A Sweet Month at Preschool, February 2014

A note from  the office...

Discovery 2's learning about bugs!

Over the past few weeks we have seen snow, torrential rain and now a taste of spring with warm, sunny days. The children have greeted each of these weather experiences with the kind of enthusiasm that only children seem to have for something which, as we get older often brings only annoyance, stress or indifference (except for the sunny days of course!) As preschool teachers we are lucky to share in the excitement of snowman building, sledding and snowball fights, brand new pairs of rain boots for sploshing through puddles and running outside with the sun on our faces through the children we spend our days with. Their stories and positivity about even the darkest of days are so uplifting that we can't help but smile, even as we are scraping the ice off our cars in the morning before work!

Important upcoming dates:

Wednesday, March 12: Scholastic Orders Due 
March 17-21: Spring Break 
Monday, March 24: Preschool re-opens
Monday, March 31: Honeybush Tea Fundraising orders final day

Friday, April 18: Good Friday; Preschool Closed
Monday, April 21: Easter Monday; Preschool Closed
Thursday/Friday, April 24/25: 3's and 4's Easter Services
April 22-25: Jean's Week BC Children's Hospital Fundraiser

We still have a few spaces available in our Discovery 2's program and our afternoon 3's and 4's program's for our September 2014/2015 preschool year. If you know anyone who is still looking for a preschool spot please let them know about us so we can give them a tour of our wonderful preschool!

For general information please contact Jen or Tina in the office.

Tel: 604-980-1326
Fax: 604-982-3277
Email: stcpre@telus.net
Website: www.stcatherinespreschool.com
Please "LIKE" our Facebook page "St. Catherine's Childcare Society"

A note from the Developmental Resource office   Marion Porter...

Children develop every day in many different ways but this month I wanted to talk about some of those "BIG" ideas surrounding development in a little more depth.

The Essentials of Development

Emotional Development means developing a full range of emotions, from sad to happy to angry and learning to handle them appropriately. This leads to deeper qualities – sympathy, caring, resilience, self-esteem, assertiveness and being able to rise to life’s challenges.

Cognitive Development means being able to communicate, to think both creatively and abstractly, to pay attention and to solve problems and develop keen judgment and a lifelong readiness to learn.

Social Development means being able to make friends and get along with others, work as part of a team and be a good leader, all of which are built on self-confidence, cooperation and trust.

Marion and Chris at the Church Pancake Supper

As we think about spring and planting gardens remember that a tiny sprout can only learn how to weather life’s challenges with nurturing and support. Resilience comes from the comfort and encouragement we give children in the first years of life. With cuddles, kisses and words of reassurance, little ones discover how to bend when they need to, how to adapt to change and how to bounce back from disappointment. Let’s all help our children stay firmly rooted.

All the classrooms are looking and sounding very busy with the development of new play skills.  The children are communicating with their teachers and their peers. The 4’s are working on Kindergarten Readiness Skills (cutting with scissors, printing letters, counting objects etc). If you have any questions or concerns please talk to their teachers. Signing Sally visited the 4’s for Valentine’s Day and told the felt story of the “Lonely Heart”.   

Please feel free to come and speak with me if you have any questions or concerns surrounding your children's development.

A note from Creative Music   Cheryl Hebb

We wore pink shirts in honour of anti bullying day.

In music class this month we learned about the musical terms for LOUD "Forte" and soft   "Piano". In order to illustrate these points to the children we listened to music pieces which had both loud and soft sections to them and the children had the opportunity to let me know whether they were Forte or Piano. We also played games which had a Valentine theme such as "Hiding the Heart" and I incorporated the Forte and Piano concepts to these games by playing instruments softly or loudly to help lead the children to the place where the heart was hidden.

As we move into March we will be working on our Easter Service songs ready for our performance in April.

A note from the Discovery 2's   Vibha, Danielle, Estelle, Karen, and Stephanie...

Throughout the month of February we talked about love, friendship and feelings. The children enjoyed stamping on heart shaped paper, gluing with different art mediums and making Valentine's Day hats on our party day.

To encourage children who are reluctant to participate in art activities we tried painting with whipping cream and Cool Aid as well as printing with potatoes and apples! This certainly intrigued the children, and everyone did have a try and seemed to have fun!

