Thursday, 8 April 2021

APRIL 2021

 

April showers bring May flowers! Or so they say! I don't know about you but my garden is already blooming! 

Weather is crazy in April so make sure you send your child with various weather appropriate gear and extra clothes in their backpacks so we can be ready for any adventure, whatever the weather!!


Three more months until the end of the school year! 

There are plenty of things planned for the last few months of school. Make sure you are watching your emails for all the updates!.

The Card Project fundraiser will be coming to an end so make sure you place your orders by tomorrow!

Please note the school closures coming up: 
FRIDAY, MAY 14TH - Professional Day (School Closed)
MONDAY, MAY 24TH - Victoria Day (School Closed)

Hey! JEANS WEEK is coming up! 


We will be collecting donations for the Children's Hospital during the week of April 19th - 23rd.
Bring your loose change and look for the upside down umbrellas at pickup and drop off and toss it in!
Jean's Day is Wednesday, April 28th so we will all wear our denim and jean jackets on that day! We will then send all the donations collected to the Children's Hospital! Look for the teachers' jeans photo in the next blog!!

Parking Lot Safety

Please make sure you are driving slowly through our parking lot as well as through the immediate neighbourhood. Now that weather is getting better, there will be a lot more children walking to school.

Please do not park in the small parking lot off Ridgeway. That is for Church staff/visitors only.


Please do not let your children play in the parking lot. Please keep them close to you while waiting for classes to open, and after class, please say your goodbyes and head on home or to the park to socialize with parents and children.


RAINBOW ROOM - Danielle, Marjan, Vibha

We hope you all had a wonderful Spring break.


Over the past few weeks we have noticed that our little twos are growing up to be a great little threes.  We are seeing them work well together.  Their play is starting to incorporate more and more friends.  We have observed this play in the Home Corner as they like to play tea party, or any form of pretend play. 
 

What a fun and exciting month of March we had learning about different modes of transportation and Easter.

For art, we made yellow school buses, decorated paper plate sailboats and cars with tissue paper, fire truck and car printing and we used our handprints to decorate our own carriage.


During Circle Time, we read a fun-filled sing along tape story- “We all go traveling by”.  Felt rhymes are always a big hit with our twos such as Five Big Buses -( great colour recognition game), Twinkle, Twinkle Motor Car, Five Little Sailboats and everyone’s favourite Wheels On the Bus. 

 5 Little Sailboats

One little sailboat with a sail so blue 

Along came another, then there were two.

Two little sailboats sailing on the sea

Along came another, then there were three.

Three little sailboats sailing close to the shore 

Along came another, then there were four.

Four little sailboats can’t wait to arrive 

Along came another, then there were five 

Five little sailboats in the wind they rock

 “It’s stormy out here, let’s get back to the dock.”

 Later, we hopped right into Easter.  Easter is one of our children’s favourite themes.  At the  science table the children really enjoyed experimenting with egg tongs to pick up small Easter objects.  It’s a great way to promote fine motor and eye and hand coordination skills.  We put shredded paper into the water table with different coloured eggs to promote colour recognition and matching game. 

 


For art, the children enjoyed marble painting Easter eggs, decorating bunnies and chicks, Easter egg printing, and making our beautiful Easter baskets with colourful eggs. 

 At Circle, the children love to sing finger rhymes and action songs. For example, Yellow Egg, Yellow Egg What Do You See? Little Peter Rabbit, See the Sleeping Bunnies, Five Little Chickens Balancing Step-by-Step on a Piece of String and...

 Hop little Rabbit, hop, hop hop

Hop little Rabbit, don’t you stop

Hop little Rabbit, 1,2,3

Hop little Rabbit, hop to me.

 For the month of April we will be talking about Spring.

Please feel free to speak to us if you have any questions or concerns.

Stay safe and Healthy

 

TREEHOUSE ROOM - Arsi, Brita, Carol, Karen, Marjan, Rose

Spring has sprung! The flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping!

Hope everyone had a fun and safe Spring break! 

 


Our first week of March, we finished up on our community helpers topic. We talked about police officers, mail carriers, garbage truck drivers, and even tried our hands as being chefs. 

