Pumpkins, Bats and Black Cats!

A note from Jen - Coordinator...

Wow October just flew by in a whirl of pumpkins, bats and spiders! It was so cute to see all the children dressed up in their Halloween costumes and I think I saw at least 10 Annas and Elsas running around the preschool (Princesses from Frozen for those of you who haven't watched the movie 20 times!) October is also the month in which we give thanks for all the special people and things in our lives and it's really heart warming (and sometimes funny) to learn what is most special to our preschoolers. This year I heard that "a story with mommy" and "walking my dog with daddy" are things that our children are thankful for as well as "candy!" and "my Batman t-shirt" were some of the funny ones!

Just a quick reminder that even as the weather gets colder we still try to get outside to play in the fresh air as often as we can. Warm coats, hats and mittens are really necessary as well as shoes/boots with good grip so that our little ones can fully enjoy their outside play time. 

Something else I want to mention is that when you are dropping your children off at preschool, please make sure to physically bring them into the classroom or at least hand them over to a teacher at the door. Drop-off and pick-up times can be very hectic and it's so important that our teachers are able to acknowledge each and every child as they arrive. 

Important Upcoming Dates...

Sunday, November 16th - First week of Sunday School.
Tuesday, November 18th - Scholastic orders due.
Wednesday, November 19th - Pizza Night 5:30-7:30pm. 
Friday, November 21st - Purdy's orders due.
Thursday, November 27th - Messy Church.
Wed/Thurs, December 10/11th - 3's/4's Christmas Services.

For general information or questions about our programs:

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

A note from Marion - Developmental Resource Teacher...

This month I spent some time with our 3's and 4's going over some fire safety concepts. I use a video which illustrates the techniques of stop, drop and roll and crawl low under smoke and then we all practice together. 

I have spent time in the classrooms offering support, guidance and strategies to our teachers which help to make sure that our program is as inclusive as possible. I have also been working closely with our music teacher Laura both in the daily running of her music classes as well as helping her to put together her very first Christmas Service!

We also had Elmer the Safety Elephant in to talk with the 4's about road safety and then it was time for our Halloween parties, so busy busy!

On November 27th we have our Messy Church evening so if you are able to attend I will look forward to seeing you there!

As always, please come and speak with me if you have any questions or concerns with regards to your children's development.

A note from the Church...

Charlie the Church Mouse! (Sweater by Marion!)

Beginning on Sunday, November 16th St. Catherine's Anglican Church is starting Sunday School here in the Rainbow Room with our wonderful preschool teacher Gabi Pasek (along with her daughter Rebecca) running the program. 

If you are interested in attending Church and having the positive influence of Sunday School for your children then please drop your preschoolers (aged 3-5) off downstairs in the Rainbow Room at 9:45am and continue upstairs for the 10am Service. 

During their time at Sunday School your children will experience stories, songs, crafts and a light snack before being brought up to join you at approximately 10:50am.

Please confirm your attendance at stcpre@telus.net.

We look forward to seeing you on Sundays!

A note from Laura Kaario - Music Teacher...

We’re still learning about fast and slow and loud and quiet, and this October we learned about high sounds and low sounds. Mice, birds and mothers usually make high sounds, and bears, lions and fathers usually make low sounds. With the threes we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and used high voices for baby bear, medium voices for mama bear and low voices for papa bear. Fours played high triangles and low drums. We listened to some excerpts from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Isis und Osiris is sung by a bass, a man with a really low voice. The Queen of the Night aria is sung by a soprano, a woman with a high voice, and this piece has even higher notes than a lot of sopranos can sing! (This one was a favourite.)

We’re also working on clapping rhythms that go with words. For example:

Jack O’Lantern – short-short-short-short

Boo! – loooong

Pumpkin – long-long

At Thanksgiving, we did the Turkey Pokey and sang If You’re Thankful and You Know it Clap Your Hands. We also sang this simple song (tune of Frère Jacques) that could be used as a grace:

I am thankful, I am thankful,

Yes, I am, Yes, I am.

Thankful for my mommy, Thankful for my daddy,

And our food, and our food.

We heard Mozart’s Piano Variations on the Melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and talked about how we can change a tune we all know a little bit by doing it faster or slower, or louder and quieter, or by adding instruments or changing words. We’re going to do a different version of Twinkle Twinkle at our Christmas service.

Later in the month, we sang about pumpkins and witches, and learned a fun poem about a scarecrow:

When all the cows are sleeping

Our new play-stands

And the sun had gone to bed,

Up jumped the scarecrow

And this is what he said:

I’m a dingle dangle scarecrow

With a flippy, floppy hat,

I can shake my hands like this,

I can shake my feet like that.

