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

Just a reminder!

“CHILDREN FROM AROUND THE WORLD”

Dear Parents,

Our January Theme will be “Children from around the world”. We would like to take our children on a multicultural journey, exploring some of the fascinating and exciting cultures and places around the world and within Canada.

Show & Tell

Show & tell will look a little different this month:

We want every child to have an opportunity to share something from/about another culture in the world.

In order to squeeze every child into our schedule, we will double-up our show & tell calendar. One student will have his/her show and tell in the morning and the other student at the end of class.

Kids can bring:

·         An item from family travels (maybe relatives have given them a souvenir)

·         Some thing from your own or a different cultural heritage

·         a picture from a book, or something you found on the internet, or at 10.000 Villages (store)

·         wear a cultural outfit, if you have one ( or just a hat, dress, shirt etc.)

·         bring music, dance etc.

I have a special globe that plays a variety of national anthems of different countries!

Help needed

Parents, please help your child to be able to tell their friends a bit about their show & tell (keep it very simple and age appropriate). You could even write a little note and we can help them with their little “presentation”. J

We also welcome and invite you as a parent, relative or friend if you would like to come in and help your child introduce a certain country or culture to our students.

International Snack: Monday, February 1/Tuesday February 2^nd

Students are invited to share a food item, small (bite size) portions. That way our children can sample many foods without much wastage. Due to allergies/food restrictions, please be sure all food items are nut/pork free.

Please sign up on the food item list hanging in the hallway.

We are looking forward to a colourful unit about “Children from all around the World”!

Thank you for your support!