We read books titled: Officer Buckle, Snail Mail, and we looked at books that described the other important jobs. For art, we sequenced a police officer by using various cut out shapes (badge/hat/tie) and painted in their faces. Moreover, we used construction paper pieces to make a garbage truck that had paper “garbage” in its back. The children also enjoyed gluing shiny foil paper to make their own badges, decorated their own police cars, and fire trucks. We also made our very own mail bags with postcards too. Who doesn’t love cheese pizza? Some of our friends had a go at making their very own mini pizzas as well. What a fun time! 


In the second week, we moved onto our primary colours, red, blue, and yellow! So much fun to see what new colours these primary colours made!  Our first 2 colours we mixed were yellow and blue which the children discovered turned GREEN! To demonstrate this, we read the book called “Little Blue & Little Yellow.” For art, we used a salad spinner on a coffee filter to see the mixing of the two colours. Furthermore, we swished the two colours into a paper cup which made the cup green inside. Some of the children also did a colour experiment by using shaving cream, diffusing paper and cotton balls to mix the colours together.  We also tried this experiment with our next two colours which were red and yellow. It was fun to see the children discover that they made the colour ORANGE! Moreover, we scooped three of our favourite colour paints and mixed them on paper to see what colours we’d create! At circle, we played I-spy and we talked about the foods we eat that may be red, yellow, or orange in colours. 

We even had a birthday party in out house corner with all our primary colours! Oh how fun!  


After spring break, Marjan introduced the children to the holiday of the Persian New Year called Nowruz! She had the traditional table called the Haft Seen table which incorporated 7 items that started with the letter S. These items all had special meanings which the children listened to intently! Happy Nowruz, welcome Spring!

In the last 2 weeks of March we talked about Easter and shapes! Our first two shapes were circle & oval. We discussed how each shape had no edges and looked at how they were different with each other too. We looked at the books called : Circle, What is round?,  Friendshape, Find a circle, and Shapes Reshape. We did a shape rhyme and played the felt board game which shape is missing!  The children even found lots of shapes around our room!  Furthermore, at circle, we talked about Easter. We read the books: Spot’s First Easter, Easter egg Hunt, Splat the cat: where’s the Easter bunny? We also played the felt board game Which Easter Egg is Missing? and Where’s the Bunny? During this time, we also practiced our Easter songs for our video performance! For art, the children made their Easter baskets by using paper plates! They loved how the circle shape plate turned into a rectangle. They also loved painting their baskets with pastel colours and decorated them with Easter shapes! 


Our next two shapes were square & rectangle! At circle, we talked about how each shape has four sides. We looked at the difference of each shape too. The children learned that square has four equal sides and rectangle has two long and two short sides. We also sang shape songs too! For art, we made square shaped bunnies, decorated bunny shapes by gluing squares on, and made flowers in a pot using square shapes. We also made bunny headbands too! 

There’s so many other fun things we did such as: salad spinning cherry blossom shaped flowers, decorated egg shaped sugar cookies, used watercolours on egg shaped diffusing paper, coloured black eggs with egg shaped chalk, some of the children went on a walk to Eldon park, and we all had a visit from the Easter bunny! We even watched a Easter DVD called Mac and Ruby’s Easter!  So much fun was had by all!


In the next month, we will be talking about spring and working on our kindergarten readiness and independent skills such as putting on our jackets on our own and using our zippers on our own too!

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to talk to your teachers!


SUNFLOWER ROOM - Arsi, Danielle, Carol


We started March with talking about Bugs!! We started with Ladybugs & read ‘The Grouchy Lady Bug' & '10 Lucky Ladybugs’. We listened to the felt rhymes ‘Little Red Bug' & '5 Little Lady Bugs’. We acted out the songs ‘We’re Are Going on a Bug Hunt" & 'Ladybug Fly Away’. We played the games ‘What Color Ladybug is Missing?’ For art we cut out wings & made our own ‘Grouchy Ladybug’. We then talked about Caterpillars & Butterflies. We read ‘The Hungry Caterpillar' & 'The Crunchy, Munchy Caterpillar’. We listened to the felt rhymes ‘Beatrix the Butterfly' & '5 Little Butterflies’. We acted out the songs ‘Flutter, Flutter, Butterfly' & 'Caterpillar Crawled’. We played the games ‘Insect Bingo' & 'What Color Bucket is the Caterpillar in?’ For art we cut out the leaf shape and glued circle shapes onto it to make a caterpillar. Our last bug was Bees!! We read ‘Give Bees a Chance' & '10 Busy Buzzy Bees’. We listened to the felt rhymes ‘5 Busy Bees' with a Hand puppet & '5 Dragonflies’. We went on a bug hunt through the building and outside into the garden, where we found a few bugs. We played the games ‘Where is the Bee Hiding?’ For art we cut out the oval body shape & sequenced making our own bees. An important fact we learnt about Bugs is that they all play an important part in Spring!