We listened to In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg and snuck around the room. (I get requests to listen to this again every week.) We also talked about how this piece is fast and quiet, although at the end it’s really loud. On Halloween week, we listened to part of the Fifth movement of Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz and imagined what his Halloweeny dream could be about.

You can check our Listening List on the door of the music class for what music we listened to each week and listen to it at home. Any other music is great too!

Now that we are in November we are working on our Christmas Service Songs!

A note from our parent board members...

Amy Green - Secretary

I am a stay at home mom to Molly (4) and Logan (2) and wife to my first love, David. We have two huge fluffy cats and one sweet and gentle horse (who lives in Langley). 

I went to school first for massage therapy and then for Marketing Management with a specialty in Entrepreneurship at BCIT. From there I jumped into working in management at a large office supply company and then into sales and pagination for a community newspaper. I took off from there to start a graphic design boutique with a partner where we created an adorable office in Fort Langley, but more importantly, a great business helping small to medium sized businesses with branding, printing, design and web.

Marion's home made veggies!

A couple of years ago with our second baby on the way, I shifted gears into freelancing and working with only a few key clients (Canada Place / Port Metro, a quilting magazine and a delicious cupcake shop) in order to be at home full time with our wee ones. 

As of this past summer I have taken a leave from work in order to fully enjoy this fabulous and fleeting time with our kids. So now my days are a whole lot less marketing strategy meetings and a whole lot more meal prep, playing trains and playing dress up. This is our daughter's third year at St Catherine's Preschool and we have really enjoyed the amazing teachers and families that are a part of this school. 

I am hoping this year as part of the preschool board that I will be able to lend some of my experience with marketing, fundraising and problem solving in order to help our school.  

Caroline Cave - Board member

I'm Caroline Cave and I'm the mother of Luca (4's) and Merryn Diligenti (2's).

Born and raised on the North Shore, I married Pepe Diligenti, The Cute and Rebellious Childhood Paperboy, in 2010. This brought me rather unexpectedly home after 16 years away pursuing studies and career.

I'm a classically trained actress (Gemini Award/Actra Award/Dora/Jessie and other nominations). Before children, I worked across the country in film, television and theatre. I've lived in Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Toronto. 

I feel most fortunate to raise my kids in North Van near their cousins and grandparents. Now in my third year at the preschool, it's an honour to serve the board. I really believe  the health of the community is integral to the health of the individual. 

I have several ties within the St. Catherine's community: 

I grew up down the road from Lauren (Barré) Sinclair; I was friends with her older sisters. 

We used to have boys over in her parents' absence and then threaten Lauren to secrecy! I also grew up alongside Laura (Steuart) Griffiths, mother of Gracie, Noah and Tucker, and Buffie (Steuart) Mayo, mum of Logan and London. I babysat Laura and Buff and apparently I let them smoke in the backyard!!

Look what we built!

Our dads are 70 and started playing music together at 15 at West Van High. They still gig regularly in a busy R'n'B band called Souled Out.

My goal this year is to raise enough funds to purchase two light tables for the preschoolers as well as new office computers and accompanying IT support and software. The monetary vision in my head is 5k. I'm very enthusiastic about the Wine Raffle we're holding, as well as two social events including a Fashion Girls' Night Out in the spring.

I look forward to meeting more of the St. Catherine's community, to joining the new church Sunday School Program, and to raising funds to enhance the kids' experience of preschool.

A note from the Discovery 2's - Sali, Vibha, Danielle, Estelle, Stephanie...

We started the month of October with a theme of fall. We talked about the colours of fall and the leaves on the trees changing. In art, we made hand-print leaves by painting our hands with Fall colours and printing them on paper. We also glued pieces of red, yellow and orange tissue paper onto a tree template to resemble leaves.

We are doing really well at circle time, our listening skills are improving every day. We sang Fall songs such as “All the leaves are falling down” and “Dingle Dangle Scarecrow”. We also enjoyed familiar songs such as “ Roly Poly up, Roly Poly down”, “Open, shut them” and “Miss Polly had a dolly”.

For Thanksgiving we read stories and sang songs about turkeys. We painted pine cones and made turkeys to take home. Next we moved on to Halloween. We read “Little Mouse’s Halloween” and learned that it’s “not so scary after all”. We sang movement songs and many counting songs involving pumpkins, ghosts and goblins. We decorated our boards for Halloween with numerous art projects: hand-print spiders, spiders with crazy legs and puffy paint pumpkins! We also enjoyed carving and exploring our pumpkins during our Halloween parties. Thank you to everyone who provided treats. If you did not get asked to bring something, don’t worry, we have many occasions for parties and will ask every family in turn.

A couple of reminders :

Now that the weather is colder, please be sure to dress your child appropriately. We will play outside unless it is raining. Also, we would appreciate if you could have your child walk up and down the stairs, holding the railing on the right hand side, they need the practice!! Happy Fall! 

