Well! Here we are! The end of the school year! It is hard to believe how fast the last 10 months have gone by! Your children have come such a long way in that time!
The Twos no longer seem like babies! They are saying "Goodbye" to Mom & Dad without a lot of tears, playing with and making new friends and learning how to follow directions and routines.The Threes have perfected the skills they learned in the Twos and are developing their social skills by interacting with friends at school and having play dates.
The Fours are developing their self awareness by building on the things they learned in the Twos and Threes. They are doing things to help get them ready for Kindergarten such as letter recognition, printing, speaking in front of the class and asking questions when they need help.
Important June Events
JUNE 13/14 - 4's Graduation
JUNE 14 - Last Day of Preschool Classes
JUNE 17/18 - Picnics - Mahon Park
JULY 2 - Summer Program Starts
JULY 25 - Summer Program Ends
JULY 26 - Preschool Closed for Summer
SEPT 4 - First Day of Preschool Classes
SEPT 19 - Preschool AGM
At the end of the year, what do the teachers have to say about your children? See below!!
DISCOVERY TWOS - Brita, Danielle, Vibha
It is hard to believe school is almost over! The time has
flown by. The children have grown from
upset two-year old’s, to interactive, exploring and talking three-year old’s.
They are now playing with their friends and starting to take turns and share
their toys. They are becoming so much
more independent with toileting, snack time, jackets and walking up & down
the stairs.
Circle time has become a time for lots of listening and
learning as they now sit for a longer time.
This month we started with talking about Mother’s Day. We read ‘Just for
U’, Sang ‘Skidamirink a dink’ and learned “I Love You” in sign language. We spent
some time decorating our lovely Mother’s Day gifts. We hope you loved them!
We moved on to learn about Safari Animals. Some of the
stories we read were ‘Can Snakes Crawl Backwards?’, Jolly Jungle & The
Animal Boogie’. We listened to the Felt Rhymes ‘5 Little Zebra’s, 5 Elephants
Balancing & 5 Naughty Monkey’s’. We also listened to the felt stories
‘Lion, Lion What do you see?’ and ‘Zebra, Zebra What do you hear?” We moved
around stomping like Elephants, slithering like snakes, swinging like Monkeys
and doing yoga poses like a Lion.
We also love spending time with Tiffany, our music teacher
who introduces us to her musical instruments and new songs.
For Art we were very busy making a Safari Collage, Paper
plate Elephants, using our hand prints to make snakes and monkeys, salad
spinning giraffes, stamping with Jungle animals, paper bag Zebras and painting
paper plate Lions. We had lots of fun
and you can see our art on the boards around our classroom.
For the next few weeks in June we will talk about Father’s
Day and summer.
Thank you for those in advance that have signed up for food
for our end of year Party.
Have a Lovely Summer and we hope to see you all in
September.
CLASS 301 - Carol, Susan
As I write this looking out on my deck full of flowers,
it really feels as if summer is here.
We've had a fun, busy, and very creative month in the
Treehouse Room at St. Catherine's Preschool.
We started off making Mother's Day cards with hand print
tulips; a lovely keepsake of those little hands. The children also decorated
small flower pots and hand planted some flowers as a Mother's Day present. I do
hope the plants have survived!
We have been learning about shapes and colours and have
created a lot of artwork using stamps, stencils and all sorts of different
shapes from around the classroom.
Many of you have followed the amazing progress of our
Painted Lady butterflies, and we have used their presence as an inspiration for
artwork, reading and science lessons. We watched a DVD (VHS video,
actually!) about the life cycle of the butterfly.
The house corner has been transformed into a
Hairdresser's/Barber Shop. Wow, what creative children we have, and we were
never short of "customers"....most of the children and all of the
teachers have had their hair "done" in new and wonderful ways.
The house corner is now a grocery store, and is proving
just as popular.
The staff had a very successful and productive
Professional Development Day. We each made at least one, some made two or
three, Felt Stories. These are used to aid lessons, songs, stories and games,
and are very popular with the children. Tina kindly lead the day and was very
patient with those of us who are less adept with hot glue guns, etc.