Another popular art activity that our 2's enjoyed was "Shake it baby, shake it!" which was were we took a (clean and empty!) Pringles tube and put paper inside it with marbles and paint and created swirly art pieces by moving our bodies and shaking the tubes!

During circle time we worked on name recognition, taking turns, colours and working together as a group while playing lots of fun games. We also learnt to say "I Love You" in sign language.

We transformed our home corner into a grocery store and this was a big hit with all the children! We really enjoyed watching them exploring all the food items, trotting about the classroom with their little grocery carts and seeing who was shopping and who was the cashier.

This month we also welcomed two new children to our 204 class, Joshua and London! We are happy to have two new friends to play with!

For the month of March we will be talking about bugs! We have also transformed our home corner into a flower shop. We hope that you have a fun and relaxing Spring Break!

A note from the Downunder Room class 301   Gabi and Permjit

February was a month of love, filled with  projects, songs and stories about friendship, loving, caring, sharing, and helping. Our classroom was filled with hearts, literally! Beating hearts full of joy, and artfully designed paper ones were everywhere! The children really enjoyed celebrating Valentine’s Day, they loved to give and receive all the Valentine’s cards they had made for each other during class time or brought in to exchange. Thank you for all the special treats! 

301 Farm animals

We had several discussions in the classroom about being helpful and kind at home and at preschool, to our family and friends. The children seemed to take their roles very seriously and showed sympathy and gentleness towards their classmates and (we hope) siblings too! We will be learning more about caring, sharing and good manners in the upcoming weeks and months. We hope to help to reinforce your child’s ongoing positive behavior both in and outside of preschool and beyond!

Some of the children showed a great interest in animals, so we changed our home corner into a barn. Our “Farm” theme is a big hit with our busy bees. We love to watch them caring for the animal babies or hungry farm animals (and of course all these animals live happily alongside the tiger family - all animals get along in preschool!)

More farm inspired artwork

We have had some special requests for particular songs, fingerplays or stories. It shows us how much the children have matured over the past few months, and how we have earned their trust that they feel free to address us with any of their needs. It is a great feeling for a teacher!

In the next couple of months we will be continuing on improving social skills and the cognitive memory through lots of small and large group games, creative art projects and stories with visuals.

A note from the Downunder room class 302   Rachel, Gabi and Sali

February was the “Love” month and brought about one of the children's favourite celebrations, Valentine's Day. We talked about the many ways of showing love to others, especially our family and friends. We shared plenty of love with songs, games and crafts. Everyone had a great time giving and receiving Valentine’s. Our room was cheerfully decorated with many brightly colored hearts which the children created for the occasion.

We had fun with a variety of literacy forms, including stories, short poems and of course, nursery rhymes about sharing, caring, helping, being a kind friend at preschool and being a valuable member of our families. Our Valentine’s Day party was a big success thanks to all the parents who donated special food items and drinks.

Our next theme is “Colours”. We will spend some more time on this topic with endless opportunities to learn. We have created some stunning art pieces by mixing primary colors to create some new colors. The children enjoyed discovering different modes of combining shades and textures. When they want to take the freshly painted creations home in their backpacks rather than let them dry first, we know we planned an activity that they enjoyed!

With Spring on the way, we will talk about the changes in nature and weather. We will also be going outside more to observe these changes and to enjoy the fresh air. Please remember to dress your child appropriately for outdoor play, thank you!

A note from the Treehouse Room class 304   Stephanie and Gabi

A classroom within a classroom!

Wow what an exciting month we have had! There were a lot of hearts around the classroom as we were preparing for Valentine's Day. During circle we talked about feelings and friendship. For art we sponge painted hearts with pink and purple paint, made a heart collage with doilies, made Valentine hats and decorated paper bags with hearts and glitter. The bags were hung out by our cubbies for our special Valentine's party. Thank you to those of you who brought the delicious snacks for our party. 

The Frog Prince

Next we moved on to talking about a variety of different fairy tales. We read "Beauty and the Beast" and made a coffee filter rose from the story, next we read "The Frog Prince" and created the frog in the story. After reading "The Little Red Hen" we made the pig from the story, "Little Red Riding Hood" inspired us to create our own wolf masks, and the story of "Aladdin" had us creating the magic lamp from the story! 

We will continue looking at different fairy tales for a couple of weeks and then we will be moving on to spring! 

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to speak to any of the teachers. 

