March 2017

Why Is Everyone Talking About The Month Of February??

Well...we had too much snow, that just wouldn't go, squatter skunks who wouldn't pack their trunks, and we used a LOT of tissues for our sniffle issues!

We would normally be in short sleeves about now with crocuses and cherry blossoms making an appearance in our gardens but Mother Nature has other ideas! Our clocks SPRING AHEAD this weekend so hopefully that will get the seasons moving!!

UPCOMING EVENTS

March 10 - 4's Skating Party

March 13-17 - Spring Break (Preschool Closed)

April 14 - Good Friday (Preschool Closed)

April 17 - Easter Monday (Preschool Closed)

April 20/21 - Easter Services

April 24-28 - Jean's Week

May 12 - Staff Pro D Day (Preschool Closed)

Here Is What The Teachers are Saying About Their Classrooms....

The Resource Office

The Essentials of Development

Emotional Development means developing a full range of emotions, from sad to happy to angry, and learning to handle them appropriately.  This leads to deeper qualities – sympathy, caring, resilience, self-esteem, assertiveness and being able to rise to life’s challenges.

Cognitive Development means being able to communicate, to think both creatively and abstractly, to pay attention and to solve problems, and develop keen judgement and a lifelong readiness to learn.

Social Development means being able to make friends and get along with others, work as a part of a team and be a good leader, all of which are built on self-confidence, cooperation and trust.

As we think about Spring and planting gardens, remember that a tiny sprout can only learn how to weather life’s challenges with nurturing and support.  Resilience comes from the comfort and encouragement we give children in the early years of life.  With cuddles, kisses and words of reassurance, little ones discover how to bend when they need to, how to adapt to change and how to bounce back from disappointment.  Let’s all help our children stay firmly rooted.

SUMMER PROGRAM - 2017

“AWAY WE GO” – Our Summer Program will once again run during the month of July.  Our theme this year will be transportation, Land, Water and Air…. Registration will begin Monday, April 10^th at 8:30 am.  Because of the holiday Monday, we will start on the 4^th of July and run Tuesday to Friday that week.  The next three weeks we will run Monday through Thursday.  Morning sessions will be

9-12 pm and afternoons from 1-4 pm.  The cost is $ 100 per session.  There is only one class so 3s, 4s, & 5s can attend together. Cheryl will be back to share in the fun, so here’s to lots of sunshine.      MARION 

The Discovery Twos

Love was in the air at preschool! What a fun and exciting month!

Our 2’s began February with Valentine’s Day! We made Love owls, heart penguins,

heart collages, and stamped heart shapes too! The classroom looked beautiful in time

for our Valentine’s Day party! We wore red, pink, white, or purple and munched on

some delicious party food! We would like to thank those parents who provided the

yummy snacks for this party! For circle, we learned to to sign “I love you’, we sang

"Skinamarinky Dinky Dink", and we listened to a story called “How do I love you?’ and also

sang a felt rhyme song called “Five little hearts.” It was great to see the children

enjoying the circles and playing together as we talked about using gentle hands and

caring about our friends.

We then focused on our primary colors, red, blue, and yellow. Our first

introduction to these colors we used Lego blocks to stamp each color and also colored

shapes. We wanted the children to recognize the colors first before the mixing fun

began. Next, we used our hands to mix red and yellow to make the color orange. The

children were delightfully surprised with the outcome. Our next color mixing experiment

was yellow and blue. This was also fun because we stamped frog shapes with the two

colors and our frog turned green. Red and blue were our next colors! We used diffusing

paper flowers and blue and red watercolors to make a beautiful purple flower! During

circle, we read “Charlie the colorful clown,” “Bear sees colors,” and sang a fun felt prop

song called “Beaver’s colorful tail.” That silly beaver!

We would like to take a moment to remind our parents with spring break coming

up, it is a great time to potty train! Please let us know if you are thinking of doing so in

order for us to continue the process at preschool!

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to talk to the

teachers.       Vibha, Danielle, Arsi, Stephanie, Susan

301

In the first week of February we practiced letters and numbers, encouraged the children to recognize their names, the sound of the letters in their names, and to name their initials. At circle, we played name-games to help the children learn their friend’s names.

We moved onto celebrating friendships, love, families and of course, the highly-anticipated Valentine’s Day. A big thank you to our lovely families for the yummies they provided us with for the party!

