It's a brand new month and a brand new year
and we are up to the SAME OLD FUN! 😁
It is hard to believe that we have already made it through January! We got through the holidays and now we are right back into the swing of things!! We have many things planned for the rest of the school year so don't forget to keep your eyes on the school calendar and the bulletin boards for special events coming up!
Important Dates Coming Up:
JAN. 31- Priority Registration for Current Families CLOSES
FEB. 1 - Registration for Community Families (6pm-7pm-Rainbow Room)
FEB. 1 - SCHOLASTIC ORDERS DUE
FEB. 12- Family Day PRESCHOOL CLOSED
FEB. 13- Church Pancake Supper
FEB. 13/14- Children's Valentine's Day Parties
MAR. 16 - 4's Skating Party
MAR. 19-23 - Spring Break PRESCHOOL CLOSED
MAR. 30 - Good Friday PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR. 2 - Easter Monday PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR. 10/11 - Easter Services & Tea (3s & 4s)
HEY! Don't forget about our Fundraisers!!
SCHOLASTIC BOOKS - Thank you for ordering books and other learning materials through Scholastic Canada because we get FREE BOOKS and other learning resources when you do!! A great and inexpensive way to pick up children's birthday/Christmas gifts!
COBS BREADS - When you are purchasing treats from Cobs in Edgemont Village, don't forget to mention you support St. Catherine's Preschool when they ring you up! We will get 5% of your sales donated to our school!! Last year we made $85!! That's a lot of dough!!
LOVABLE LABELS - Parents need labels for lunch kits, containers, jackets, shoes, boots and almost everything else our children own! Order from Lovable Labels and St. Catherine's Preschool gets 20% of the profits!! They have stickers, iron-on labels and more durable metal ones. We have some examples in the office. Have a look at their website and don't forget to use our special ordering link: www.StCatherines.lovablelabels.ca
SEPTEMBER 2018 REGISTRATION - We are taking registrations now for next September. Make sure you have your sheet in to the preschool office before Feb. 1st so you will get priority placement. We are excited to offer ALL DAY PRESCHOOL CLASSES for threes and fours. Please tell your friends about our preschool. Also, if you can, take some of our postcards to post around your communities to help us advertise! Thanks in advance!
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED IN CLASS...!
DISCOVERY TWOS - Arsi, Brita, Marion, Susan, Vibha (& Danielle!)
We can’t believe it is February already.
In January, we were busy learning about Winter. We discovered Penguins and Polar bears live
where it is very cold. We learned what
clothes we would need to dress ourselves in for the cold weather. Some winter art activities that the children
enjoyed were: decorating hats and
mittens, Popsicle stick snowflakes, ice-cube painting, winter collage and making
snowmen. 
At circle time we talked about winter animals, Five Little Snowmen felt rhyme, snowflake body movement, mitten colour recognition and a hot chocolate
game. Some of the children's favourite books were Snowflake Baby and Under My Hood I Have a Hat.
A big welcome to our four new friends Beckett, Holly,
Stefan and Zachary in 201 class.
As always, please feel free to come and talk to us if you
have any concerns.
CLASS 301-Estelle & Susan
Hi Everyone!
A new year has begun and we are so excited for what’s
ahead! The last month has been filled with winter activities of every kind. At
the art table we have focused our crafts on using white paint to create snow,
glitter to symbolize ice and even shaving cream to give a real snow effect. At
circle, many felt stories and action songs were played out. A few being
“Snowflakes, Snowflakes Falling Down”, the classic winter story “The Mitten”
and a Robert Munch favourite, “Tomas’s Snowsuit”. 
Towards the end of January we
introduced shapes and colours. We are focusing on mixing colours and
recognizing each colour shades. This exploration will continue into February.
We look forward to the month of “love”!
CLASS 302-Karen, Brita, Aleysha (& Sousan!)
Welcome back children and parents of 302.
We hope you all had a restful Winter break. We have been
back at school now for 4 weeks and the children transitioned nicely back into
their preschool setting.
December has come and gone but we wanted to reflect on some
of the things we did. We started practicing in November for our annual
Christmas Service. Our amazing music teacher Rachel puts together a wonderful
compilation of songs for the children to share with their families at this
magical time of year. The children also worked on their Christmas gifts and cards that they took home before the winter break; this is something they can
treasure for years to come. Thank you to the parent’s for their contributions
to our Christmas party. This is such a nice time for the children to share the
same food, try something new and explore the social aspects of a meal.
For the month of January we used different materials for
our art to make all things winter. We started off by decorating winter mittens,
painting a picture with coloured ice, using coloured glue and Epsom salts to
make a winter scene, using pipette’s with water colour on diffusing paper
shaped like snowflakes. Last but not least we made melted snowmen. We hope you
noticed all the great art on our boards.
We have also been talking about colours and shapes. How
colours changed when mixed together turn into another colour using paint, water
colour and shaving cream. We have been playing shape matching games and reading
stories at circle.
In February we will be talking about what it means to be
a friend and Valentines Day.
We will also be starting our card project….
February 8th will be Aleysha’s last day with us at St.
Catherine's and we wish her the best of luck in her new adventures and thank her
for her support with our program.
Some of you may have noticed that Sousan has not been
present since the beginning of the new year. At this time she is home managing
some health issues but we hope to have her back soon. We wish her a speedy
recovery.
CLASS 401-Karen & Rosie
Wow, it’s already February! Rosie and I hope you enjoyed
your Christmas break. The children were all very excited to start school again
as I am sure the parents felt the same way😊.
Christmas seems so long ago but that is where we will
start. December was filled with all things Christmas. We started off with our
rehearsing for the Christmas service. The end result was seeing the children
being confident and happy to share the experience with their families. Each
year we go to Edgemont Village to sing Christmas carols to a few of our
favourite local merchants. A big thank you to Trims for giving each of the
children a sleigh ornament for their tree to share with their family.
