Forward, March
And welcome Spring,
When bunnies bounce
And birds all sing!
When March winds blow
The Winter away,
They get us ready
For April and May!
OUR SAMOSA FUNDRAISER WAS A HIT!!
We are still tallying the totals as the Samosa Fundraising Co. has kept our campaign open just a little bit longer for anyone wanting a last minute order.
Don't forget to pick up your orders on March 8 between 11:30am - 3pm. Thanks for your support!
ABSENSES & SICKNESS - Some are not calling for absences.
Please remember to CALL or EMAIL the office as early as you can to let us know your child will be absent. This helps us greatly when we need to shift staff around to keep us in ratio when our own staff are sick.
Also, if your child is going to be absent PLEASE LET US KNOW IF IT IS DUE TO SICKNESS OR NOT. If it is due to SICKNESS, then please give us your child's symptoms so we can keep a record of the communicable illnesses traveling through our centre.
Thank you for keeping your sick children home. This is the best way to stop the spread of communicable illnesses from running through our centre. We are a GROUP CARE SETTING and when sicknesses come in to the classrooms, they SPREAD FAST.
EASTER SERVICES
We will be holding our Easter Services AT 10:45 am on:
TUES, MARCH 7 - for Rainbow-T/Th, Treehouse-T/Th
WED, MARCH 8 - for Rainbow-M/W, Treehouse-MWF, Sunflower-MWF
Parents are invited to come to the Church for the Service at 10:45 and then after the Service, there will be short, small get-together in your child's classroom.
FIRST AID COURSE - FRI. MARCH 31
As parents of small children, we are used to dealing with falls and bumps and scrapes but would you know how to deal with something a little more serious?
First aid could be the difference between life and losing those you love. Statistics from the Red Cross indicate that about 60% of deaths from injuries could be prevented had first aid been offered before emergency services arrived at the scene.
Please join me in an Emergency Child First Aid Course on Friday, March 31st at Life Preservers First Aid Inc at 224 Lonsdale Ave.
Please click on the link below and select NORTH VANCOUVER / MARCH 31 from the location and calendar. Hope to see you there!
SPECIAL EVENTS & SCHOOL CLOSURES
MAR 7 - Easter Service: 10:45 - For Tue/Thu classes
MAR 8 - Easter Service: 10:45 - For Mon/Wed/Fri classes
MAR 13-17 - Spring Break - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 7 - Good Friday - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 10 - Easter Monday - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 24-28 - Jeans Week - Donations for Children's Hospital
MAY 5 - Pro. D Day - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
MAY 22 - Victoria Day - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
JUNE 15/16 - 4's Graduation Ceremony
JUNE 16 - Last Day of Preschool
JUNE 21 - School Picnic
THE CLASSROOMS ARE BUSY.
Please take the time to read our BLOG. A lot of work goes in to all the activities the teachers plan for your children and then putting all that in a blog for you to read takes a lot of time!
Please tell the teachers what you think! If you find something great or funny or wonderful...please let your teachers know! The more you don't give feedback, the more sparkles they will send home with your child's artwork!! 😜
RAINBOW ROOM - Danielle, Susan, Vibha
February might be a short month, but we
still managed to fill it with a lot of things to play and learn with. Welcome,
to our new friends that joined our Tuesday/Thursday class in February!
We look
forward to having lots of fun times with you. We have also noticed that our
2-year-olds are turning into big 3-year-olds! They are beginning to play with
each other and ask friends to join them. They are waiting for their turns at
art or with toys and sharing them when they have finished. The children are
also showing more independence with trying to put their own jackets and shoes
on.
We started the month talking about Friends
and Love. We sang “Skidamrink’, ‘The
More we Get Together’ and learned how to say “I Love You” in sign language. We
read “Emily’s Valentine Party, Porcupine Cupid, Who do you Love?” and listened
to the felt story “The Lonely Heart”. We also listened to the felt Rhymes ‘5 Big
Hearts & ‘5 Little Valentine’s All in a row’.
We played the game what
colored heart is missing? For art we experimented with many different ways on
how to decorate a heart. We used a salad spinner, we used tissue paper and glue and we also
made a ‘love you to pieces’ on a heart. For our Valentine’s Day Party, we all
took turns mixing the pancake batter, cutting up the fruit and most importantly
eating what we made. It was yummy!! In the home corner we turned it into a
Flower Shop complete with vases, cash registers, flowers and pots. This was
lots of fun.
