We began May with our staff professional development day which was a felting workshop put on by our wonderful administrator Tina with her company Little Giant Preschool Resources. This was a real team building day for us as we got to spend some time all together, make some new stories and games to share with our preschoolers and discuss ideas we have for programming, as well as having a laugh or two along the way!Next we had our "Just for Mom" event which was well attended and lots of fun. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us as well as the many businesses who donated items for our door prizes.
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| Painted lady butterfly hanging out in the Memorial Garden! |
We had a delivery of caterpillars to our Treehouse room at the beginning of May and it has been a fantastic learning experience for our preschoolers to watch them go through the stages from caterpillar to chrysalis and then on to their final transformation into butterflies. Over the past few days we have been releasing several at a time into the memorial garden and it has been so much fun watching the children's faces light up as they watch them flutter away into the sky!
Upcoming dates to remember:
Thurs June 12: Messy Church
Tues/Wed June 17/18: 4's Graduation.
Wed June 18: Last day of preschool classes.
Thurs/Fri June 19/20: Picnics.
Mon-Thurs July 7-31: Summer Program.
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
Address: 1058 Ridgewood Drive, North Van, V7R 1H8
Please like our facebook page "St. Catherine's Childcare Society"
A note from the Developmental Resource Office Marion...
It has been a great year with lots of laughter and learning
through play. All the children have demonstrated that they are ready for
new challenges.
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| One of our classroom butterflies. |
The 2’s have begun to make connections with their peers and
we can now hear some conversations emerging that are absolutely delightful to
listen to. Many of them have been successful with toilet training while
others are working on being trained for the 3’s.
The 3’s have learnt so much this year about sharing, turn
taking, using their words and developing listening skills, especially at circle
time. For some of the children going into the 4’s will mean extra time at
preschool. In the 4’s the children will learn to become more independent
with dressing and self help skills. There will be lots of opportunities
for the children to develop their Kindergarten readiness skills.
The 4’s are moving on to Kindergarten. Parents need to
embrace this transition as it is the next step in your child’s
development. Parents can help with this transition by:
- Talking with your child about the impending changes (timing is everything, wait until you are just enjoying a walk in the park and just chatting about life)
- Helping you child acquire many self help skills (dressing, eating and being responsible for simple tasks around the house)
- Encouraging your child to ask for help when needed
- Allowing your child to practice working independently
- Teaching your child to follow directions
- Helping your child learn his/her full name, address and phone number
- Teaching your child about rules and how important they are
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| Marion's toes are ready to limbo! |
I want to say a fond farewell to the families who are moving
on, it has been a pleasure having you as part of the St. Catherine’s
Family. I want to wish everyone a great, sunny summer and as usual I
never say good-bye, but see you in the Village.
A note from Creative Music Cheryl...
This month we had our Music Open House and had the opportunity to bring our families to visit a music class. Both our 3's and 4's classes sang the wonderful song Tingalayo and then our 3's took turns at being the conductor for an orchestra and our 4's listened to the story "Peter and the Wolf" and learned to identify the different instruments that portrayed each character. Oh and for those of you who are interested, the taped recording of Peter and the Wolf finishes very suddenly... but in case you are wondering the duck does make it out of the wolf alive! Thank you to all our families for taking some time to visit my music class, it was wonderful to share a little of what goes on in our music program with you.
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| Our playground looking lovely after the donation of wood chips! |
A note from the Discovery 2's Danielle, Vibha, Estelle, Stephanie and Karen
It's
amazing how fast this year went by. It has been a fun filled year with lots of
play and learning for the children. It has been such a great pleasure to watch
your children develop throughout the year. All of the groups have become more
cohesive with one another. They are inviting friends to play and have formed
relationships with each other. The children are also using sentences and more
words when talking to their friends and their teachers.
This
month we have been talking about transportation. We used a variety of different
art mediums to create things that go. We glued tissue paper on cars, put cars
in paint and drove them onto paper to make different car tracks, used different
utensils with paint to make prints for a train, glued colorful squares on
buses, rolled paint onto stencils, and finger painted airplanes.
A note from the Downunder Room, class 301 Gabi and Permjit
We can’t believe that we only have a couple of more weeks to spend with our busy bees! We already miss the children of 301, our very interesting, full of energy, full of strong personalities, never a dull moment- emotionally charged class!
A school year is long enough to get
to know them quite well, well enough to like, even to love them. We share many
happy and some bittersweet moments, we learn about their likes and dislikes, we
learn to adjust our daily routine to their needs and abilities and even to the
general mood of the day in the classroom.
Thank you for trusting us to care for
your lovely children, hopefully we will see you in September again! Have a
wonderful Summer!
May was a very busy month in class 302. We learned some
interesting facts about endangered, rescued and injured animals. Our home
corner area was transformed into an Animal Rescue tent where the children
happily cared for “injured” cats, dogs and other creatures. They all practiced
they empathy, sharing, caring and other social skills.
They were all excited to celebrate a very special family
member, Mom, by creating a card and a batch of handmade lip-scrub for her.
The children loved having their family members visiting our
preschool for Music Open House and they were equally delighted to see them in
our classroom for a visit.