A note from class 301 - Permjit, Gabi and Sousan...

We are all into the swing of things. Busy bees actually. We have started to gel very well as a class and help each other out. It's a beautiful, calm class with great personalities!

At the beginning of October we started off with an autumn theme; the colours of leaves, printing with them and activities and songs about fall. The children loved the story "The Giving Tree".  From there we went onto Thanksgiving and what we are thankful for. A popular choice after chocolate and candy was dad, mum and siblings. We had endless discussions about what our favourite food was on Thanksgiving. We made turkeys using feathers, potato printing and felt stories.Then it was time to move onto Halloween and Diwali. We started off by talking about what is real and pretend. We made spider webs using our favourite thing of all, sparkles! They were everywhere! We decorated pumpkins, cats, bats, spooky houses, as well as felt stories and songs. Our favourite one was " Five black and shiny crows, Sitting on a Scarecrows back, eating the most delicious corn."

We had a few days in the middle of October, to talk about Diwali, which is a celebration of the Festival of Lights. It's about good over evil. It's celebrated in India and other parts of the world and it's like Christmas. Presents are exchanged and families get together. We painted Diva's and tasted Halva which some of us loved and others not so much.

We would like to say big thank you for our yummy treats for our Halloween party!! We had so much fun dressing up and enjoyed our room being made spooky! I would like to say a big thank you to Marion, who helps us during these extra busy times and works her magic when we want special things done! We came in the morning and the children noticed the treehouse had different animals in it and were dressed for Halloween!

If you have any concerns or queries please come and talk to us.

A note from class 302 - Narine, Gabi and Karen...

Our class is really coming together nicely as the children become more comfortable with the routines and expectations of preschool. This month we learned about fire safety with Marion our Developmental Resource Teacher. Marion showed the children a video which illustrated many important fire safety rules including "STOP, DROP and ROLL" in case fire was to get on your clothing and "CRAWL LOW UNDER SMOKE" to help you to get out of a building if it was on fire. These concepts might seem scary but are taught sensitively and I think we can all agree how important it is to practice such life saving techniques.

October is the month in which we give thanks for all the wonderful things in our lives. We talked about who is special and how we can show them that we care, we created art which centered around the beautiful autumn leaves which are all around us as we walk around our neighbourhoods as well as some turkey inspired art.

Next we began to talk about Halloween, and enjoyed making some really cool "Rock Spiders" as well as having an awesome Halloween Party in which we dressed up in our Halloween costumes and ate some yummy treats brought in by our lovely parents - thank you!

Please come and speak with us if you have any questions or concerns.

A note from class 401 - Stephanie, Narine and Karen...

Hello, everyone!

Incredible! October has gone and very soon the wonderful season of Christmas will be here!  But let us first review what we have done during this beautiful autumn month of October.

In the first couple of weeks we were doing lots of seasonal crafts and activities. For example, we “painted” apples on apple trees using our thumbs which was a lot of fun! Some children decided to put to use all of their fingers creating a very rich apple harvest on the trees and under them! During this art we were talking about the different colours of the apples as well as how delicious they taste. The autumn foliage is especially beautiful during October.  We talked about “falling down leaves – red, yellow, brown …” about the different shapes the leaves have, why they change colour etc.

Next came Thanksgiving! Our children decorated their own turkeys by gluing “googly” eyes, feathers, and the beak. We sang a new finger play Thanksgiving song with children happily participating and enjoying themselves. Another craft that we worked on was “button corn”. We were talking about different parts of the corn plant, the different coloured kernels they may have, how sweet and delicious they taste, and the different ways we prepare it. It became a little bit messy when we were gluing button “kernels” but at the same time it was interesting and exciting.

Finally lots of Halloween fun was had! But what is the Halloween without a spooky art!?  We were talking about real versus pretend to help children not be scared of “booo and wooo” stuff.  Children cheerfully participated in making Q-tip skeletons, potato-painting pumpkins, gluing many eyes on their spiders to make them spooky, creating shape monsters and ghosts, and making a Jack-o-Lantern. We enjoyed hearing all about the children's Halloween night and we are glad to know that everyone had a safe and happy Halloween.

A note from class 402 - Danielle, Arsi and Sousan...

What a fun and busy month October has been. The children have settled in nicely and are getting used to our routine and transitions.

In the beginning of October we talked about Thanksgiving. During one of our circles we discussed what we were thankful for and some of the answers the children gave were, "friends" "pets" and "family." A very fun family activity we did this year was disguising Tom Turkey. The results were great. Thank you to the children and their families for their creative ideas!! We also made pumpkins muffins and tarts (who doesn't love the smell of yummy fresh treats?!). The children also enjoyed making pumpkin prints using mini pumpkins as their stencils. We had a special visit from Elmer the Elephant and Ruff who talked to us about pedestrian and traffic safety. Ruff also let us know the importance of wearing a seat belt in a car.