We then moved onto taking local transportation with a
BC Ferry and the Skytrain. We stamped people walking onto the ferry and read
“’The Ferry Boat Ride’. We listened to the felt rhyme 4 Ferry Boats & 5
Sailboats. We read ‘ I am a Subway’ and listened to the felt rhyme
“Traffic Light’ we used different transportation cookie cutters to make our own
collage. Some of us decorated Hot Air Balloons and read “Ride the Big Machines
in Winter” and listened to the felt ‘Red car, Red Car’ what do you see?’.
We then moved onto talking about Airplanes.
We read “Going on a plane” and sang ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, we are going on a
plane’. We learnt the yoga pose – Flying like a plane and made Airplane
stencils for art. We also read “Cool
Cars’ and did body movements of driving in a car to music. We also used cars to
paint with and enjoyed the patterns the tires made on the paper.
Finally, the children have been busy
practicing their songs for the upcoming Easter Concert to be held on 8 March,
in the church at 11:00 AM.
If you have any questions or concerns about
your child, please feel free to ask us. We can always arrange a time as drop
off & pick up times can be busy.
TREEHOUSE ROOM - Carol, Gabi, Kamal, Karen, Rose
Hi Treehouse Parents
I want to start off by saying how much we have been enjoying all the children bringing in their Show and Share. We have seen some very neat stuff and heard some interesting stories. Some children missed their time slot so please feel free to arrange another time with the teachers.
We finished off our Card Project and are in the processing phase and parents will hopefully be able to order in April. All the pieces turned out beautifully and we can’t wait to share them with you.
Children that will be moving on to Kindergarten next year were all given handouts on Kindergarten Readiness. It is a resource we use to prepare the children for September. Children are practising writing their names while holding a pencil correctly, using scissors, putting up a “Quiet Hand” when they want to say something at circle…there is simply too much to list. We hope everyone has had a chance to look over the handout.
On our sunny days we like to explore our community. We took a short walk to a construction site that was “On the job”. So many people to get the job done. The flag person gave a very informative talk about what was going on. We saw a backhoe, dump trucks, excavator, equipment cube van and lots of safety equipment. We continued our adventure into Edgemont Village and talked about our community and all the things it has to offer.
We hope everyone had a chance to share a cup of warm cocoa with their child with the chocolate spoons they made. During February we talked about friends, family, sharing and what it means to love. The sharing of the hot cocoa was to spend a moment with your child and maybe they would share what we had been discussing during the weeks leading up to February 14th.
We had our Valentines celebrations on the 13th and 14th. Each child had made a Valentines bag and WOW they were full of all sorts of treats, thank you parents and students
. Marion also came in with her puppet named Signing Sally and showed the children how to say Happy Valentines Day. Children went home with Valentines crowns, painted faces and memories of another fun day at pre-school.
On February 22nd (Pink Shirt Day) we talked about what it means and how people can get hurt and how we can make it better.
The last few weeks the children have been practising for our Easter Service. Parents are welcome to attend and join us in the classroom afterwards for some light refreshments. At this time we will be handing out the children's journals that they have been working in since October, the children are very exited to share them with you. We also encourage parents to look around the class especially the art board in the hallway and in the back of the room. Our present theme is Transportation and all the children got to choose how they would like to travel.
Last buy not least a BIG THANK YOU to the parents who brought in clothing, children’s item etc. to support the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria.
Spring Break is just around the corner. Some families have already let us know about their plans. However if you have not please let the office or a teacher know if you are planning to be away. The preschool is closed for 1 week (March 13th-17th) and we reopen again on the 20th.
See you all at the Easter Service!
Karen, Gabi and Kam (M.W.F.)
Karen, Rose, Gabi and Carol (T.Th)
SUNFLOWER ROOM - Carol, Danielle, Rose
What a great month
we’ve had in the Sunflower Room, full of friends, hearts and construction
workers, plus a party and two “field trips”!
We started February by
designing and painting some art for our Card Project. This is a fundraiser, and
you will be able to order cards etc. depicting your child’s original artwork. More about that at a later
date, when they’re ready.
For the first half of
the month our theme was St. Valentine’s Day. For that, we talked about what it
means to be a friend, how we can practice kindness and show our love for family
and friends.
Our books included:
Porcupine Cupid, Guess How Much I Love You, Click Clack Moo, I Love You, I Need
a Hug, A Book of Hugs, and many more. We played Ring-a-ring-a-rosie, Find Your
Friend matching game, and heart target toss with bean bags and pom poms. Our
songs were all about love and friends.