Tiffany held open days during which parents were welcomed
into the music room to observe the music classes. The children were very
excited to have an audience and to see their parents, grandparents and friends
there. I'm sure all who attended were impressed by the breadth of knowledge the
children have after a relatively short time.
This will be the last blog for this term, so we'd like to
wish you all a very happy and safe summer. We will see some of you at the
summer program, some next term in September, and those who are moving on to
Kindergarten, I'm sure we'll see you in the neighbourhood.
CLASS 302/404 - Karen, Susan, Carol
Where did the year go, it can not already be June! This will be our last blog for the year so thank you for checking it out.
We started off the month making Mother’s Day gifts. We hope you got to enjoy the lavender Epsom salts and enjoyed reading the questionnaire. At circle we played a felt board game about places mom’s would be or what she would be doing...the mall, exercising, cleaning the house and so on. We also read How to Raise a Mom and I Love You Forever.
Every year Marion brings in Painted Lady butterflies. They start off as eggs, then to a caterpillar, into a pupa and out comes a butterfly. We get to watch the transformations and talk about each stage. When all the butterflies are ready to be set free we go the Memorial garden and release them.
Check out the board in the hallway as it has caterpillars that turn into colourful butterflies. Hanging across the room we strung up hand print butterflies. On our back wall there are black and white pictures of butterflies made from stencils. On the windows are flowers that were painted by using a salad spinner. The children were cheering on their friends as they made the spinner turn faster and faster.
You may have noticed other art we have put up about shapes and colours. We have a lot of books on this topic which we read at circle...The Shape of Things, Scribble, Shapes that Roll, Not a Box and many more. We also played felt board games about what each shapes/colour sees and what shape/colour is missing.
The children have started on their Father's Day gifts; fine motor skills hard at work!
As you know this has been a combined class with 5 of our students that will be graduating from our 4’s. It has be wonderful to see how the 3’s have had positive support from the older children. We wish them Good luck in Kindergarten!
On Thursday June the 14th we will be having our Year End/Graduation Party. There we be a sign up sheet on our bulletin board for food items to share, thank you in advance!
We have had a wonderful year getting to know all the children and the parents. But the time has come to say….
It’s time to say goodbye to all my friends.
It’s time to say goodbye to all my friends.
It’s time to say goodbye give a smile and wave up high.
It’s time to say goodbye to all my friends.
Have a wonderful summer!
CLASS 401 - Arsi, Karen, Vibha, Lisa, Marjan
May was a very busy month for our class! We had lots to
talk about such as Mother’s Day, flowers and gardening, and bugs! We got to
work!
During circle time, we read the book called “One Bean,”
which introduced the class about what we need to plant a seed. We talked about
garden words such as trowel, wheelbarrow, gloves, soil and so on. The children
knew they need sun and rain to make sure flowers grow. We learned about the
parts of a flower such as the roots, the stems, leaves and flower. It was great
to see the children practice their own gardening skills by planting their own
sunflower seed in class. Hope they’re still watering their flowers at home!
We also finished our alphabets with the letters U,W, X,
Y, and Z! Some of the art we did were: decorate umbrellas and Popsicle V
shapes, we used watercolors to color diffusing paper flowers, turned an X into
a xylophone, used yarn and circle shapes to make a yo-yo for the letter Y, and
practiced tracing our letter Z for zebra!
We read books such as “Zoomer’s
Summer Snowstorm,” and “No more Yawning.” Just for one, the children made roti
with Vibha. What a fun activity to do with friends at school! They were yummy
too!
Remember parents, the alphabets surrounds us every day so have fun looking
for letters anywhere you! It great practice and it’s fun!
Our next topic was Mother’s Day! The children worked very
hard to keep their surprises until the special day! We got to work decorating
and glittering jars that the children chose to turn into candle holders. We
used various coloured collage paper and silver glitter to give the candle
holders a special touch from them! Once we finished the candle holders, we
moved onto making hand print tulip cards! What a special keepsake! Hope all our
mommies had a great Mother’s Day weekend and enjoyed the children's gifts!
