possible.
And I do know, that as a mother of boys, (26 and 30 years-old), your children will soon be grown and gone and getting them to come over to help you re-pot your aloe vera will be next to impossible!!
IMPORTANT DATES & EVENTS
JUNE 16 - 4'S GRADUATION CEREMONY
Sunflower Room: 11:45 am (Church)
Treehouse Room: 1:30 pm (Church)
JUNE 16 - LAST DAY OF PRESCHOOL
JUNE 21 - PICNICS: All Classes
Mahon Water Park: 11:30am - 1:30pm
Bring a blanket and lunch and stay to play in the Water Park. We will have a last HOORAH to say goodbye to all our friends and teachers. And the FAMOUS CANDY TOSS just might be happening!!
HEY! St. Catherine's has a COMMUNITY GARDEN!
Do you love to garden but don't have the space?
There are 9 garden boxes that are up for rent this summer! You can adopt a garden box for $40.
FUNDRAISING IN THE SUMMER
We have several fundraising partners that you can visit in the summer to keep supporting St. Catherine's Childcare Society while we are closed until September. Please think about sharing them with your friends and family as well!
1. Scholastic Books: You can get books delivered to your home over the summer. Please go online and take a look at some of the fabulous books, activities and learning materials you can order. They make great gifts throughout the year for any age!
2. Little Kitchen Academy: The first-of-its-kind Montessori-inspired cooking school in Edgemont Village for children ages three through teen. Let them know at Registration that you are part of St. Catherine's Childcare Society and you will receive a discount and our school will receive a $10 bonus!
3. Lovable Labels: Order personalized labels for your children's clothes, lunch boxes and containers and anything else that needs labelling. 20% of every order will support St. Catherine's Childcare Society. Place your order online at
www.StCatherines.lovablelabels.ca
4. Cobs Bakery: When you make a purchase at the Edgemont Village Cobs store, you can mention you would like to support St. Catherine's Preschool and 5% of your purchase will be forwarded to St. Catherine's.
5. Return It Recycling at Brooksbank Ave: Take your cans and bottles to the Return It Depot on Brooksbank Ave. and you can donate them to St. Catherine's Childcare Society. You will need to print off a St. Catherine's Childcare Society sticker (or pick one up from the preschool office) and put that on your clear bag of cans/bottles/milk containers and St. Catherine's will get the proceeds!
6. Boston Pizza on Esplanade: When you purchase food from the Boston Pizza on Esplanade & Chesterfield in North Van., take a clear picture of your receipt and email it to the preschool. We will forward these on, and we will receive a bonus for 5% of the food sales!
Please remember that we will have fundraisers all year long so let your friends and family know about all our special events!
Future Events:
Pizza Night & Cake Walk: November 2023
Purdys Chocolates: November 2023
Samosas: November 2023
The Card Project: Spring 2024
THE CLASSROOMS WERE BUSY...
RAINBOW ROOM - Danielle, Susan, Vibha
In the month of May, we delved into two exciting themes with our children. The enchanting world of Under the Sea and the fascinating era of Dinosaurs. Through engaging discussions, interactive activities, and hands-on exploration, we provided a captivating learning experience that explored the wonders of marine life and the prehistoric creatures that once roamed the earth.
Our art activities included creating marble painting seahorses, decorating jellyfish, crafting sea turtles, making sea creatures stencil collages and designing a starfish using tissue paper.
Circle time is always an exciting, enriching part of our day, where we come together to learn and explore. The "Goodnight Ocean" book and the stories about "Slippery Fish" and "Fidgety Fish" were enjoyed by our children. And our Five Blue Whales and Slippery Fish felt rhymes were a big hit.
Young children are naturally curious about dinosaurs whether it is the terrifying T-Rex, the long necked Brachiosaurus, or the funny looking Triceratops.
Dinosaurs are super cool! We did a fantastic art project by creating a dinosaur skeleton with Q-tips and a tissue paper Stegosaurus. The Shake It Dino Egg action song was an engaging experience for the children. Another energetic and fun body movement activity was Stomping Like a Dinosaur. Five Huge Dinosaurs felt rhyme allowed the children to actively engage in the storytelling process.
This blog post marks the end of our journey together, and we want to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt thanks for all the love and support you have provided us throughout the year.
It has been an absolute joy to have your children in our care, watching them grow, learn, and explore the world around them. Their enthusiasm and curiosity have brightened our days, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of their lives. We wish you and your family a safe and fantastic summer.
TREEHOUSE ROOM - Carol, Gabi, Karen, Rose, Catriona
In a few weeks, your children will move on from preschool to either start in a Kindergarten class, or hopefully they will return to St. Catherine's in the Fall. They are so ready to do so! We are confident that they are prepared, equipped with lots of new skills in so many areas of their development, and also a little bit scared and very much excited for the upcoming changes.
One thing for sure, they are bolder, louder and faster - definitely keeping us moving to get those 10 000 steps by mid day. They are also more observant, curious, passionate, and very keen to be part of fun activities and little groups that captures their interest.
Instead of a detailed description of our activities for May, please excuse our spying on your children while we share what we witnessed by watching them play. We strongly believe that children learn best through play, and that must be the main reason we all ended up at St. Catherine’s.
