MARCH 2021

 

Forward, MARCH, and welcome Spring, when bunnies bounce and birds all sing. When MARCH winds blow the Winter away, they get the world ready for April and May!!

March is when we start to notice all the signs of Spring!! The birds are singing louder, the flowers are peeking out of the soil and the weather can be sun, rain or snow...all in the same day!!

Spring Break is coming up and we will be taking one week off: March 15-19. The local schools will be taking two weeks off so if your child will be staying away for longer than the one week, please let us know ahead of time so we can better plan our classroom schedules.

Please remember, you should be letting us know when your child is going to be absent from school and please let us know if it is a home day, an appointment, or it is because of sickness. And please let us know what the symptoms are so we can keep track of the sicknesses in the classrooms as well as watch for symptoms in others.

Thank you so much for keeping your children away when they have runny noses, coughs and other minor ailments. We have noticed a huge improvement on the health of our students and our teachers this year! Children who are tired or just seem "out of sorts" should also stay home as sometimes we find this is just a precursor to them getting sick. 

Last March we had to shut our doors after Spring Break because of the Covid-19 Pandemic and now a year later, we are still under a lot of restrictions. Please remember, on Spring Break, to stay healthy by following all the recommendations laid out by the Government of Canada regarding Covid. If you plan on travelling, please remember to isolate if required and hopefully we will all come back healthy to socialize safely in the classrooms again.  https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/isolation

Important Dates and Events

MAR 10...........SAMOSA ORDER PICK UP

MAR 15-19......SPRING BREAK (PRESCHOOL CLOSED)

APR 2..............GOOD FRIDAY (PRESCHOOL CLOSED)

APR 5..............EASTER MONDAY (PRESCHOOL CLOSED)

MAY 14...........PRO-D DAY (PRESCHOOL CLOSED)

MAY 24...........VICTORIA DAY (PRESCHOOL CLOSED)

SEPTEMBER 2021 REGISTRATON

Registration is over and you should have received an email letting you know your child's schedule for September. If you did not receive it, check your junk file or let us know in the office. We may have an incorrect email address for you.

YOU MUST reply to the registration email to accept or decline the class. 

If you have not given a deposit yet, we must receive it before May 1st or we will not be able to save a spot for your child. Please call the office with any questions: 604-980-1326

Plenty of things happened in the classrooms last month. The teachers have written all about it below. Please take the time to read what they have to say.

RAINBOW ROOM - DANIELLE, MARJAN, VIBHA

What a busy month we had in our Discovery Two’s.  We started with learning about ‘love’ and Valentine’s Day and we learned about Chinese New Year. We also spent time exploring the Colours – Blue, Yellow, Green & Orange.

For Valentine’s week we listened to the Felt Story ‘The Lonely Heart’, ‘Pink Heart, Pink Heart, what do you see?’ and we read the ‘I spy Book & Valentine’s party’. We sang ‘Skidamarink, "The More we get together" & "If you love me & you Know it". We heard the felt rhymes ‘6 Valentine’s jumping on the bed, Silly Faces & 3 Naughty Hearts swinging in a tree’. We learned ‘I love you’ in sign language. For art we mixed shaving cream, powder paint & water colors to see what colors we could make. We took a print of it. We used marbles and pink & purple paint to decorate Hearts.  We also made our own heart wreathes with red, pink & purple hearts and tissue paper. We had some ‘pink snow’ in the water table that felt cold when we touched it. We finished our Valentine’s Day week with a PJ party and we made Pancakes for us to eat at snack.

We talked about Chinese New Year and a few of us decorated Fans. We read the story ‘Our First Chinese New Year’ and listened to the felt rhyme 5 Red & Gold Dragons.

We moved onto exploring Colours. For the colour ‘Blue’ we used a potato masher and blue paint to make prints. For circle we read ‘What colour is Pink?’ & sang the song ‘What colour are you wearing?’ We played the game ‘Little Mouse, which colour house are you hiding in? & ‘Which Blue shape is missing?’.  For the colour yellow we used real lemons and we had fun smelling the lemons as we made prints. We read ‘5 Little Ducks’ and sang the action rhyme ‘Sleeping Ducks’. For the colour green we used green paint & duplo blocks to make prints or we used a salad spinner & green paint to decorate apples. For circle we listened to ‘Green Frog, Green frog what do you see?’. 

We also guessed what was in the green crayon & we read the book ‘Colours’. For the colour orange we watched as oranges were juiced in front of us and we got to taste the juice. Some of us then used the left over oranges to make prints and smell the orange as we pressed it onto the paper. Some of us made carrot prints with orange paint & carrots.  For circle we listened to ‘Orange Fish, Orange Fish what do you see?’ & We also guessed what was in the orange crayon. We also practiced Yoga Poses, Namaste.

One of the children’s favourite songs we sing in transitions is “Roly, Poly”. The words we use are:

Roly poly, roly poly
Up, up, up.
Up, up, up.
Roly roly poly. Roly, roly, poly.
Down, down, down.
Down, down, down.