Before we knew it, Halloween was around the corner. We started off by painting ghosts using a salad spinner. The children were surprised how blobs of paint turned into cool designs. We then made bats from egg cartons, we drew our own spider web designs and sparkled them as well. Of course the webs needed spiders and so we made some. The children counted the legs to make sure they had eight! Another fun art activity the children made were spooky Halloween stained glass windows. They were excited to see what their windows looked like after they added their design to it.....spooookkkyyy!!!

Last but most fun...was our Halloween party!!! It was so fun to see the children in their costumes. We had a great time dancing and eating yummy party food. We even had a chance to watch a bit of "Stellaluna" since we had read the book too.

Thank you to the parents who brought the yummy food and drinks for our party.

Looking forward to November, we will be introducing Echo, our adopted killer whale to the children. We will also be touching on Remembrance Day.

If you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to ask us.

A note from class 304 - Vibha, Stephanie and Gabi...

October was a very busy an exciting month.  First, we talked about Thanksgiving and things that we are thankful for.  We decorated foam turkeys with colourful feathers and made turkeys using play dough.  At circle, we talked about apples and the different things we can use apples for. We cut up apples into small pieces and made applesauce then we ate it at snack and it was delicious!

Next, we celebrated Diwali (Festival of Lights).  We learned how to say Namaste ( Hello) in Hindi.  For art, we decorated clay diyas (Lamp) with paint.  The Children also, had the opportunity to make Roti (Indian Bread)  which were enjoyed by the children for snack.

Before we knew it, it was Halloween. For art, we made paper bag pumpkins, spiders, and owls. The Halloween party was lots of fun. We all had fun dressing up in our costumes and some of us enjoyed describing who we were. A huge thank you to parents for bringing in yummy treats for the party. We all enjoyed them very much.

Marion came to our class and talked about fire safety. We watched a video which taught us to STOP, DROP AND ROLL if fire gets on our clothes as well as practicing crawling low under smoke.  

Please make sure that your child has appropriate clothing for preschool, as we will go out to play when it is not raining.  If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to speak to us.

A note from class 403 - Permjit and Stephanie...

In October, we started with Thanksgiving, discussed Johnny Appleseed (his real name being John Chapman) and how he planted apple seeds everywhere he went so that people wouldn't go hungry. We also talked about why we sing the Johnny Appleseed grace song before snack time because we are thankful. We enjoyed making apple muffins together and best part was eating them! We enjoyed stories about Thanksgiving, made turkeys using feathers, sparkles and helped to make cranberry sauce which we took home to share.

Room on the Broom

Then it was time to move on to Halloween. We talked about what's real and pretend. We loved making ghosts, using shaving foam and glue, they were 3D so it was messy and fun! We cut out our pumpkins and made them into Jack-o-Lanterns and enjoyed a story about a witch looking for a home and how it ended up being a Jack-o-Lantern house. We did so many activities at Halloween and enjoyed lots of fun stories using felt props and books. One of the songs we enjoyed was, "There's a spider on the floor, on the floor". 

We took a few days out from Halloween and celebrated Diwali, Festival of Lights. We painted Divas and tried Halva, which was very sweet. Some of us loved it and others not so sure. It's a big time of celebration in certain parts of the world. In India it's an official holiday like Christmas. Presents are exchanged and there are big family get-togethers. The house is lit with little lights using tiny little lamps (divas) made of clay and it's a beautiful welcoming atmosphere. This celebration signifies good combating over evil.

On Halloween day the children came dressed up in their costumes. We had princesses, super heroes and some spookier characters too! Our party was so much fun with Halloween music and delicious treats and we had a witches cauldron with spooky smoke! We dimmed the lights in the room and the effects were great and everyone got into the spirit of having fun (no pun intended!).

We would like to thank the parents who bought in the food and beverages for our Halloween party, they were yummy!

We also had some important safety talks and videos during October. Marion came in to talk to our class about fire safety and the children watched a video with Fireman Dam and his spotty dog. Then we learned what to do in case of emergency, to stop drop, roll and crawl low under smoke. Thank you Marion!

 

Elmer the Safety Elephant dropped by as well and talked to us about the importance of pedestrian safety and traffic safety. He showed us the correct way to cross the street, traffic light safety and how to play safely outside.

It's been a fun and busy October and now we're looking ahead to November where we will discuss Remembrance Day and focus on colours, numbers and shapes.

If at anytime you have any questions, please do not hesitate to speak to us.

Thanks for reading our blog, have a great day!