 We created many art pieces with hearts, used a lot of red, pink, purple paints and a bucketful of sparkles. It was nice to hear whom they dedicated their art to, they sure love their families and friends!

Mother Nature gave us some great ideas about circle time and classroom set-up planning, first in the form of dumping some unexpected amounts of snow, then directing a skunk family to live (and spray) in the church.

Hope you will all have a wonderful break, and that you can enjoy activities in the snow – up in the mountains!                                       

Estelle, Gabi and Karen

302

First of all, we would like to thank you for your contributions of yummy food items and drinks to celebrate Valentine’s Day!

February is usually the best time to talk about great topics with the children including family and friendships, emotions, social skills to help us navigate through preschool years and beyond…

The children had some great ideas on how to be helpful, how to care, share, be sensitive of others' feelings and reactions in tricky social situations. We paired them up to create art together, or help one another for a day. They loved talking about their families and drawing pictures for their much loved parents, siblings or preschool friends.

It is very exciting to see how they form new friendships and how easily they solve problems on their own without a grown-up’s help. They are growing up in front of our very own eyes. How special is that?!

We’ve all been enjoying the “store” in the home corner, where we are relentlessly practicing social skills for life! Let me tell you all that the line to the cash-registers moves painfully slow sometimes, they overcharge for groceries, you never find what you are looking for because they keep moving the merchandise, and you never find change!

The little ones usually prefer the gym, except for a few who likes to play outside better. We were stuck inside many times, but we brought the outside in by experimenting with snow, sculpting with snow, or just playing with snow on trays or in the water table.

Stinky little creatures decided to move in to the Church's unseen parts but they also gave us some great ideas for circle time stories and discussions on wild life and smells.

Hopefully the snowy season is just about to end, so we can move onto our Spring theme soon!

Enjoy Spring Break with your little ones!                 Karen and Gabi

304

February was the month about love! At circle we talked about feelings and friendship. For art we made Valentine bags, decorated hearts with glitter, created love bugs using hearts, made a collage heart, and decorated Valentine crowns. To end things off we had a very fun party to celebrate Valentine's Day. Thank you to everyone who brought the great snacks for us. It wouldn't be a party without them. 

The next thing we focused on were dinosaurs. We learnt a lot about all of the different dinosaurs there were. For art we painted T-Rex, painted wooden dinosaurs, splatter painted dinosaur stencils, used puffy paint on T-Rex's footprint, and put toy dinosaurs in paint then walked them into a piece of paper to see each one of their footprints. 

Next we will learn all about Spring!   Stephanie & Gabi

401

For the month of February we focused on friendship and love. At circle time we did a lot of name games and group activities. We talked about someone or something we love and why. For art we decorated Valentine bags, created a person using hearts, cut out hearts and then decorated them with glitter, and made a heart tree. To end things off we had a formal Valentine party. We transformed the classroom into a formal restaurant. Thank you to all of the parents who contributed a delicious snack for our party! 

Next we went onto learning about a popular author and illustrator, Eric Carle. We talked about who he was and what made him decide to want to write books. We also looked at the beautiful pictures in the books that he makes using a collage technique. Each day we would read one of his stories at circle time and then create art to go along with the story. For 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' we made diffusing paper butterflies with watercolours and egg carton caterpillars, for 'The Greedy Python' we painted and cut snakes out it paper plates, for 'The Grouchy Ladybug' we made ladybugs and glued on a grouchy picture of ourselves on it, and for 'The Tiny Seed' we used Eric Carle's collage technique and created flowers. 

Next month we will continue to look at a couple more books by Eric Carle and also go to the library for a field trip. After we get back from spring break, we will starting exploring the season of Spring.
Stephanie & Susan

402

We started February with Love of Course, for Valentine’s Day.  Some of the books we read were “Franklin’s Valentines”, “Pete the Cat – Cool Valentines’ and “Happy Valentine’s Day Dolores”. We played Memory Games with Coloured Hearts and choose a heart and followed through with the action e.g. Jump, Shake a friend’s hand. For Art, we did lots and lots of cutting out heart shapes.  We decorated them with paint, glue or sequins and even made a hat.  We also cut out our own Heart Shaped Name puzzles and made “Love Penguins”. We finished with a Valentine’s Party, thanks to those who brought the yummy treats.