During circle, we talked about why we love our mommies and what we love to do
with our mommies. We sang the song M-O-M-M-Y in the tune of Bingo and it was
tricky but fun! We also played a felt board story called `What do mommies do on
Mother`s Day?”
For our last two weeks of May, we looked into bugs! We took a
special close look at ants, butterflies, ladybugs and bees! We sang “The ants
go marching by” as we looked at the funny book at circle time. For art, the
children used circle and rectangle shapes to create their own ants. We played a
memory bug game where the children had to remember which bugs were hiding under
the towel! There were lots of bugs to choose from but the children sure
remembered them all!
Since our butterflies were soon going to hatch from their
chrysalises, we thought it was great to learn about butterflies as well! We
learned that the butterflies start out as tiny eggs which hatch into
caterpillars. They then form a chrysalis to sleep for a bit until they are
ready to hatch into a beautiful butterfly! It has also been great for the
children to see this transformation really happen as we have visited our live
chrysalises in the office! At circle, we read the book “Ten Fluttering
Butterflies” and played the game “Which butterfly is missing?”
Ladybug, ladybug where do you live? Our next bug was the
ladybug. We learned that ladybugs are part of the beetle family and that some
have no spots and some have up to twenty spots! The children listened to the
story called “The Very Lazy Ladybug,” and watch “Five Little Ladybugs” get
snatched by Mr.Bird in the funny felt board song. We then read the story called
“Bizzy Mizz Lizzie” about a very busy bee! We learned that bees live all over
the world except in Antarctica. They like to eat pollen and nectar and they
make honey! The children also enjoyed guessing which colour beehive the bee was
hiding under in the felt board game called “Busy Bee.” For art, we made bees
using circle, rectangle,and triangle shapes to make cute little bees that liked
to buzz.
In the last few weeks of school, we will be continuing
with our journals, working on a special surprise,talking about Father’s Day and
getting ready for graduation and going to kindergarten! If you have any
questions, please do not hesitate to ask your teachers!
CLASS 402 - Arsi, Danielle, Marjan
It’s hard to believe that I am writing our last newsletter
for 402 for this year. They are only a
few weeks away from Graduating and moving onto Kindergarten… Oh how much they
have developed and grown in the last 10 months!
The Month of May is a special one as we talk about our Mothers and how important they are too us and what we love about our
Moms. We read ‘Just Like You’ and sang
the rhyme “Mommy” (Tune of Bingo). For
art we decorated our own Flower Pots and planted Sunflower Seeds… I wonder how
big are they now?
We moved onto Spring & Planting. Some of the stories we
read were “One Bean", "The Enormous Potato" and "Franklin Plants a Tree". We have
also spent time in the home corner ‘planting flowers and taking care of
them’. We had flowers, shovels, watering
cans, gloves, buckets and vases. The flowers looked great!! We spent some time
being seeds and ‘growing’.
We also finally finished discovering the last of the
Alphabet. It was amazing to watch the
children as they each took turns with their letter of the alphabet and tried to
‘trick’ their friends into guessing what was inside. Remember to keep practicing by writing their
names or even putting letters up around the house to familiarize them with each
letter.
For the last two weeks we explored the ‘Jungle’. This was lots of fun. In the first week we
looked into Monkeys, Elephants & Tigers.
We read “Who is the Beast", "Monkey Puzzle" & “Strictly No Elephants".
We listened to the felt rhymes "5 Little Monkeys", "5 Tiny Tigers" & "5
Elephants went out to play". We then decorated Monkeys and cut our Elephant
Masks and then painted them.
The next
week we explored Poisonous Frogs, Bats & Toucans. We read the stories "Ah Ha", "Bumblebee Bat" & "Toucan Can" and we listened to “The Animal Boogie".
We danced around like birds with scarves and acted out animal movements that
matched their pictures. We made our own 3D Frogs on Lily Pads and painted, cut and glued our own Toucans. We have had
fun exploring the different jungle animals – learning about the difference
between mammals and birds and where they live in the jungle.
