Wednesday, 1 April 2020

April 2020

Usually March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb...but I feel we may be in for a SAFARI during the month of APRIL!!

Well, here we are on April 1st and no joke, these have to be some of the strangest times that many of us have ever been in before!

Hopefully our building will open for May but unfortunately, it is out of our hands and we must wait to hear how this pandemic will play out for us in North Vancouver. We will keep you informed as soon as we hear anything.

All preschool spaces will be held until the end of the year for those currently enrolled.

Refunds will be issued for those who have already paid for April, and other months, once we find out if we will be continuing in May or not.

Take this time to spend quality time with your families. We may never get this opportunity again and let me tell you, they grow up fast and one day...they do move out! 

Get plenty of sunshine (as the Covid virus does not like it!) and fresh air and STAY HEALTHY!!

If we all do our part, keep social distancing and washing our hands, we will get through this.

The Preschool Office is open for responding to emails and phone messages if you have any questions or concerns.


March was a great, but a short month for us at preschool. But we did do some great stuff in our classrooms. Please check it out below!!


AND WHILE YOU ARE AT HOME: You can KEEP SUPPORTING THE PRESCHOOL and help to keep your child's boredom at bay!! 
PLEASE think about ordering from SCHOLASTIC BOOKS! All orders are shipped to your home!
Visit: www.scholastic.ca/clubshop


NOTE: SUMMER PROGRAM REGISTRATION HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE. Hopefully we will be able to run the program in July!! We will  keep you informed.


IMPORTANT DATES & EVENTS (Note: May Change)

APR 8/9 - Easter Services - *CANCELLED*
APR 10 - Good Friday - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 13 - Easter Monday - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 27 - MAY 1 - Jeans Week to support Children's Hospital *POSTPONED*
MAY 4 - Possible Preschool Start Date - Look for Confirmation Email in late April
MAY 6/7 - Music Open House (3s & 4s) *POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE*
MAY 18 - Victoria Day - PRESCHOOL CLOSED
JUNE 15-19 - Extra week of classes added in lieu of extra week taken at Spring Break
JUNE 19 - 4's Graduation
JUNE 19 - Last Day of Preschool
JUNE 22/23 - Picnics


DISCOVERY TWOS - Vibha, Arsi, Danielle, Marjan, Rose

March was a short month for us but before we left for Spring Break, we did a lot of stuff!

At the sandbox, we had beautiful yellow flowers and rocks, which the children enjoyed playing with together. 

At the water table, we had a few small frog toys and one big beautiful frog in the middle and the children were having fun with them as well. 

At the science table, there were some nests and birds and a few logs, and the children enjoyed working with them. 

At the art table, children made birds with beautiful colourful feathers. They also made amazing flowers with their hand prints and you would be thrilled to see how the beautiful flowers were made with their little hands!
 
Other days, the children made caterpillar collage art and leaves with marble painting for the caterpillars to sit on. They were beautifully done!

They also painted their own rocks, and used pine cones and little brushes and leaves for painting another day. 

For circle time, we had Five Little Birds felt story, Blue Bird Blue Bird What Do You See? felt story, Five Little Peonies Flower felt story, the Rain Story book, Five Little Tulips felt story and rhyme, Little Birds rhyme and action song, Mouse's First Spring book, Dancing with Sunflowers, I am a Little Sunflower, My Sunflower action rhymes, and the 10 Little Speckled Frogs book.

We had a great and focused two weeks in March. We look forward to more preschool in the future. Stay healthy and we hope to be back at preschool soon.

TREEHOUSE ROOM - Karen, Susan, Brita, Marjan, Carol

I hope you all had a good Spring Break and a great relaxing time with your family before this pandemic has made us all so anxious!

Welcome to the world of Dr.Seuss. We were talking about Dr.Seuss for two weeks. In the house corner, we had cages and lots of stuffies which the children really enjoyed playing  with.  

At the water table, the children were playing with alphabet crabs, referring to the Dr.Seuss alphabet book that was read for children on a previous day at the circle time.  

At the circle time, we read many other Dr. Seuss books, including the Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish, and Red Fish Blue Fish books. We sang "I'm a little fish song" and the "Green Egg Green Egg What Do You See" felt story. 

Another book was "Cat in the Hat", "Hands Hands Finger Thumb", "What you can do in a people house", "The Foot Book", and "Hop on Pop". We had games about finding the Lorax behind the Truffala  tree, and what colour Truffala tree is missing. Also "What hat is the cat in the hat behind" game with Dr. Seuss characters. During the circle time, we also had learning fun facts about Dr.Seuss, like his full name, the number of children's book that he wrote and illustrated, his funny hat collection, how he visited his dad when he worked at a zoo, and how he came home and doodled afterwards. 