Our next topic was “Pete the Cat’.  This was such great fun. We read about his coloured shoes, missing buttons, groovy shoes and bedtime fun.  We listened & sang along to the songs that went along with the story.  We used shoes to make ‘shoe prints’, we cut out shirts and glued on buttons and we baked some yummy muffins.

We decided to change it up a bit and learn about a Canadian Artist named Tom Thompson.  We learnt about him and how he loved to sketch, draw and paint landscapes and portraits. We discovered he had many brothers and sisters and played 8 different musical instruments. We then ‘got to be’ an artist for a week.  Starting with sketching then using water coloured paints. We then moved on to sketch a bowl of fruit using charcoal and then our imagination to sketch with water coloured pencils/crayons.  Our grand finale was sketching first then using acrylics to paint on our “canvas’s”.

It is great to see the children having play dates outside of school. This really shows in free play as they connect with each other and engage in social play.  They are also trying hard to ‘fill everyone’s buckets’ by incorporating different friends in their play.

Finally, just a reminder that this is the time of year we are full swing into Kindergarten Readiness.  The children should be trying to put their own jackets etc. on, be responsible for their belongings and practicing writing their names.

Any questions, please feel free to ask us.  Have a great Spring Break!    
Arsi, Danielle and Sousan

403

For the month of February we focused on friendship and love. At circle time we did a lot of name games and group activities. We talked about someone or something we love and why. For art we decorated Valentine bags, created a person using hearts, cut out hearts and then decorated them with glitter, and drew someone we love. To end things off we had a formal Valentine party. We transformed the classroom into a formal restaurant. Thank you to all of the parents who contributed a delicious snack for our party! 

Next we went into exploring everything about dinosaurs. At circle we would talk about the different dinosaurs there were and their characteristics. We talked about how dinosaurs are extinct and how scientists figured out how each one looked like. We also discussed volcanoes. For art we painted wooden dinosaurs with q-tips, painted Stegosaurus, string painted Pterodactyl, made dinosaur prints with sponges, traced dinosaur footprints with a candle then washed watercolour over it to see the picture appear, made paper mâché volcanoes, and painted plaster of Paris dinosaurs. Exploring dinosaurs was so exciting and interactive. We were able to make our volcano erupt and we pretended to be paleontologists and used tools to dig up dinosaur fossils. 

Next month we will be talking about Spring.  

Stephanie, Estelle, Gabi, Sousan, Karen

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And to help promote a healthy family life...may I suggest FAMILY GAME NIGHT!?!

Here are five big research-based reasons why family game nights are important:

1. GAMES ARE GOOD FOR MOTOR SKILLS.
Every time your little ones roll the dice or shuffle the cards, they’re developing their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills – which can lead to later success in sports, playing instruments, writing and more.

2. GAMES CAN LEAD TO BETTER GRADES.
Cutting to the chase- a little family game time now can lead to some great academic benefits come report card time!
Many games build specific skills that are useful in your kids’ academic careers – like math, spelling, vocabulary and general knowledge, to name just a few. Research from Carnegie Mellon shows that even a small amount of practice playing academic games can lead to big results in the classroom.

3. GAMES HELP YOUR KIDS SOLVE PROBLEMS.
Researchers from the University of Florida have found that kids who practice strategizing and solving problems with their parents end up having better memory techniques and more success at solving all sorts of problems on their own.
Playing strategy games with your kids is one way to give them valuable practice at solving problems. But even more importantly, it also gives you a chance to demonstrate effective problem-solving techniques that your kids can learn from and emulate.

4. GAME NIGHT IS FAMILY BONDING NIGHT.
Numerous studies have shown that children from families who maintain strong lines of communication through frequent get-togethers like game nights and family dinners enjoy benefits to nearly every aspect of their lives, including:

• Larger vocabularies starting at age two
• Higher reading scores in elementary through high school
• More motivation in school
• Better relationships with peers
• A more positive perception of the parent-child relationship
• Better emotional well-being and life satisfaction

5. GAMES ARE JUST PLAIN FUN!
Granted, this is a different breed of fun than what you got used to during your carefree, kid-free college days, and it’s surely different than what your kids will be calling fun in just a few short years. But for now, while everybody’s still hanging out in the house all together, make the most of it – by making some amazing memories!