Repeat with in/out and left/right

In the new few weeks we will talk about Transportation, Spring & Easter. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the office and make a time to talk to us. 

TREEHOUSE ROOM - ARSI, BRITA, CAROL, KAREN, MARJAN, ROSE

Hello Parents! We just had another amazing month; February! Lots of new things this happened this month. We first started off with our Card project, children decorated hearts with shaving cream and watercolor for a cool rainbow effects and children were super excited of mixing up all those surprising colors.For Valentines Art, we decorated heart shaped Valentine’s Day cards for our friends using stickers and tissue paper, we then have them put in their friend’s cubby.

We also made “Bee-kind” art with egg cartons; Red and pink bracelets, stamped hearts with glitter, Valentine bags out of paper plate, and marble painting heart shapes. We brought the afternoon class for a walk looking for things we liked while holding up a heart! (They had so much fun!)

In our Valentines Circle, we talked about how to be a good friend at preschool and how to show it.  Rhymes and Games during circle: “Missing heart game”, “6 little Valentine’s Way up high in the tree”, “5 little Valentine’s to giveaway” and “10 little Purple Hearts”. Valentines Books we read: “The day it rained hearts”, “Karen’s Valentine’s surprise”, “The Smartest Giant in Town”, “Haley and Six Best Friends” and “No Matter What”.

 In the middle of the month (February 12th), we celebrated Chinese New Year, we watched a DVD called “Kai-Lan Celebrate the Chinese New Year”. We made a paper plate Ox and paper plate dragons as our Chinese new year’s Art. We read “Ruby’s Chinese New Year” and “5 Big dragons”.

 We also did a Pancake for Shrove Tuesday!

 Finally, we finished off the month with our Community helper's theme.

In circle we named and talked about many different types of community helpers. We learned about what a veterinarian was and the many types such as small animal vet, farm vet, aquatic vet and zoo vet. We also talked about what a teacher was and the many different types, where would you find them, and why are they important.   We played “Am I a community helper" game?, “Emergency medical services rhyme”, “Five busy firefighters rhyme”, and “I’m a little fire fighter rhyme.”.

We talked about the importance of going to the dentist and keeping our teeth clean.

We did the felt board story of Happy tooth/sad tooth, and songs: “Construction worker bear” & “Hurry hurry drive the fire truck.”

We also talked about how important construction workers are because they help building our homes, school, grocery stores etc.…

 Books we have read for our Community Helpers theme: “I’m going to the dentist”,

“Why did they go to the Vet ?” , “This is a construction worker”, “The Veterinarian”, and “Busy People- The Teacher”.

 For art, we made fire trucks, ambulances, Fireman hats, X-ray arts, Paper plate dogs and tooth brush art where children used a toothbrush to brush mint scented white paint on to a paper cut-out Tooth.

They also constructed their own thing using egg cartons, small boxes, wood and rocks; Sequencing a police officer using various shapes and decorating our own mailbag and “addressing” letters for the bag; “Why my pet went to the Vet” art, and decorating their own story book. In Music, we played with rhythm sticks and sang "Johnny Hammers with one Hammer."

And we played the xylophone.

The afternoon class played charades and went for a walk to the duck pond and on the way back, we got some delicious hot chocolate.

 In the next month we will be starting our journals and will start looking into Kindergarten Readiness, such as recognizing different letters, numbers, shapes… cutting and gross motor skills.

 Thanks to the children who came in wearing a pink shirt on Pink Shirt day. We talked about kindness to people around us, and we had a walk in the afternoon for a neighbourhood scavenger hunt on Pink Shirt day

 Definitely a busy but fun month!

Lastly, our children are snacking more than ever before, so kindly, please, pack MORE healthy snacks for your child to have at school. Thank you 

SUNFLOWER ROOM - ARSI, DANIELLE, CAROL

Love is in the air…..!!! What a beautiful month February has been. We have learned a lot!

We began the month with Valentine’s Day! We began by talking about who we love….such as our families and friends and what we can do to show them our love. We had great answers such as mom, dad, sister, brother and we’d love by helping our mom, playing with sibling(s), or reading together. So sweet! We read many great books such as: The Lonely Heart, Mouse’s First Valentine’s, The Day it rained hearts, The Colour of Love,  The Biggest Valentine ever, I love you because you’re you, Love, Splat and a draw & tell story called Karen’s Valentine’s surprise. During circle, we also enjoyed felt board rhymes called: 6 Valentine’s hearts, 5 Valentine’s to give away, valentine tree and silly faces. 

The children also had fun playing a felt board game to guess which colour heart was missing, action heart game, freeze dance, and  "little heart, little heart" guessing game, and "Will you be my Valentine?"  One of our favourite songs we sang was Skidamarink with lots of actions and we also sang "Love love love" and the tricky song called Heart with the tune of bingo.

 For art, the children traced a heart shape and used their fine motor skills to tear up colourful tissue paper to fill the heart shape. We also made a beautiful heart wreath using various sizes of hearts and we got busy decorating our Valentine’s Day bags. The children got creative using stickers, glitter glue, and doilies.  This year due to the circumstances of Covid, the children made Valentine’s Day cards at school. 