A note from the Treehouse Room class 401   Sali, Rachel and Karen

The month of February brought with it Valentine’s day. We talked about friendship, kindness and of course..hearts!  We made Valentine crafts such as a heart collage. The children folded the paper and cut along a line to make the heart (one of their kindergarten skills) then decorated it. They painted hearts at the easel and made heart crowns. The children decorated bags for their friends to place Valentine cards in and learned about giving and receiving while handing out the cards.

How many scoops in our ice-cream cones?

One of the highlights of the month was our Valentine’s Day party. It was wonderful to see the children dressed in their formal wear. We decorated the classroom as a fancy restaurant. Susan, our practicum student, enjoyed playing hostess, giving the children a menu and showing them to their table. Thank you for contributing the lovely snacks.

We have also had fun building sculptures with ice and using droppers to colour them. Look for the poster in the hall for pictures.

Sweet treats for our sweet teachers?

After Valentine’s Day we started an alphabet theme. In circle, we have been singing songs such as ‘B-I-N-G-O’ and playing letter matching games. In art, we have been tracing letters with Q-tips and cutting out the first letter of our name. We converted the home corner into a school which the children are very excited about. We have made the back board of the classroom into a chalk board where the children can practice their letters. Next, we will be moving on to numbers.

We have started our Kindergarten Readiness Program which is usually on Mondays. The children work in small groups to develop skills such as letter and number recognition, how to write their name and sequencing and sorting activities.

A note from class 402 Treehouse/Rainbow Room   Arsi, Stephanie, Karen and Cheryl

Love is in the air! We had so much fun preparing for Valentine's Day. For art the children decorated paper bags with glitter and hearts, made owls using heart shapes, created heart people, made bouncy heart hats, made hand-print hearts, and we all worked together to make a friendship fruit salad. To end things off we had a formal Valentine's Day party where our classroom was transformed into a fancy restaurant. The children had their best clothes on along with excellent manners and table etiquette. It was so much fun ordering from the menu and being served just like a real restaurant. Thank you for everyone who brought the yummy treats for our party! 

Many of the children were interested in the Olympics that were going on so we decided to spend a couple of weeks talking about them. We talked about the Olympic Rings at circle and how each of the colours were present in the flags of each nation that participated in the Olympics then we looked at all the different flags. We painted gold medals and had our own ceremony at circle time where each child was awarded a medal. We made Canada flags with our hand-prints so we could cheer on our team! We were so excited to find out that both our women's and men's hockey teams won gold! We also made the Olympic torch, marble painted skateboards using the colours of the Oympic Rings, and made syrniki, which are Russian style pancakes. They were delicious with a little bit of maple syrup! Yum! 

With the children going to kindergarten very soon we are going to focus on some pre -kindergarten skills for the next couple of weeks. This will be ongoing for the rest of the year as we will tie this learning into our daily routine as well as doing other topics throughout the year. 

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to speak to any of the teachers.

A note from class 403   Permjit and Stephanie

What can we say about February! It was a very happy month of red and pink with some purple thrown in there as well!

We just finished celebrating Chinese New Year and went straight into Valentine's Day. We made cards, decorated hearts and participated in endless activities around friendship. We shared stories about feelings, caring, understanding and being inclusive, played games which worked on our memory skills and talked about the people we love and the friendships which are such a special part of our lives.

We had so much fun making our friendship fruit salad and talked about the fruit that the children loved the most and why they liked it. An interesting fruit was the star fruit, some of us were not sure about trying it although once we did, it wasn't that bad, and some of us really enjoyed it! There was lots of laughter and fun, while chopping up our salad and making sure we were chopping the fruit carefully and safely!

Thank you so much for the yummy contributions to our posh restaurant meal. The children loved that they got to chose from a menu and the teachers were the servers! We have to say that the children all had excellent manners and were so respectful when asking about items on the menu.We really enjoyed it and they looked so cute all dressed up, it's one of those priceless moments!

Fancy Restaurant Valentine Party

We have started working our way through kindergarten readiness. We are making our way through our ABC's, enjoying doing a letter at a time. Making Chocolate Chip Cookies for C was a big hit and the cookies were delicious. While learning our letters, we'll be encouraging the children by engaging in activities using scissors to cut out the letters in our names and using different games during circle time and around the classroom to promote letter recognition; they will be very busy bees! We will continue to incorporate getting them ready for kindergarten with fun themes along the way.

Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns.