It's incredible to think that another year here at St. Catherine's is almost over! This time of year is always bittersweet for us. On one hand we are excited to celebrate a successful year full of laughter, new experiences and watching your children grow - in ability and confidence as well as height! - but at the same time it is hard to say goodbye, especially to our "big" kids who are off to kindergarten in September. We will miss you all!
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| Discovery 2's Sea creatures. |
I want to say a HUGE thank you to our families for all that you do, from special treats at parties and helping out in the classroom to supporting the preschool through donations, Scholastic orders and fundraisers, we REALLY appreciate your support.
I also need to thank our parent board members - Leslie Black, Amy Green, Caroline Cave and Lauren Sinclair for all their work over the past year. Leslie has been on the board for several years now and always helps us to put together a really valuable parent education evening. Amy was our secretary this year and also spearheaded a very successful wine raffle! Caroline and Lauren, along with the other ladies, hosted a really fun parent social evening at the Taphouse which was a chance for our parents to get together and have some grown up fun! Having a great team of enthusiastic parents on the board really helps us to facilitate these special events and we were certainly extremely lucky to have had these four wonderful women provide us with their time and expertise over the past year. We also have to thank our Chair of the board Gillian Holland, Christine Rowe our rector, Phyllis Mittlestead and Chris Whalen for their continued support of our preschool through their contributions to the board.
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| 402's Chicka Chicka Art work! |
Lastly I have to thank the St. Cath's team for all that they do to make this preschool the incredible place that it is. Without these ladies we would not have the high standards of care and the excellent reputation that we have all across the North Shore and beyond. Our teachers are the best that there are. This is more than a job to these ladies it is definitely a vocation and I feel blessed to come to work every day with people who are so motivated, creative, nurturing and just a little bit crazy - you have to be to do the work that we do!!
On behalf of all of us at St. Catherine's Preschool, we wish you all a fantastic summer filled with long lazy days playing outside and lots of adventures with your children. Remember the best gifts you can give to your children cannot be bought. Spending time making memories big and small are all that your children really want or need from you!
Important upcoming dates:
Tues June 16: 402 Graduation Ceremony - 12:15pm Sunflower Room
Wed June 17: 401 Graduation Ceremony - 10:45am Sunflower Room
Wed June 17: 403 Graduation Ceremony - 2:00pm Treehouse Room
Wed June 17: Last day of Preschool classes.
Thurs June 18: 201/202/302/304/402 Picnic Mahon Park 11:30am-1:30pm
Fri June 19: 301/401/403 Picnic Mahon Park 11:30am-1:30pm
Mon July 6-Thurs July 30: Summer Program
Sat July 11 - Sun August 24: Preschool Office Closed.
Mon August 25: Preschool Office Re-opens.
For general information about our programs please contact Jen or Tina:
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" Thank you!
A note from Marion Porter - Developmental Resource Educator
“Are we at
the end of the school year?” You may be
asking this very question as am I. It
seems like only yesterday... The 2’s were dealing with gradual entry schedules
and separation, the 3’s were back meeting new friends, connecting with old ones
and getting to know their teachers. The
4’s came back from the summer break with all new skills and an excitement for
learning and preparing for the next chapter in their lives. We said Hello to our new Music teacher, Laura
who rose to the occasion and put together a wonderful Christmas Service and a
special Easter Service. I enjoyed
spending time in all the classes 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 – is identified
in all research as a critical factor for school success.
Language
Development: vocabulary building, rhyming, oral communication, listening – is
identified in all research as a prerequisite for academic success.
“READINESS”
involves 3 Key Factors:
1) the task
at hand makes sense to the child
2) the
task builds on prior accomplishments and
learning flow
3) the child
demonstrates a real and visible interest in the task and in the steps
Readiness
goes hand-in-hand with developmentally appropriate practice.
A note from Laura Kaario - Music teacher
Now music class has come to an end this year, and so has my time at St. Catherine’s as I will be going to UVic in the fall to finish my Bachelor of Music in education. I’m sorry to be leaving this wonderful preschool and all the teachers and students I have met this year. Perhaps I’ll be able to come back in a few years full of further knowledge!
This year I have focused on introducing the children to the joys of music to foster a lifelong enjoyment of listening to and making music. We’ve heard the many forms music can take – from classical, ethnic, jazz, folk, even environmental sounds as music. When we listen we practiced our listening skills in a few ways: finding and keeping a steady beat; dancing; identifying the tempo, how high the sound is, or what is making the sound; listening quietly and imagining what feelings or story the music is telling us about. We’ve also started basics of making music ourselves with lots of singing, percussion instruments, keeping the beat, and concepts such as high and low, fast and slow (tempo) and loud and quiet. The 4s have learned the solfegge notes so and mi and rhythm syllables ti ti and ta.