For art we did so many
things with hearts! We painted hearts, collaged hearts, added lace and doilies,
used them to make flowers, and traced and cut them to make heart people. We
also practiced threading skills and made bracelets to take home. Especially
fun, was decorating our Valentine bags
for our friends to post cards to each other on our party day.
In our Home corner, we
set up a Post Office and played at writing and sending Valentine cards and
letters. At our final circle each day, we emptied the post box and delivered
the cards and letters to our friends. We all had a lovely time at our
Valentine’s Party; we played games,
danced, watched “Franklin’s Valentine’s Day” and had a special snack of party
food. (Thank you to the families that provided the food this time).
Our next theme was
Construction. We had tool benches in the classroom, lots of different building
blocks and toys and construction themed art: we used toy steam rollers and
trucks to make tyre tracks and construction sites, we collaged concrete mixers
and bulldozers, made a construction worker with hard hat, tool belt and all the
other necessary clothing, and we made a tool belt by tracing, cutting and
gluing. The children are doing more and more cutting during art, and we’re
seeing a real improvement. As well, the older children are writing their names
each day on their art; the younger children are working towards that, sometimes
just writing the first letter of their names, and so on. Good work, everybody!
Our construction books
were: Dreaming Up, Construction Cat, Construction Worker, Alphabet Under
Construction; and some songs were: Johnny’s Hammer, My Name is Joe, Wheels on
the Digger, London Bridge is Falling Down, Build Up, and I think the most popular …Bob the Builder!
We watched a DVD
called Mighty Machines that taught us about all the vehicles used on the
construction site of a new hospital. We also walked along our street to have a
look at the construction site there; we saw the huge hole in the ground, the
backhoe, and all the fencing around the site for safety. We were lucky to have
a lovely sunny day for that walk, so we also saw lots of (spring?) flowers and
even some birds having a bath in a puddle.
This month, the four
and five year olds that will be going on to kindergarten started their weekly
journals. This will become a record of their progress in drawing, printing, and
other pre-kindergarten skills; they will
take their journal home at the end of the school year.
We had another super
Story Time at Edgemont Library, by one of the children’s librarians there. We
are very proud of how well behaved our class is when we are out in public, and
you as parents should be proud too. They
are also getting very good at going for walks in the neighbourhood, so I’m sure
we will be doing more of that as the weather gets better.
One last thing we’ve
been working on, has been practicing our songs for the upcoming Easter Concert
to be held on 8 March, in the church at 11:00 AM.
If you have any
questions about our program or your child, please feel free to ask us. We can
always arrange a time if the drop off times are too busy.
Thanks to you all for your support,
RESOURCE ROOM - Marion
BUILDING JOY IN OUR CHILDREN:
* give each child special individual time.
* create and keep alive good, warm memories through family traditions, photos, special events and doing things together as a family.
* smile frequently and enjoy a good laugh together.
* find activities you and your family enjoy doing together.
* remember, ordinary daily activities are as important as special trips and holidays.
*during the first five years, children need lots of opportunities to just play, either alone, with peers and with you.
* give children the opportunity to have play dates with their peers.
* sharing joy with others is very important.
* children are born not knowing what is safe and important. In the years before age five, they need parents and caregivers to provide routines and rules to maintain safety and respect for others.
*the parents and caregivers also need to provide consistent consequences and moral guidance, suitable for the age and temperament of each child, and teach them how to think, problem solve and communicate their feelings and needs.
Most of these essentials take place in ordinary, everyday activities at home or at the preschool. The important thing to remember is that children need exposure to all three of these essentials.
Resources for Parents
1. North Shore Community Resource and Referral
They will help with filling out subsidy forms, income tax forms, and will help with all child related activities, workshops, school & childcare facilities. They also have a large library of resources.
2. St. Catherine's Church Newsletter - Church Events
They have a 10am Service each Sunday and Evening Prayer during the week on zoom Tuesdays at 8pm. The first Sunday of every month is SOUL FOOD SUNDAY -- Come for breakfast with the Service. They are holding many family events this month and next so check out their newsletter:
3. Childcare BC Bulletin - Government of BC
This site will be useful for parents to see what the Government has in store for Childcare. Childcare has recently been changed from the Ministry of Children and Families to the Ministry of Education so there are many changes coming in the future.
Love the blog and thanks for keeping us informed. Those look like, fun, vibrant and colourful classrooms....keep up the great work
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