In the next few weeks we will be talking about Father’s Day,
finishing our Journals and stories about going to Kindergarten.
We wish you all a Great Summer and all the best of luck in
Kindergarten. Please come back and visit us!!
CLASS 403/304 - Karen, Susan, Carol, Lisa, Brita
The month of May brought us caterpillars that turned into butterflies, shapes, colours and Mother's Day art. The home corner was turned into a hairdressing studio and a grocery store (not at the same time😆). Just saying that we have some very amazing hair stylists at St. Catherine's!
We celebrated the arrival of the butterflies by honouring them with lots of art. We coloured diffusing paper that were shaped like butterflies with watercolor, hand print butterflies, used stencils to outline butterflies and cut out craft paper to make a butterfly. 
Our fun Friday we watched a DVD from The Magic School Bus all about Butterflies. We also made star shaped crayons using 7 different colours. I hope that all the children drew something fun with them.
Have a look in the hallway at the shape art the children did. We talked about how we are surrounded by shapes and that you might not even notice them.
The afternoons brought warmer weather in the playground and we brought out water pails with paint brushes, bubbles, drawing with chalk and we opened the sandbox, where there were many sand cakes and castles made.
The highlight of this butterfly month was that we got to see how their life cycle progressed from eggs, caterpillars, pupas to butterflies. When they are ready to be released we go up to the Memorial gardens and set them free. A big thank you to Marion for bringing this experience to us!
Our year end party is coming soon and it will also be a Graduation celebration for our 4’s. We wish them well in Kindergarten.
This will be our last blog of the year and we just want to say that it has been wonderful getting to know your children. I just wish that the time did not go by so quickly. But that's what happens when you are having fun.
Have a great summer!
RESOURCE OFFICE - Marion
Such an exciting time of year around the preschool.
The 4s are very excited about visiting their new Kindergartens, some even
think they should be going there now, but we still have lots to do this
year.
The caterpillars in the Treehouse Room have finished emerging into
butterflies. There are 32 of them and they have been released into the Memorial Garden some time next week. I usually take
each class out and we release a few at a time.
As the weather gets warmer
there will be more opportunities for play dates outside. Check out the 4s
bulletin boards for the list of Kindergartens and who is going where. It
is always nice to know someone when you start something new.
I have enjoyed spending time with your precious children.
They have learnt so many things this year and some have been here 3
years. Looking forward to the Graduations and the class picnics.
Have a great summer and I will see you around the Village.
MUSIC - Tiffany
With just a couple of weeks left in the school year, we
are enjoying every musical minute we have together. We are now applying the
skills we have learned over the term and have begun to read actual music! We
can tell the difference between the lengths of music notes. We know the high
voices sing in the treble clef and the low voices sing in the bass clef. We can
incorporate phrasing into our songs with the musical dynamics, forte and piano.
Thank you, to all the parents and family members who were
able to participate in the Music Open House, last month. I believe the children
are most proud to show off their developing musicianship. I am also proud of the
hard work they have done.
As Summer Break approaches, we will be listening to
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, ‘Summer’ series and colouring to that. We are also
having fun playing musical chairs and freeze dance!
Moving into the Summer, I would recommend playing as much
music in the home as possible. The children love to hear cultural music, they
love to dance and clapping/tapping is a big part of their ability to recognize
rhythms and the beat. Singing should always be encouraged and If it gets too
loud, ask them to sing, ‘piano’.
If you have a musical instrument in your home, I would
suggest exploring it with your child. Let them play it. If you do not have any
musical instruments in your home, I would suggest purchasing something small,
such as a children’s sized xylophone or a hand drum. Bells and shakers can be
taken in the car or to the park and your own voice is an instrument, too! One
that follows wherever you go and one that does not cost money in a store.
Happy Summer Break, everyone. The pleasure to teach music
has been all mine. Congratulations to the children moving off to Kindergarten.
Bravo!
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