This is only the beginning! Music is an endless pursuit whether you are 4 or 64 years old. I encourage you to listen to lots of music this summer with your kids, whether that be an old favourite of yours or something new for you to discover together. Dance to it, see if you can keep the beat or add a new repeating rhythm, make a storyline for what you hear or talk about how it makes you feel. Better yet, add a couple of new or old songs to sing to this summer as well, or make an instrument out things you can find around the house (we discovered anything that makes noise can be used as an instrument!). Play music games like London Bridge is Falling Down or pass a beanbag on the beat to a song.
Wishing you a lot of musical enjoyment and learning in your near and distant future!
A note from the Discovery 2's Program - Sali, Vibha, Estelle, Stephanie, Danielle
We began the month of May with a theme of
flowers. We transformed the home corner into a garden centre and the children
were busy planting pretend flowers, watering them and arranging bouquets. For art, we created tissue paper collage
flowers and hand-print tulips.
Soon it was Mother’s Day and the children
had fun making a ‘secret surprise’ and a card for their mommys. We hope the mommys enjoyed these as much as the
children enjoyed making them.
Next we moved on to a “Commotion in the Ocean”: For art, we did sea horse stamping, we created sea creatures with water colours
and pipettes, glitter octopi, hand print crabs and sponge painted starfish. We
also made whales out of tissue paper and fabric. At circle time we read a book called ‘Snappy Little Splashers’ and we sang ‘Slippery fish’, '5
little sharks’ and learned this rhyme:
Seashell, seashell,
Sing a song for me,
Tell me about the ocean,
Tell me about the sea.
Tell me about the ocean,
Tell me about the sea.
We hope you have a wonderful, safe summer
and we look forward to seeing you in September!
A note from the Treehouse Room Class 301 - Permjit, Gabi and Sousan
We have enjoyed being with your children and getting to know them over this past year. They have grown up so much and become very independent little people!
In the last couple of months we have been very busy taking part in science experiments (our favourite one was the erupting volcano!) making a special surprise for our very special mamas! Dinosaurs took over our classroom with our child-made dino habitat and different dinosaurs running all over the classroom! Then it was time to learn about some of the creatures we find in the ocean. It would take many pages to write down everything we created, discussed and the activities we took part in but needless to say we had a fantastic time learning, creating and laughing together.
We wish all the children in our class all the best as they move on to the "big 4's". We have enjoyed our time together and will miss you all lots now that it's time to say goodbye. We wish you all a great summer and we will see you in September.
A note from the Treehouse Room Class 302 - Gabi, Susan, Karen and Peggy
The last month has been very exciting for the children of 302. During the month of May we focused on finishing up our theme of dinosaurs and starting our new theme of the ocean/sea. This transition has gone very well and the children are engaged and excited about our new adventures and activities. In the middle of May we celebrated Mother’s Day. Our children took pride and care in planting the cute little succulent plants for their moms. This activity encouraged the conversation of how plants grow and how to care for plants. We hope all of the moms are enjoying their gifts.
Due to our new theme, our class has been very interested in ocean creatures both at circle and at the art table. Please take a couple of minutes to check out the many ocean themed crafts that are displayed in our classroom and hallway, they are very well done! Since the ocean has been such a hit with our class we are continuing this theme until the end of the year.
We can hardly believe preschool will soon be finishing up for the year. We would like to thank all of the parents who came to visit over the last month. It was very fun having new faces in the classroom each day. The children enjoyed playing, engaging and listening to each parent that spent the morning with us. As we finish up these final weeks of preschool we look forward to many fun activities and of course spending lots of time outside enjoying the sun! We wish you a wonderful summer and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures in September.
A note from the Sunflower Room Class 401 - Susan, Stephanie and Karen
May has been a very exciting month
for us all in 401. At the beginning of the month our class enjoyed a field trip
to the local Edgemont Village Library. We listened to many fun and exciting
stories and songs. A story which made us all roar with laughter was “The Book With No
Pictures” by BJ Novak. We highly recommend this book for all families! A song
the librarian sang that we absolutely loved was “The Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea”.
This song has since been sung in our classroom many times and goes well with
our upcoming themes of ocean and Hawaii.
The middle of May was focused on preparing
our Mother’s Day gifts. The children took care when planting their sunflower
within the small pot of dirt. This activity allowed the children to see how a
plant grows and the importance of watering and caring for something as small as
a sunflower seed. We hope all of our moms are enjoying their gifts! Also
this month the children made beautiful tie dyed shirts for our Hawaiian Luau. The month of May ended with an
eventful visit from a real scientist! She brought in many fun activities on
the topic of bubbles for us to explore. We blew small, medium and large bubbles
and even got to take home a handmade bubble blower!