They used stickers, tissue paper, doilies and some drew on them as well. The most fun part though was putting it in the bags for their friends. What a great way to show our friends how much we care about them! We also did a fun art using shaving cream and water colours! Once the children mixed the colours, they took a heart shape and made the impression of the shaving cream! How fun to see the marbled design pop up on the heart shape!  On our party day, we loved seeing the children dressed in either red, pink, white or gold. All the children had a turn putting the ingredients in and mixing our pancake recipe! The best part was eating them during lunch! Mmmm! 

This year it was the year of the Ox for Chinese New Year!  

During circle, we talked about the traditions of this celebration. We read the book : My first Chinese New Year. The book showed us how families get ready by cleaning the bad luck out of their homes to allow good luck to enter! We also learned that children get ready by getting fresh haircuts and new clothes. Moreover, we saw how families gather to have a delicious feast that’s prepared at home! The best part is when families go to watch the dragon parade and get red envelopes with money to wish them good luck and prosperity! Our children were super happy to take a red envelope home too!

We also had fun singing the felt board rhyme "5 little oxen" and "Lucky envelopes"! We finished our day by watching a DVD called Kai-Lan Celebrates Chinese New Year! For art, we used our fine motor skills and hand eye coordination to cut straight lines on our red lanterns. We than used Q-tips to decorate them with gold paint. They looked great! 

For our last two weeks in the month we focused on shapes and colours. In the first week we learned about the shapes square, and circle. We also looked at which primary colours, when mixed together make  new colours.  Our first experiment was taking red and yellow watercolours and mixing them to get orange. We incorporated this in our art when the children cut out 2 sides of the square shape diffusing paper then watched as they mixed the watercolours to give them an orange result. During circle, we read the book called Square, Perfect Square and Who said red? We also sang the songs called: Sammy square, and Square song. Moreover, we played a few games as well! We played a shape bean bag tossing game, find the matching colour bowl, and if you’re holding a square and pass the colour action songs.  For our circle shape, we read the books:  The Crayon box that talked, What is round?  &  Little blue, Little yellow yellow Leo Leoni  which were also the colours we talked about. We mixed our watercolours and discovered they make green. The children also sang the songs: Circle, 5 little crayons. 

We also played find a circle/round shape in the room, which green coloured item is missing, find the colour bowl matching game,  and in the gym we played a wall memory game. For art, we used blue & yellow paint with various size lids to stamp a collage. It was fun watching the children mix the colours on the collage and see how they made green. 

On our last week of the month, we looked at the shapes rectangle, triangle, and oval. We also looked at how red and blue made purple, red and white made pink and how the three primary colours would possibly make brown! We read the books: Where is rectangle? 2 long, 2 short, Not a box, Triangle, and Friendshape. The children enjoyed watching a house take shape as we watched the felt board story called The Shape story.  We sang the songs: Ricky rectangle, I’m a triangle, One-two-three, and Ollie oval. We even helped the Shape Monster eat different shapes as the children fed it the shapes they were holding. We also liked the action song If you have a rectangle please stand up….For art, the children used their cutting skills to cut the sides of a rectangle and used red and blue to make a “butterfly print” by folding over the one side and see the print on the opposite side.  They even used rectangle shaped diffusing paper and used red and blue block paint to make their own designs.  For the triangle, children cut the sides and used a salad spinner to spin red and white paint to make pink! They looked super cool! We even played the triangle instruments in music class! 

Our last shape was oval! We wanted to see what colours the children would create by mixing the 3 primary colours. We used an oval shape paper to make their impressions. Some looked like rainbows, some made brown, and some were all different colours together. It was fun!

 As we look forward to March, we will be looking at bugs, spring with flowers and planting and Easter!

We will be incorporating kindergarten readiness as well with various learning opportunities.

For our 4’s, we will be practicing writing their name, holding a pencil with a pincer grip, and putting on/off our jackets and zipping as well. 

For our 3’s, we will continue with putting on/off our jackets, hand over hand writing their name, gripping the scissors and cutting straight lines. 

 If you have any questions or concerns, please set up a time through email or phone to talk to your teachers. 

 

RESOURCE OFFICE - MARION

Happy March!  It is always a pleasure to spend time in the classrooms and see the excitement that each program theme brings to the children.  

The Discovery 2’s are engaging more in parallel play and are chatting with each other.  The teachers are wanting to help with toilet training, so just let them know what you are doing at home and they can follow through at school.  Once you make the daytime move out of pull-ups to underwear it is will be less confusing for your child to just wear the underwear.  They will have accidents, but this is part of the learning process.   

Both the Treehouse and Sunflower Rooms are busy meeting the developmental stages of each child.  Activities are age appropriate and extra assistance is given when needed.  Kindergarten Readiness is an important part of the last few months.  The children will be learning skills through play and I will be sending home a Kindergarten list of skills what families can work on together.  

Have a nice Spring Break.