April Newsletter

                              APRIL NEWSLETTER 2016

Dear Parents,

I hope everybody had a nice Easter Break and enjoyed some special time with their family! It is great to finally see all the snow melting. I can’t wait to see our children running down the hill and playing in the trees again!!

The children enjoyed our nursery rhyme unit and fairy tales that we read to them last month. Our students had so much fun, singing and clapping our rhymes and acting out the stories in the gym.

Thank you to Dr. Finch for visiting our class and teaching our students about the importance of eye exams. The  “Teddy Bear Eye Check” presentation was also a great way to introduce children to what to expect when you go to an optometrist.

APRIL THEMES

SIGNS OF SPRING

For the following weeks we will be emphasizing “changes in nature” during spring. We will explore the season through various hands on activities. We will plant seeds, watch them sprouting and turning into vegetable plants and flowers. Please ask your child to “I spy” for birds that are returning back from warmer places! Check the grass for earthworms, robins and watch for buds on the trees. We will keep our eyes and ears wide open and explore the season with all our senses.

We would like to “dissect” potted spring flowers (tulips, daffodils etc.) and take a closer look at their roots, bulbs etc. If you would like to donate some spring flowers to either brighten up our classroom or for scientific purposes that would be greatly appreciated.  

DENTAL HEALTH

This month is “National Children’s Dental Health Month”.  We will take the opportunity to teach our children about how to keep their teeth healthy, eating tooth friendly foods, flossing and going to the dentist. Our dental health unit will include fun activities such as brushing and flossing “Duplo blocks” and using fly swatters to hit food items that cause “sugar bugs” . 

CHECK YOUR INDOOR SHOES

We realized a big growth spurt in some of our students and noticed that some of our little feet are getting too big for their shoes. Please check your child’s current indoor shoes to ensure that they still fit them.

OUTSIDE PLAY

Depending on weather conditions, we will start taking our children outside again. Please make sure your child comes dressed in layers and wears appropriate shoes for potential outside play. If you don’t find us in the classroom, we will meet you in the boot room for pick up. It might take us a while to get used  to putting on jackets, shoes, etc. again. It certainly helps to practice zipping and buttoning at home. It will save us precious playtime! J

SASKATOON PRESCHOOL FOUNDATION (SPF) SPRING RAFFLE

We are grateful to have an opportunity to participate in the SPF Annual Raffle again. SPF is an organization that subsidizes families who can’t afford to send their children to preschool and provides training and resources for preschools. I will provide you with further information once we have the raffle tickets.

Kind Regards,                                               

Uli Hecker, Ruth Skinner, Susanne Pachal, Samina Roohi

Register

MAKE SURE TO REGISTER SOON!!!

2016/17 classes are starting to fill up!

March Newsletter

    MARCH NEWSLETTER 2016

Dear Parents,

March is here and spring seems to be just around the corner! Time is flying, especially when you look at our children. They all have grown so much within the past few months. Our students enjoyed learning about different vehicles last month. After we read the book “This is not a box”, the children used boxes and turned them into cars, trains, rocket ships and boats. We also taught our students the German names for different vehicles and sang a variety of action songs.

Due to the spring break, March will be a relatively short month; however like always, we will be busy exploring the world around us. Depending on the weather, we might even start taking our children outside again (we will let you know beforehand).

MARCH THEME:  NURSERY RHYMES

There is overwhelming evidence that early learning of nursery rhymes, rhythmic poems, songs and chants significantly enhances early reading skills.

Listening to funny poems and searching for patterns and rhymes within poems also provide a fun and active playground for phonetic awareness and the ability to hear the sounds of letters. Our children will listen to a variety of traditional and modern nursery rhymes in English and German and many activities and crafts will evolve around this topic.

TEDDY BEAR “EYE CHECK”: Wednesday, March 9th

On Wednesday, March 9^th we will have an optometrist visit our M-W-F classroom. She will talk about the importance of regular eye exams. The children will have a chance to use doctor tools and practice eye exams on Teddy bears. We hope the children will come home and tell you all about this special visit. Optometrists and doctors highly encourage parents to get their child’s vision checked from an early age on. I am sure the “Teddy Bear eye check” will help your child to get excited about going to his first or next optometrist appointment! J

We will try to schedule an appointment for our Tue-Thu class as well and will let you know about the date.