We also read "What pet should I get?" book. We listed the pets that each child would like. We also read "How the Grinch stole Christmas" book, and discussed the message of the book, which is the true meaning of Christmas. Dr. Seuss ABC was another book; we sang the alphabet while rowing our boats, we wrote a list of words that started with the letters of the alphabets. We also practiced our Easter songs.
 
For art, we had "Cat in the Hat" collage and also Truffala trees on water colour. Children also made a red fish, blue fish with the hand prints of both their hands. They also made green eggs by stamp painting. Children were sponge painting, decorating pet shapes, onion stamping the grinch face and decorating it, and painting the letters of the alphabet and corresponding shapes.

We also watched video about Dr.Seuss called  The Lorax, Cat in the Hat, and Green Eggs and Ham

And last but not least, we went for a neighborhood walk, and the children enjoyed their yummy hot chocolate from Delany's. 

We hope to see you all in the preschool soon!

SUNFLOWER ROOM - Arsi, Danielle, Carol

To our 401 parents, we’d like to start by saying we hope your family and friends are healthy and safe. We miss our children very much and we hope they are all doing well.

Our month of March began with looking into Spring! We began by talking about planting seeds and flowers. During circle, the children helped Danielle plant a seed, using soil and a shovel. This opened up the conversation about seeds, pollination, and ways flowers can start to grow. 

We read the book “Seeds to plant” which showed us the parts of the flower as it’s planted. We learned about roots, stems, leaves and the flower. We also looked at items needed for gardening such as gloves, shovels, rakes and pots to name a few. 

The children were excited to learn that even the wind and birds can help Mother Nature by planting seeds! Furthermore, we learned about how  bees pollinate flowers. Bees are so important to us! We also looked at the books, “Flowers,” “Grow Flower Grow,” and “This is the Sunflower.” We pretended to be sunflowers and danced to “I’m a little Sunflower.” We had fun with the felt rhymes called “5 little Flowers” and “My little sunflower.” For art, we sequenced from 1-3 the steps of planting a seed, we drew a flower using dot to dot numbers, we made our own flowers in a pot using different shapes, and we used sunflower seeds to make our own sunflower!

On our second week, we read the book “Mouse’s First Spring,” “When will it be Spring?”, “It looked like spilt milk,” and “Outside inside.” These books talked about the change in weather and how outside looks a bit different. The children mentioned such things as we hear birds, trees start budding with leaves, grass starts to grow, we wear boots and rain coats, and the temperature becomes a bit warmer. We played a felt board guessing game called “which colour flower is missing?” and sang a song called “Spring time.” 

The children loved and giggled through the story of “It looked like spilt milk,” and enjoyed watching the felt pieces of each cloud as it was put on the board. We then talked about why we need rain in spring and what shape clouds they’ve seen when they look up into the sky! There were some amazing shapes!  We also played a felt board game where the moon hid behind various coloured clouds! The children were super excited when the moon was found each time. That silly Herman the worm also made an appearance at circle as we sang his song! He got bigger and bigger as he ate a grape, an apple, a banana, and a watermelon!! Ask the teacher what happened to him at the end??  It’s quite funny!

We also did a funny action song called “Wiggly Worm,” a felt board rhyme called “6 little worms,” and a fun rhyme named “Where can they be?” For art, the children used nature as their brush to paint a nature art. It was neat to see how the children really enjoyed using nature to create amazing pieces of art! Moreover, we used our fine motor skills to practice cutting out a worm. This worm loved mud and so the children used wide brushes to paint “mud” for their worm to sit on!

What a fun month March was so far!!! We learned many things about spring and nature!

We wish you all a healthy and happy spring break and hope to see you soon once it’s safe!

MUSIC PROGRAM - Tifany Oakes

Dear families,

Thank you for always showing up to music class with joy and excitement. As we all know, March was a short month for the preschool and we aren’t sure when things will be up and running again.

In March, we talked a lot about our upcoming Easter Service and how excited we are to perform for our loved ones. We practiced our words, singing and we had prepared a dance, as well. At this time, the children may be feeling confused as to why we are no longer practicing. Maybe the children are wondering if and when we will finally get to perform what we had been working on; What we had been talking about so much over the last couple of weeks, spent together. I am so proud of their hard work and focus.

Please let your children know how amazingly musical they are. Ask them to sing and dance, for you, what they remember. Give them the opportunity to perform for you, if they wish.

For the rest of March we were going to continue on with Easter rehearsals, focusing on singing loud and proud as well as memory games to help with learning lyrics. I would have rewarded their hard work with sparkly Easter stickers and a game of freeze dance or musical chairs. Can you play musical chairs with them? They LOVE it.
 
I hope for the chance to be musical with the children in the near future. I miss them dearly. Until that time, stay safe and healthy. Above all, stay musical! 

Tuesday, 3 March 2020

March 2020


If we all wish hard enough, maybe we can get a jump start on MARCH-ing into SPRING!! 

Time is flying by and we have only four months left before the school year is over! It's hard to believe but we still have a lot planned so keep checking your calendars and bulletin boards so you don't miss a thing!!



NOTE: The 4's Skating Party date has been changed to FRIDAY, MARCH 6TH! Please check your emails and bulletin boards for specific times and location.

Please see Calendar of Important Events below.




COVID 19 - There has been a lot in the media regarding Covid 19. Here is a link that will give you more information for British Columbians: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site/Documents/COVID19_schools_childcare_guidelines.pdf

The best thing you can do to help us and your family keep down the spread of Covid 19 and all other communicable diseases that are just as dangerous, is to WASH YOUR HANDS. 

If your child comes down with symptoms such as sore throat, fever, cough, vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea or any strange rashes, please KEEP THEM HOME. 

Also, when your child has been away sick, please refrain from sending them back too early. If your child has LOW ENERGY, you should keep them home. If your child is not able to participate in the program, we will call you to pick them up.

When your child is ABSENT, please call or email the preschool to let us know and to tell us why they are absent. If they are SICK, we need to know the SYMPTOMS so we can keep track of what is going through our classrooms. This is very important. 

FUNDRAISING AROUND ST. CATHERINE'S PRESCHOOL

The Card Project - We take your child's art and turn it into beautiful greeting cards! Great for gifts or for the many card-giving occasions throughout the year! You can also order exercise books and sketch books. 

Lovable Labels - Everyone need labels! For lunch kits and food containers, for clothes and for the many other things that we have that need labeling! Go to: www.StCatherines.LoveableLabels.ca

Cobs Bakery - If you shop at the Cobs Bakery in Edgemont Village, when they are ringing you up, tell them you support our preschool and we will get a percentage of your sale!  

Scholastic Books - If you order $30 online, you get a free book! But feel free to order just one book! Some are as low as $2! Foster a love of reading in your child and they will have the best start into their education!

Summer Program 2020: 
"KINGS, QUEENS, CASTLES & THINGS"
Registration begins Wednesday, April 15th.  
Sessions run July 6-9, July 13-16, July 20-23 and July 27-30.  Morning sessions 9-12 noon.  
Afternoons sessions 1-4 PM.  
Cost is $110 per session.


IMPORTANT DATES & EVENTS

MAR 6 - 4's Skating Party
MAR 16-20 - Spring Break PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 8/9 - Easter Services (3s & 4s)
APR 10 - Good Friday PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 13 - Easter Monday PRESCHOOL CLOSED
APR 15 - Summer Program Registration
APR 27-MAY 1 - Jean's Week for Children's Hospital
MAY 18 - Music Open House (3s & 4s)

Hey!! The teachers spend a lot of time planning and preparing to make each day fun and special in the eyes of your child. They want to inspire wonder and curiosity and a love of school and spirit!  

Hurrah for our families! Hurrah for our friends! Hurrah for our community! Hurrah for our school! 

Check out what happened in the classrooms last month:


RAINBOW ROOM - Vibha, Rose, Marjan, Danielle, Arsi

We just had another amazing month of February here in our Rainbow Room.

We were still exploring Winter during the first week of February, we made a beautiful Winter Collage with paint during our Art time. Also, we read our favorite story “Five little Snowmen” during Circle time.

For the second week of February we had with our theme “Valentines”. We learnt all about Love, Friendship, Feelings, Kindness, Sharing& Caring. We also learnt how to say “I love you” in sign language. We had Pajamas day and a Valentine’s Day party. We especially like to thank you to all the parents who bought in all the delicious snacks for our Valentine’s Day party, we had such an amazing time.

For arts, we made a “heart” shape collage with paper, and we did “The Shape of My heart” with paint.

As for circle time we learned “5 Little Valentine’s” (rhyme) and our favorite songs:
You are my sunshine”
Skidamarink”
Way up high in the Valentine tree”

Finally, we finished off the month with our Transportation theme!
We talked about different forms of transportation (Cars, Boats, Trains, Buses, Boats, Planes) We did “This little train” Felt Rhyme.
Our favorite song during circle time was “Wheels on the bus”.
Books we have read are
Thomas the tank Engine”,
Trucks”
That’s not my Truck”
“We all go traveling by”
For arts, we did Tractor painting, Gluing shapes on Yellow bus, transportation shape collage, and hot air balloons painting.

Please continue to have your children walk up and down the stairs by themselves holding the railing and/or your hand, and have them put their own snack bag in the basket. Thank you for your continuous support!

Our themes for March will be Natural Spring and Farm.
As always, please come and talk to us if you have any questions or concerns.


TREEHOUSE ROOM - Karen, Susan, Marjan, Brita, Carol

Hello Parents! We started so many new things this month, here we go.

               Every year we introduce our orca whale Echo to the class. Echo goes home with our children that have registered as a 4. So far 6 children have taken Echo and what adventures he has had so far. Keep the adventures going when it is your child’l,..ls turn.
                On our bulletin boards you should have seen information about the Card Project. The children have put together a beautiful piece of art using watercolour on diffusing paper and an orca whale breaching in the centre. The children were happy with their piece and excited of the possibility of being made into a card. 
                Show and share has been a big hit! We love how the children are happy to show off their items. This is such a wonderful way to get up in front of their peers and be comfortable talking about something they are happy to share. There is a sign up sheet on the Treehouse door, spaces are filling up.
                We have also started our journals. Each week the 4’s will sit down with the teacher and draw something that interests them or something to do with the theme we are focusing on. Once they are finished the children describe their picture to us and we write it down. This will be continued till the end of the year.
                Now on to our themes for the month of February. We started off with BEE KIND. We hope you got a chance to see the board in the hall with all the bee’s 🐝 on it. At circle we read In My Heart and talked about being kind, feelings and sharing. This was a segway into everything about Valentines Day.
                Who doesn’t like chocolate and flowers for Valentines Day. We turned the home corner into a chocolate shop and under the treehouse we made a flower shop. 
                Our circle times were filled with stories The Day it Rained Hearts, Love Splat, Happy Valentines Curious George, Blue heart, blue heart what do you see? We also did 5 little hearts rhyme, Heart is its name, find the missing heart and Valentines give away to you rhyme. 
                For art we where busy making Love bugs from paper plates, decorating paper bags for the Valentine cards, marble painting heart shapes and finger painting the word Love.
                We ended or Valentines Day with a party🎉. Thank you to all the parents that brought food in to share. Without the food it wouldn’t be a party.
                Now on to the second half of the month….
                We went back in time, about 240 million years ago. We transformed the home corner into a Jurassic Park. You could find Volcanoes, T-Rex, Triceratops, Velociraptors, Spinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Plateosaurus, Stegosaurus and so many more. There were even Pterodactyls in the sky among the clouds.
                All around the classroom from the water table that had hatching ice eggs, to the sand box that contained dinosaur sand shapers, the light table had plastic bones and brushes. Our tables had dinosaur puzzles, matching games, lace dinosaurs and stencil rubbings.We continued the play out side with a Dinosaur hunt. There were enough for each child to have 1 and they were responsible to find it food, a home and friends. It took our outside play to a whole new level. 
                Dinosaur art was explored with clay, molds, brushes and plastic knives. Painting dinosaur window coverings, using rollers to paint dinosaurs and finger painting the back of a dinosaur and giving it the name of the being of a child…Williamasaurous is an example. We even had dinosaur foot prints leading to the Treehouse. Luckily we were not around to see who left them.
                Circle time was filled with all sorts of information. Were dinosaurs herbivore, carnivore or omnivores? Most carnivores walked on 2 feet that helped them move faster. The word dinosaur means Terrifying lizard. The colour of all dinosaurs in unknown it is just an educated guess. I could go on…….
                We played matching dinosaur game, we read All about Dinosaurs, What if Dinosaurs came back? How do dinosaurs go to school? Dinosaur Stomp, Individual books about particular dinosaurs, The Good Dinosaur CD and watched a video from the Magic School Bus. We also pretend we were dinosaurs using our hands, feet, voices and heads. Last but not least 5 dinosaurs felt rhyme. 
                Whew! I think I covered the month of February. As we head into March we are exploring the world of Dr. Seuss and after Spring break we will be talking about you guessed it, SPRING. Our Easter service will be coming up in April and we are starting to prepare for the Easter service songs, thank you Tiffany.
                Once again thanks for reading our blog to the end. 



SUNFLOWER ROOM - Danielle, Arsi, Carol

For the Month of February, we started with talking about Valentine’s Day. How we love our family and friends. We read the felt story ‘The Lonely Heart’ and books “Froggy’s First Kiss, The night before Valentine’s Day, Franklins Valentine, The biggest Valentine Ever & ‘Skidamarink’.  We also read stories about being kind to one another and helping friends. We guessed which color heart was missing and matched different hearts as a team. We listened to the felt rhymes ‘The Valentine Tree, 6 Valentines & 5 Valentines to Give Away. We sang ‘Skidamarink & the ‘Heart’ Bingo Song. We made Bees with Heart shaped wings, a Heart Collage, a Tree with hearts and made a Heart Shaped Name puzzle.  These art activities involved practicing our cutting skills, hand eye coordination and following 2- 3 steps to complete. A fun time was had in our ‘bakery’ with cookies, cupcakes, cash registers and ‘money’.  We even had fun in the water table finding hearts in the peanut foam (it looked like snow).

We finished Valentine’s Week with a great party. Thank you to the parents who provided the Party food, a fun time was had by all.

We moved onto learning about Numbers, from 1 – 10. We read the Stories “10 Tiny Turtles & 10 Lucky Ladybugs’. We sang “5 Fat Sausages” & “5 Little Elephants”.  We counted out the rhymes 5 Little Frogs and 5 Big Buses.  We found the match to our number from 0 -9 and played which number was missing.  For art we matched the numbers 1 – 10 to make a caterpillar and then used a bingo dabber to count out the amounts needed for each number from 1 -10. In the home corner we turned it into a grocery store where we shopped for things but it had to match the number on the basket. If we had the number 7 on a basket – we could only buy 7 things. This was a great week, as we started to visualize the quantity each number was associated with. e.g. : : = 4.

For our last week we have been busy learning about 4 shapes – Rectangle, Square, Circle and Triangle. We read the books ‘In a box, Scribble, What is a Triangle, Square, Rectangle, Friendshape & Owl Babies’.  For art we matched the different shapes to each other, we cut out a rectangle to make a shape robot and then we used shapes to make our own Owls. We tried something different in the water table as we used different shapes to make our own robots/spaceships. We had the opportunity to ‘throw’ bean bag shapes onto the matching shape in the home corner with our friends.  We have been very busy challenging ourselves while still filling our buckets.

In the next month we will start learning about Spring and our Alphabet. We will also be looking into Kindergarten Readiness.  A big part of this is independence.  As we will be encouraging them to help themselves more as they get ready for kindergarten e.g. putting on their own jackets, zipping up their jackets, opening & closing their own snacks.


MUSIC PROGRAM - Tifany

In the month of February, we celebrated friendship and love. We practiced matching tones and continued to get familiar with the ‘Rhythm Family’. The children were also introduced to the ‘Cousins Three’ and played a fun shoe-passing game to practice our sense of triple or ‘waltz’ time. We must do this because there will be singing and dancing to ‘Waltz’ time in our upcoming Easter Service. During Valentine’s week, we used tone blocks to spell the word, L-O-V-E, in an arpeggio of do-mi-sol-do. (The ‘C’ major scale)

Over the past two weeks we have been talking about our Easter Service and all of the exciting Spring things to look forward to. We coloured to, “Flight of the Bumblebee” and felt the Bzzz of the violin. We marched to the “Anvil Chorus”, learning how to take long legato and short staccato steps and we explored the brass family, as we played our imaginary trumpets to some Big Band music.

We are now into March and focusing all of our energy on preparing for the Easter Service. Our service is going to be full of wonderful surprises, where families will get a chance to enjoy the their children’s developing musicianship.

Families are encouraged to play various genres of music in the home and ask your child if they can hear the beat. See if they can clap or tap with you; maybe even dance! Ask them what instruments they hear and find out why they like/dislike certain songs.


With all my heart, thank you for keeping music in the home. See you in the Spring!


RESOURCE OFFICE - Marion

All the children are busy learning through play.  

The 2s are developing their play skills, sharing and using their words to interact with their peers.  At this age children are wanting some control in their daily routines.  Give them the opportunity to walk down the stairs on their own, holding the railing and they can hang their coats in their cubbies.  Giving young children time to process our requests of them is essential for their development of self help skills.  You can ask a child to repeat your request back to you so you know that they have heard you.  Follow through with expectations and be consistent with consequences. 
The teachers will be working with the 4s on Kindergarten readiness skills.  There are many opportunities each day to point out letters, numbers, colors and shapes.  Play games while driving from one activity to another such as "I Spy", pointing out different objects around them.  Have fun!

 


Summer Program 2020: 
"KINGS, QUEENS, CASTLES & THINGS"
Registration begins Wednesday, April 15th.  Sessions run July 6-9, July 13-16, July 20-23 and July 27-30.  Morning sessions 9-12 noon.  Afternoons sessions 1-4 PM.  Cost is $110 per session.