Unbelievably, preschool will be coming to an end next week. We are sad to be saying goodbye but will make the most of our last days together! We wish you and your family a fantastic summer and we will miss all of our class as they head off to Kindergarten in September.
A note from the Sunflower/Rainbow Room Class 402 - Arsi, Danielle and Sousan
After the Easter Services which were great, we looked into 'The Human Body'. We learned what our bodies are made off, what
we need to do in order to keep them healthy and happy. We used clay to 'design' our own bodies and
we made a collage of the skeletal system.
We played with 'red intestines' in the water table, looked at x ray's,
touched ' a skeleton' and dug for bones in the sand box.
We then moved on to our favourite subject 'Mother's Day'. The children were very busy making their own candle votive holders with lots of glue and tissue paper..Something to treasure for years to come!
We have enjoyed being with your children and getting to know them over this past year. They have grown up so much and become very independent little people!
In the last couple of months we have been very busy taking part in science experiments (our favourite one was the erupting volcano!) making a special surprise for our very special mamas! Dinosaurs took over our classroom with our child-made dino habitat and different dinosaurs running all over the classroom! Then it was time to learn about some of the creatures we find in the ocean. It would take many pages to write down everything we created, discussed and the activities we took part in but needless to say we had a fantastic time learning, creating and laughing together.
We wish all the children in our class all the best as they move on to the "big 4's". We have enjoyed our time together and will miss you all lots now that it's time to say goodbye. We wish you all a great summer and we will see you in September.
A note from the Treehouse Room Class 302 - Gabi, Susan, Karen and Peggy
The last month has been very exciting for the children of 302. During the month of May we focused on finishing up our theme of dinosaurs and starting our new theme of the ocean/sea. This transition has gone very well and the children are engaged and excited about our new adventures and activities. In the middle of May we celebrated Mother’s Day. Our children took pride and care in planting the cute little succulent plants for their moms. This activity encouraged the conversation of how plants grow and how to care for plants. We hope all of the moms are enjoying their gifts.
Due to our new theme, our class has been very interested in ocean creatures both at circle and at the art table. Please take a couple of minutes to check out the many ocean themed crafts that are displayed in our classroom and hallway, they are very well done! Since the ocean has been such a hit with our class we are continuing this theme until the end of the year.
We can hardly believe preschool will soon be finishing up for the year. We would like to thank all of the parents who came to visit over the last month. It was very fun having new faces in the classroom each day. The children enjoyed playing, engaging and listening to each parent that spent the morning with us. As we finish up these final weeks of preschool we look forward to many fun activities and of course spending lots of time outside enjoying the sun! We wish you a wonderful summer and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures in September.
A note from the Sunflower Room Class 401 - Susan, Stephanie and Karen
Unbelievably, preschool will be coming to an end next week. We are sad to be saying goodbye but will make the most of our last days together! We wish you and your family a fantastic summer and we will miss all of our class as they head off to Kindergarten in September.
A note from the Sunflower/Rainbow Room Class 402 - Arsi, Danielle and Sousan
Wow, how time flies... I cannot believe
that we are now going into June....The children have grown so much since
September! We have certainly made the last few months
at Preschool busy ones with lots of
learning, exploring, playing and experimenting with new things.
After the Easter Services which were great, we looked into 'The Human Body'. We learned what our bodies are made off, what
we need to do in order to keep them healthy and happy. We used clay to 'design' our own bodies and
we made a collage of the skeletal system.
We played with 'red intestines' in the water table, looked at x ray's,
touched ' a skeleton' and dug for bones in the sand box. We then moved on to our favourite subject 'Mother's Day'. The children were very busy making their own candle votive holders with lots of glue and tissue paper..Something to treasure for years to come!
The children have now finally finished
looking at each letter of the alphabet... As you can imagine this took us 26
days! We have now became very proficient at knowing what letter our names begin with and also the first letter of our friends names...This gave us many
opportunities to practice letters, especially how to spell our names.
Next we looked at another favourite topic
'Bugs'. This involved talking about how important bugs are to our
world, were you can find them, how they
move, what they eat and what they do for us. We explored worms, snails and bugs.
We even had time for a special Bug Walk to the duck pond.
Last week we had a “Fossil Workshop”.
After spending two weeks exploring dinosaurs, it was a great way to sum up our
learning. We made our own fossils out of
clay. We used glasses, hammers and
brushes to dig up our own 'dinosaur bones'. We traced, cut and decorated T-Rex, Stegosaurus' and Brachiosaurus'. The teachers had a lot of fun learning how to pronounce the dinosaur names,
while the children enjoyed being the teachers...Lots of learning for everyone.