EASTER ACTIVITIES

We will have a short unit on “Easter traditions”. Feel free to take a look at the booklet that will be sitting on the little table in the hallway. You will also see “Easter activities” on our center table, that include counting, matching and sorting of Easter eggs.  

DATES to REMEMBER

Friday, March 4          PD day, no school

March 9/10              Scholastic book orders due

Friday, March 25       Good Friday, no school         

March 28- April 1      Spring Break

Kind Regards,                                              

Uli Hecker, Ruth Skinner, Susanne Pachal, Samina Roohi

February Newsletter

FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER 2016

Dear Parents,

I hope you all enjoyed the unusual “heat wave” that we experienced last month. The weather has taken us on another roller coaster ride.

Thank you to all children and parents for contributing to our “Children from around the World” unit last month! The highlight was our “International Snack Day” and it felt like going to a multicultural restaurant. Thank you for bringing all the different food samples from around the world. We had so many interesting Show and Tells and we traveled around the globe with toy cars, airplanes and ships. It truly helped the children to develop a basic understanding of how we have to use different forms of transportation to get to other places.

Our students had a blast, celebrating “Fasching” and scaring away winter. It used to be my favourite holiday when I was a child. When else do you get to dress up, dance on the sidewalks and catch candies that people from the floats toss in the crowd? J

FEBRUARY THEME

This week, we have celebrated love and friendship. You might have seen the various Valentine activities on our center table. We also read books about how important it is to “fill our buckets” by being gentle and kind to each other. February is a fairly short month, as the break starts next week.

TRANSPORTATION

As we had already touched the topic of “Going to Places” last month we will take a closer look at different ways of transportation. Part of this unit will be sorting, categorizing vehicles, flying paper airplanes and exploring “sink and float”. Pretty soon your child will teach you how to say car, boat, train and airplane in German.

If you know someone who drives a truck, flies an airplane or is a captain, pirate (may be not) etc., please let us know!!! We had a student’s dad visiting us this Wednesday. Thank you to Don Atchison, who is a pilot and dad of one of our students. He told our MWF a.m. class about his profession and how airplanes work.

We always encourage and welcome parents, family members and friends to join us and share their stories and knowledge with our children!

DATES to REMEMBER

Monday, February 15   Family Day, Holiday, no school

February 16-19           February Break, no school

March 4                    PD Day, no school

March 25                   Good Friday Holiday

March 28 – April 3     Inclusive Spring Vacation

Openings for the 2016-17 School Year

Our classes for the Fall are starting to fill up. Many of our current families have already pre-registered their child or younger siblings.  If you haven’t done so yet or   know people who have children that are eligible for preschool, please contact us at 306-281-4428 or coordinator.Hanselandgretel@gmail.com.

Have a wonderful February Break! For those of you heading off to destinations, please drive or fly safely and enjoy your holidays.  For those of you staying here, let’s keep our fingers crossed for continued great weather! J

Kind Regards,

Uli Hecker, Ruth Skinner

Susanne Pachal, Samina Roohi

Available spots!

Celebrating Fasching!

Dear Parents,

We will have two "special event" days this week!

On Monday, we will wrap up our “Children from around the world” unit with  our international snack day!

On Wednesday this week,  we will be celebrating FASCHING!

Parents and care givers are invited to join us for the last 20 minutes of class time on both days!

FASCHING Party: February 3^rd

We will be celebrating Fasching this month. Fasching is a traditional German holiday season, often associated with festivals of the Christian church (letting loose before Lent and fasting begins). However, it goes back to pagan times, and was a way of driving out the spirits of winter and encouraging the coming of spring and good crops. In Germany, at this time of the year, many people in different areas of the country dress up in costumes and join floats Fasching/Karneval parades that are happening all over the country.

The most exciting part is the candy toss throughout the parade. In many cities of Germany you  will see hundreds of people on the sidewalks, shouting “Helau” or “Alarf” and trying to catch Fasching candies.

There will be a poster hanging in the hallway of our preschool, with more information on Fasching.

Faschings Party:

We will have a Fasching Party in our classroom. Children are invited to wear a costume that day. Parents are welcome to join us for the last 20 minutes and be part of the candy toss parade. 

I will order traditional German “Krapfen” (doughnuts) for our Fasching Party and children will not need a snack that day!

Please remember that there is no class this Friday!

Have a great week!

Uli Hecker