We then moved onto Spring & Planting.  Some of the stories we read were “A Seed Grows & Tiny Seed’. We talked about what we would need in order to plant seeds and then we planted some Alpha seeds and watched them sprout over the next few days.  We listened to the felt rhymes ‘5 Little Beans' & '5 Tough & Tiny Seeds’. For art we sequenced how a plant grows, starting with a seed, a stem & then into a flower. We then used a sponge to decorate a sunflower and then add sunflower seeds.  We 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 talked about Birds and the part they play in Spring and helping flowers. We read ‘Feathers for Lunch’ & we listened to the felt rhyme ‘5 Little Birds’. We sung ‘Little Bird in the tree’. For art we cut out the body of the bird and used our handprints to make the wings.

After Spring Break, we introduced the Leader & the Leader’s Helper. This is where they each will take a turn being both and they sit in their own chair at circle and lead the class when we leave or enter the room.  The children really rise to the occasion of being ‘role models’ to their friends.

For the last two weeks we were talking about Easter. We read ‘Happy Easter Little Critter', 'The Egg Who Couldn’t Decide', 'Spot’s First Easter', 'Easter Egg Hunt' & 'The Golden Egg Book’. We listened to the CD Stories ‘There was on Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick' & Easter Eggs Everywhere’& watched the DVD ‘Max & Ruby’s Easter’. We played the games ‘Farm Animal Bingo, Easter Chick are you hiding in the …egg? 'Which color Bunny is Missing?' & 'Which Colored Egg is Missing?’. We sung ‘Little Peter Rabbit', 'Hop Little Bunny', 'Sleeping Bunnies', 'The Bunny Bingo Song' & '5 Chicks Balancing’. We also practiced our Easter Songs that we videoed for you. We hope you enjoyed our performance?! We also had a visit from Easter Bunny who left us some Easter Treats, these looked good in our Easter Baskets that we cut and painted. We also sequenced an Egg Shaped bunny, with some of us cutting out the egg shape. We also used a salad spinner (plus our muscles) to spin paint onto our egg. We then traced an Easter Basket and decorated it with eggs. We also put a face onto our Bunny Hats that we used when we went on our Easter Egg Hunt. In the home corner we had baskets, hand puppets and Easter eggs. We spent lots of time hiding and finding the eggs and puppets.


Just a reminder, although the sun has been shining a bit more, our yard tends to be shady & cool. Please pack a jacket for your child. We are also continuing to practice being more independent by putting on & zipping up our own jackets as well as opening and closing our snack containers. Please continue to encourage your child to do these activities at home.

We are continuing Kindergarten readiness with the older children which includes encouraging them to write their own name, cut frequently & play with their friends.  We are also starting the Alphabet, where we talk about the letters at circle time.

Any questions please feel free to contact us to arrange a time to talk. 


RESOURCE OFFICE - Marion

So happy we were able to return to school after Spring Break this year.  Over the next few months we look forward to experiencing Spring time activities, both indoors and outdoors.  


Our Butterfly Kit will arrive the beginning of May and the little caterpillars with develop into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.  They will be in the Treehouse Room for all children to visit and then will be released into the Memorial Garden early June.   

I know how different it has been this year, not being able to come into the school, but we hope that the photos and blog entries keep you updated with what is happening in our classrooms.  Your support of our protocols has helped us to maintain a safe and happy environment for our teachers and your children.   If you have any concerns or questions please e-mail the office and we will pass them onto the classroom teachers.  

I know the 4s are working hard on their Kindergarten readiness skills, letters, numbers, counting and sequencing.  They are working on co-operating with their peers in group games and extending their time at circle with group activities.


I have had a number of inquiries regarding our Summer Program.  After 25 years, Cheryl 
Hebb and I have decided that we cannot continue to offer the program.  With the current protocols and guidelines we felt that it would too hard to regulate and organize the registration of community families.   We would like to thank all the families that supported us over the years.

 


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