It’s an amazing feeling to witness a group of young minds coming up with a grand idea, and to help them to create and learn through this idea, then multiply it into a hundred other ideas.
Well, it all started with a box of chalk. A big box of big, chunky, colourful chalk pieces that were meticulously worked into a small handful of tiny pieces in about two weeks of time. In the beginning, a few friends decided that they wanted to make FAIRY DUST. Geniuses! They worked like there was no tomorrow. They gathered tools, pails, small rocks, small twigs, leaves.
The initial idea was that if they got enough ‘fairy dust’ on our shoes, our wishes would be granted. Dirty shoes did not make everyone happy, so dust was produced on our hands. Some people were assigned to work in the sandbox to mix different colours in different containers. Some were building roads, some were mixing the dust with sand. Some of the workers hid some chalk pieces for later realizing how valuable they were at the moment.
Geniuses! They compared, measured, planned, tested, organized, and most importantly, worked in groups, in teams. They negotiated, compromised, coordinated and communicated.
I’m sure that most of you know the expression “everything I know I learned in Kindergarten“. It needs a correction. “Everything I know I learned in preschool.”
SUNFLOWER ROOM - Carol, Danielle, Rose
How time
flies! The last 9 months have flown by with lots of learning, playing and
having fun and we packed May full of so much it is hard to remember it all.
We started
with learning about the author and song writer ‘Raffi’. It was exciting to
learn that Raffi lives in BC and is Canadian. We sang soooo many of our
favorite songs like "Baby Beluga", "Willaby, Wallaby Woo", "Brush Your Teeth", "There
is a Spider on Your Head" and "Down by the Bay". The children enjoyed making
their own beluga whales and elephants. They also glued tissue paper onto paper spiders and watermelons.
We then
moved onto Mother’s Day. The children were asked ‘What is something you love
about your Mom?’ We talked about how special they are to us. We decorated clay
pots and planted flower seeds to go inside the pots. We made a lovely flower
card with ‘buttons’. We read books on how we love our Mom’s and sang “MOMMY’
(to the tune of Bingo).
We have
ended the year with a trip around the world. The children grabbed their ‘passports’,
packed their bags and headed off to discover new places. Each child had the
opportunity to choose a country they ‘identified’ with and shared it with their
friends. This has created a great learning environment as the children have the
chance to speak in front of their friends and the children have learnt about
each other through listening to their friends, sharing food, pictures and
customs.
We started
in Australia and painted Boomerangs, then to Korea and learnt how to play the
game Ddakji. We made a Chinese Flag with red tissue paper and gold stars and
Rose told us about Taiwan and we can say ‘Ni hao’ to say hello. We had YUMMY
Iranian candies and chocolate burgers and learnt there are many, many big
animals in South Africa. We also enjoyed some delicious treats as well. We made windmills and ate cheese from Holland
and learnt about Leprechauns, shamrocks and shortbread in Ireland.
We then
moved on to Scotland while listening to bagpipes and dancing a ‘Highland Fling’.
We also read ‘The Loch Mess Monster’. We visited England, talked about Big Ben,
saw lots of castles and sang ‘London Bridge’ & ‘Grand Old Duke of York’. For our last few days we have finally returned
to North America. We started by exploring Manitoba, having polar bear cookies,
played hockey in the gym and read the story “Making a Moose out of Life”. We
watched short videos about life in a cabin in Indian Arm. In Hawaii we learned how to ‘hula dance’ and we decorated surfboards. We also learned about all the different types of animals in Honduras & The San Juan Island.
We finally returned to Canada and celebrated our own city, beautiful Vancouver.
In amongst
all of this exciting travel we didn’t forget about our Dad’s. We painted our secret
glass bottles, mixed and poured some special ingredients and made Dad portraits
for a card. We sang ‘DADDY’ and One Little Hug and read ‘Best Dad in the Sea’.
For our last week we will relax and have fun with our friends.
We have
loved spending time over the last ten months with your children and will miss
them a lot. We hope to see some of them again in September and if they are
graduating, pop by for a visit. We would
like to wish you all a Wonderful Warm Summer!
Carol, Danielle & Rose
RESOURCE ROOM - Marion
"Are we at the end of the school year?"- you may be asking this very question, as am I.
It seems like only yesterday that the Discovery 2s were dealing with Gradual Entry schedules and separation, and the 3s were back making new friends, connecting with old ones and getting to know their teachers. The 4s came back from the Summer break with all new skills and an excitement for learning and preparing for the next chapter in their lives. I have enjoyed spending time in all the classrooms and watching the children grow and meet their developmental milestones at their own pace through play.
A few things to think about over the Summer:
Emotional Development: a strong sense of trust, security, confidence and self-esteem - is the foundation for learning and growing.
Social Competence: making friends, sharing, turn taking, cooperation - are identified in all research as a critical factors for school success.
Language Development: vocabulary building, rhyming, oral communication, listening - is identified in all research as a prerequisite for academic success.
Please enjoy your Summer break, while you relax and enjoy these early years. I know I certainly did and now as Mere Mere to three beautiful grandchildren, I am confident that my 3 boys will carry on our family values of love, respect and having fun together.
Remember to laugh. it is good for the soul.
IMPORTANT DATES & EVENTS