We are so close to the end of the school year, and we have
so many more fun activities to do! This is the time of the year when we, the
teachers have so many more ideas to share, to teach, than sadly have to realize
that we only have a short amount of time to spend with the children. We only have a few hours in a week in their
company, but those hours are precious, we learn about their personalities,
unique needs, we learn to respect each other. It is a bittersweet moment when
we have to say good-bye to our preschoolers.
We thank you for all your support, your suggestions, your
help, your understanding, your very creative ways to get involved in your
child’s education. Keep up the good work and have a great summer!
This month our class was learning about creatures that live under the sea. We created lots of beautiful "Ocean Art" such as octopuses, starfish, sea horses, turtles, and whales. We read lots of stories set in the sea. Some favourite stories with preschoolers are the Rainbow Fish series of books.This has been a really fun and busy year at preschool. We have watched some of our quieter children begin to find their voices and engage in more confident play and we have noticed some of our more out-going children invite their friends into their games. This class is a full of unique personalities and we have so enjoyed getting to know each and every one of your wonderful children. We have also enjoyed being able to help facilitate the play and learning and watch some very firm friendships form between the children in this class.
As this is our combined class we have some children who are moving on to Kindergarten after this year and other children will be coming back to preschool again next year. For those of you who will be leaving us, we will miss you and we wish you all the best and for those of who will be returning in September, we look forward to spending another year playing and learning together.
A note from the Treehouse Room, class 401 Sali, Rachel and Karen
This month we had a very special delivery to our classroom... Caterpillars! We got to watch as they ate their food then built their chrysalises around themselves and then it was time to be very patient while we waited for them to turn into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies! Next was the best part when we got to set them free!
Learning about the life cycle of a butterfly is a very fun subject for preschoolers especially when we get to enjoy The Very Hungry Caterpillar story by Eric Carle, make our own caterpillars and butterflies and then see the real thing happening before our very eyes!
We also talked about ants this month and watched the ants in our ant farm dig tunnels through NASA space gel!! A favourite song was "The Ants Go Marching 2 by 2!"
This year we have seen our class learn and mature so much. They have formed close friendships, learned the importance of listening, exploring and asking questions. We are so lucky to have been able to be there to share in these special moments and we will miss them all!
We are looking forward to celebrating with you on June 18th when our little ones have their graduation ceremony and then hopefully having some good weather for a final goodbye at the picnic on Friday June 20th. We wish you all a fantastic summer and a great transition into kindergarten in September.
A note from the Treehouse/Rainbow Room, class 402 Arsi, Stephanie, Karen, Cheryl
What a fun month May has been! We can't believe this school year is almost coming to an
end with our 4's graduating to kindergarten!
This month we worked on a very special project for our
moms for Mother's Day. The children decorated the front and back of handmade recipe books with their hand prints in bright colours. We added a special touch
by having them dress up in a chef's apron and hat which then became the cover
picture! Most importantly we received great recipes from our
families which we compiled in the recipe book for our moms and families to
enjoy! Hope everyone has tested some of those delicious ideas!
Since summer is around the corner, we thought we'd have
some fun bringing Hawaii into our classroom! We got busy working on Hawaiian
shirts which the children painted with string and glued colourful buttons on
the front and then we made tie-dye t-shirts as well! Next we made beautiful leis out of various colours of paper and attached them together with string to make them look like the Hibiscus flowers they use in Hawaii. The
children were very excited to paint in a pool using a coconut. What a blast
that was for us! We added bright paint to our paper lined pool and just had
lots of fun watching the coconut make a beautiful abstract painting! Of course we can't talk about Hawaii without doing some
pineapple art. The children decorated pineapples by using yellow and
green tissue paper. Lastly, we had a fun hula dance party where we learned how
to hula dance! We even did the limbo!! For snack, we munched on some special
treats including Popsicles! Yummy!! We'd like to thank all our families who brought in the
treats for our party!!
As we get closer to graduation, we see the special
friendships that have formed with the children. They have all made new friends
and bonded with ones they knew from before. It's been such a fun and wonderful
year teaching the children. We wish them all the best in their years ahead as
they move into kindergarten!!
If you have any concerns or questions, please do not
hesitate to ask any teachers.
A note from the Treehouse Room, class 403 Permjit and Stephanie
For
the month of May we were busy working on a surprise project for someone very
special in our lives. We found out a lot of moms liked to read so we decided to
make bookmarks for Mother's Day. The children spent a lot of time and put a lot
of thought into the way they decorated each bookmark to make them extra
special. It was very interesting hearing all of the comments about their moms.
Some were 5 years old and others were 50. Hope you all enjoyed those!
Our
next theme was Hawaii. It was amazing to find out that so many children have
been to Hawaii. We cut out grass from newspaper, made paper Leis with colorful
flowers, used water colours to decorate sea creatures, and tie dyed t-shirts.
To end things off we had a Luau. It was so much fun. The children played in the "Flamingo Tiki Hut" we put up in the house corner, we did the limbo and we
learned how to hula dance. Thank you to everyone who contributed treats for the
party.
We
had a fantastic year with all of your children. We enjoyed watching them learn
and grow throughout the year. They have developed in so many different ways and
we would like to wish all of you the best of luck in the future.
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