In June, we are looking into 'Community
Helpers'. The people who help us
everyday. We enjoyed a visit from
The District of North Vancouver Firefighters and we hope you all enjoyed the slideshow we sent via email.
Over the last few weeks we have been busy
cutting, drawing, writing, gluing, exploring, learning new things, playing and
having fun... Challenging ourselves so we can grow and develop. We have done an excellent job and now we are
ready for Kindergarten!
Finally, we would like to thank you all for
a great year. It has been so much
fun...We are going to miss everyone.
Please come back for a visit when you have the time! If you have any questions or concerns,
please feel free to speak to either Danielle,
Arsi or Sousan.
A note from the Treehouse Room Class 304 - Vibha, Stephanie, Gabi and Karen
We
can't believe it's that time of the year again. This year has flown by so
quickly. For the last month and a half we explored dinosaurs. We talked about
volcanoes, the different types of dinosaurs, and what paleontologists do. We
decorated stegosauruses, T-Rex, and Pteranodons. We worked together to make a
group volcano and to create a Jurassic park area in our home corner! We did a
science experiment to make a lava lamp and were amazed at the reaction of the
alka seltzer. One day we became paleontologists and dug for dinosaur fossils.
It was hard work getting to the dinosaurs but in the end it was so exciting to
see what we found. The children really enjoyed this theme as a lot of them
already knew many of the dinosaur names and what they looked like.
The
last few weeks we explored different art mediums such as shaving cream, powder
paint, and finger-paints. It was incredible to see what the children created
using their imagination with these materials. We also made cake pops and apple
juice. They were delicious!
Next we moved on to our Hawaiian theme which some of our class had first hand knowledge of, having just been on holiday over there! We learned about the different islands and which animals and plants you might find over there. We also learned that there are volcanoes which are still active and some which are dormant (just like the time of the dinosaurs!). On Friday we had a Luau and some of us wore the tie-dye T-shirts we made together!
We
can't believe it's that time of the year again. This year has flown by so
quickly. For the last month and a half we explored dinosaurs. We talked about
volcanoes, the different types of dinosaurs, and what paleontologists do. We
decorated stegosauruses, T-Rex, and Pteranodons. We worked together to make a
group volcano and to create a Jurassic park area in our home corner! We did a
science experiment to make a lava lamp and were amazed at the reaction of the
alka seltzer. One day we became paleontologists and dug for dinosaur fossils.
It was hard work getting to the dinosaurs but in the end it was so exciting to
see what we found. The children really enjoyed this theme as a lot of them
already knew many of the dinosaur names and what they looked like.
During
our dinosaur exploration we were able to fit a week in to create something
special for an important lady in our lives. The children spent a lot of time
decorating the wine bottle vases and were so excited to give them to their
moms. Hope all you moms had a wonderful Mother's Day!
The
last few weeks we explored different art mediums such as shaving cream, powder
paint, and finger-paints. It was incredible to see what the children created
using their imagination with these materials. We also made cake pops and apple
juice. They were delicious!
The
children have come together so nicely as a group and they have been a pleasure
to work with. We would like to wish everyone an amazing summer and hope to see
you all next year for more fun and learning!
A note from the Treehouse Room Class 403 - Permjit, Stephanie, Karen and Gabi
This is our final blog entry for our class before many of you move on to Kindergarten. We know how excited you all are to begin "big school" and we wish you all the best as you move on to this next chapter in your lives. We will miss you all and we want you to know how much we have enjoyed spending time getting to know you all and getting you prepared for this next transition.
For the last little while we have been exploring dinosaurs. First we made an awesome dino habitat and then we talked about how there were a lot of volcanic eruptions during the time of the dinosaurs so we made our own volcano and added it to our habitat. The best part was making our volcano explode with "real" lava! Next we read about and learned what dinosaurs eat as well as which ones flew, ran fast or lumbered along slowly! To tie in with this theme, we had a real scientist from High Touch High Tech come to give us a "Fossil" workshop in which we learned about what amber is made from, dug for bones and looked at real fossils. The scientist was really clever and she kept us very interested throughout the workshop!
Next we moved on to our Hawaiian theme which some of our class had first hand knowledge of, having just been on holiday over there! We learned about the different islands and which animals and plants you might find over there. We also learned that there are volcanoes which are still active and some which are dormant (just like the time of the dinosaurs!). On Friday we had a Luau and some of us wore the tie-dye T-shirts we made together!
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to teach the most important people in your life, we hope you all have a fantastic summer filled with fun and adventures. We look forward to seeing some of you again in September and for those of you who are headed off to Kindergarten we know you are going to do so well!
From all of us here at St. Catherine's Preschool, we wish you a wonderful summer with your family!
From all of us here at St. Catherine's Preschool, we wish you a wonderful summer with your family!