On to January…We have introduced our Orca whale Echo. If
you have not heard about him yet, he goes home every Friday and the children
(with some help from parents) draw pictures to tell us what they did with Echo
over the weekend. The children love hearing all his new adventures on Monday
morning.
Every Wednesday we will be working on journals. This
dedicated time gives the children focus to draw or write a detailed story. Also
we have our Show and Share on Wednesdays. All the children are very excited to
present their item in front of their friends.
We encourage you to pack a cup with your child’s snack as
we are now providing a jug of water and the children can pour their own.
Throughout the year we are going to be encouraging the
children to use self regulation and to take other peoples feelings into account.
It’s important for them to realize that not everyone enjoys participating in
every game and activity and that’s ok. Sometimes getting excited about a game
is only great, if everyone has a choice and it’s ok for them to say no to
something they don’t enjoy. As adults we don’t always want to participate in
certain activities and just enjoy being in the moment, its the same for our
children.
Kindergarten readiness is something we will be working on
until the end of the year. We will be happy to show you what this entails.
February brings Valentines Day, talking about friendship
and what it means to be kind.
CLASS 402-Arsi, Rosie, Permjit (& Danielle!!)
January was an out of this world month for our boys! We quickly jumped into the swing
of things after our Christmas break! We dove right into Space and it was very fun and
interesting!
We first looked at how our solar system was in the Milky Way and began to learn
the name of our planets. We learned that we live on Earth and that the sun’s gravity
keeps all the planets orbiting around it. We learned that the sun is a star and that the
moon has many craters on its surface. The boys made a paper mache Earth by using
newspaper and glue to cover a balloon. Once dry, we painted the Earth in blue and
green. We also made a collage of the planets in order from the Sun. It was fun watching
“Rachel and the Treeschoolers” dvd because she showed us all about the solar system,
gravity, and the phases of the moon.
After learning about the solar system, we needed to know how people get to
space. Our next topic was spaceships! Spaceships are very big and need a big team of
people to make sure everything is working. We learned that spaceships need a huge
fuel tank to power them when up in space. Moreover, they have two rocket launchers
attached to them at liftoff. We also learned that a crawler is the machine that takes a
spaceship to it’s launch pad. This takes 5 long hours because the crawler moves super
slow. The boys had a lot of fun painting their own big “spaceship” and decorating it with
buttons and pipe cleaners. They even enjoyed sitting in it and blasting off! We were
lucky enough to have Liam. S bring his tall spaceship to share with his friends at play
time! They all had a turn going in it too! As a fun way of learning the letters of their
names, the boys made a rocket ship made of their name! It was a little tricky, but they
all tried really hard! ZOOM blast off!
Now that we knew how to get to space we had to know who went to space!
Astronauts!! The boys listened to a story about Chris Hadfield who is a Canadian
astronaut. They really enjoyed hearing how Chris as a little boy always knew he wanted
to go to space. In the book, we learned that there is lots of studying to do before a
person becomes an astronaut. Once they do, they have an important job when they go
up in space. They bring back information for us to learn! We also learned that
astronauts must wear a spacesuit and a breathing helmet. They sometimes have to fix
satellite stations and catch their food since everything floats! “My Astronaut” was a fun
felt rhyme that we did during circle about an astronaut who can’t make up his mind
which color helmet to wear to space!
Some of the books we read this month:
“There was an old Martian who swallowed the moon”
“National Geographic: The book about planets”
“Peteriffic”
“Man on the moon”
“Interstellar Cinderella”
In the next month, we will be focusing on friendships, caring, and being a friend. We will
also do some fun activities for Valentine’s Day and learn about Chinese New Year.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to speak to a teacher!
CLASS 304/403-Estelle, Karen & Sousan
February is here. But what happened in December and
January?
Christmas was in full swing in the Treehouse room. We
made Christmas gifts and cards for the children to bring home to their parents,
rode the sleigh in the home corner, wrote a letter to Santa and got a response
back, decorated cookies, told the story about the birth of Jesus and had our
Christmas party. We also practiced our songs that were prepared by our amazing
music teacher Rachel, to share with our parents at our annual Christmas Service. The children
braved the cold winter elements with our Christmas caroling in Edgemont
village. A big thank you to Trims for the wooden sleigh ornaments.
During the month of January we introduced our class whale
named Echo. I am sure you have heard about him but just in case you haven’t,
Echo goes home every Friday with 1 child. He returns on Monday and we find out
all the exciting adventures he had on the weekend.
We also started our journals with the 4’s which we will
be doing every Wednesday. The children seem to be putting a lot of effort into
their drawings and are able to give a detailed description of what they have
drawn.
We have be focusing on letters and numbers with a variety
of games, art and stories at circle
In the next few weeks we will be starting our
kindergarten readiness with our 4’s
We are asking that you pack a cup in your child’s snack
bag. There will be a jug of water in the centre of the table for the children
to pour themselves.
Some of you may have noticed that Sousan has not been present
since the new year has started. She is managing some health issues at this time
but we hope to have her back soon.
On to February…Valentines Day, friendship and Chinese New
Year.
MUSIC - Rachel
Music class in January began by
listening to the Winter movement from Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons concerto and drawing winter inspired pictures. Then we had a special visitor, Baby Bear,
who helped us learn to identify instruments by only listening to their
different sounds. We have also learned the proper musical terminology for loud
and quiet, and have listened to musical excerpts to hear the difference. We
have been playing bells, drums, tambourines and shakers while continuing to
practicing our rhythm and dynamics. THE RESOURCE OFFICE-Marion
As it rains outside, the children are learning so much in the classrooms.
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