QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER DECEMBER
LESSARD DAYCARE AND AFTERSCHOOL CARE
Website : www.lessarddaycare.com
Email: info.lessarddaycare@gmail.com
Quarterly Newsletter – December 2019
A WORD OF GRATITUDE
It is the right time to express our sincere gratitude from the bottom of our hearts to each and every single family for your continued support over the last three years. Yes, when we look behind, whatever we could achieve throughout these years is only because of your support and co-operation. Again, we appreciate your continued support for our future endeavors.
Here, we promise you to maintain the excellence in safety, cleanliness and healthy environments which are nurturing and respectful that incorporates the value and importance of play.
DAYCARE AND AFTER SCHOOL CARE RE-ACCREDITATION
To ensure all our families are aware, now we are going through the process of RE-ACCREDITATION. For anyone who may not be aware, accreditation is a voluntary program that recognizes a daycare or after school care as a high-quality service provider. The process is very intensive and the program must meet a specific set of criteria which are above and beyond our normal set of Alberta Government Childcare Regulations.
As a part of this process, we already sent out a family survey to all the families and really appreciate your support by taking your time to complete the survey and gave it back to us. Of course, we value your comments by taking remedies, if it needs.
Parent And Staff Information Committee
We are currently asking for parents of the centre to volunteer their time approximately 3 to 4 times throughout September to June to help share information from the parent’s perspective at our committee meetings. We try our best to ensure our meeting times will work with our parents, they are not extensive in length and are actually quite fun, but all and all this opportunity is extremely valuable because it allows our families a “VOICE” when it comes to their child’s[children’s] program. Ultimately, we would like to have 1 or 2 parents from each of the childcare rooms to join us. If you are interested or happen to require any information, please feel free to speak with Shanty, Asha or Sherine.
Parent Handbook Information-Centre Policies and Procedures
As mentioned, & attached in the previous email, we revised a few policies to meet the changing needs of children, families & staff, it will be effective from December 2019. Please review the REVISED edition of the “Parent Handbook”, dated December 2019 in our website : www.lessarddaycare.com and click on “Parent Handbook” or if you require a copy, please let me know, I can send a copy electronically to your e-mail.
Parent Corner
If you would like to add to our quarterly newsletter with information that is related to family and/or children, please let me know and I would love to add your information to our News.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Holiday Celebration
A month of celebration ahead of us with a lot of holiday activities in all the rooms. THE HOLIDAY CELEBRATION AT THE CENTRE FOR OUR FAMILIES WILL BE ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12,2019 FROM 4:00PM TO 5:00PM . DAYCARE & OSC CHILDREN WILL BE GATHERING TOGETHER IN THE OSC ROOM (CONCERT WILL START @ 4:00PM, FIRST TODDLERS, THEN PRESCHOOLERS, FOLLOWED BY KINDERS AND FINALLY OSC WILL PERFORM.) .
Another attraction – SANTA WILL BE VISITING US AND DEFINITELY ALL OUR KIDS CAN EXPECT GIFT FROM SANTA….. PLUS, TREATS, COOKIE DECORATION FOR SMALL KIDS, CONCERTS ETC…. So please arrange your schedule, be here by 4:00pm and enjoy with our children. We really appreciate your valuable presence on time.
CENTRE CLOSURE OVER THE HOLIDAYS
Monday, December 24th, [ Christmas Eve] we are opening until 12:00pm. So please make sure to pick up your child/children before 12:00pm and we appreciate your cooperation.
The centre is closed from December 25th, 2019 to January 2nd, 2020 – we will return to work on January 2nd.
FRIENDLY REMINDER
LATE PICK - UP POLICY
The Centre closes at 6:00 pm. For casual lateness, a late pick-up fee of $1.00 per minute will be levied for every minute past 6:00 pm. In the case of lateness, the $1 per minute (*past 6pm or other specified closing time) charge is due as soon as possible (either that day, or the next day), and the late fee collected will be fully payable to the staff member(s) who stayed with the child to ensure their safety beyond the Centre’s operating hours.
ROOM NEWS
Toddler Room
It’s been another engaging season of exploration and experiences in the toddler room as we say goodbye to Autumn and begin to welcome in the Winter. The staff have been busy too, furthering their professional development through emergent curriculum workshops that enable us to continue to grow and give the best care to the families we work with. In September, we celebrated a room birthday, where the children had an opportunity to celebrate their friend with singing, dancing, cake, and snacks. We had a camping day where the children pretended to make fire and Smores, and each child constructed a ‘tent’ from blankets.
The most exciting experience for the children was likely our Pirate day! We made a pirate’s boat from cardboard boxes, with eye patches, skull and crossbones hats, and telescopes. The children enjoyed painting their boat together and learning about pirates through stories and themed musical activities. We finished off the month of September with a pajama and movie day, where we cozied up in warm PJs and watched the Cars movie. In October, we went out and explored the nearby wooded paths, collecting leaves, rocks, sticks, pinecones, etc for our scavenger hunt. The children loved looking through the leaves to find worms and ants. We celebrated another joyous birthday in October, complete with more cake and celebrations; and the next week the center put together a delicious and hot Thanksgiving lunch for the children to enjoy!
We made a big Turkey craft where each of the children got to think of a reason, they were thankful for. A lot of children said their mom’s and dad’s, their brother/sisters, and their daycare friends. We ended the month with a big Halloween bash, where the children dressed up in their costumes, played spooky games, watched themed movies, and had a costume parade! This November, we have so far talked a little about Remembrance Day and why we wear poppies, and each child made their own poppy flowers to attach to the large white cross we stationed in our room. We are busy now preparing for winter and Christmas celebrations, and are excited for everything the New Year will bring to all. If you have any questions, please feel free to talk.
Thank you,
Gabrielle & Blaise
Preschool Room
Over the last three months September, October & November we have been very busy planning and implementing our Fall program based on the Emergent curriculum The Emergent Curriculum is a philosophy of learning and a way of planning curriculum that focuses on being responsive to the children's interest to create meaningful learning experiences. This philosophy prioritizes active participation, relationship building, flexibility and adaptive methods. It's plays based, collaborative and open ended. In this practice the children initiate the curriculum through play base topics of Interest, the staff follows the children’s lead through critical observation, inquiry, documentation and provide activity-based experiences for them to dig deeper, develop hypotheses and acquire knowledge.
In September and October our program took us on fieldtrips to the local fire Station, Lois Hole Public Library, ETS bus ride to the West Edmonton Mall, several community walks and nature walk through the nearby forest. We invited our Parents into our classroom to view the program, collaborate with our staff and be a part of our Parents Meet and Greet Tea Party. We celebrated our children’s birthdays with cake, hats and special treats. We celebrated Labour Day and Thanks giving Day with a special Thanksgiving lunch for the children, we celebrated Halloween with candy sharing and a dress up costume party
As our program expands, we baked, we built, we dressed up, we took a pretend camping trip to the lake where we built a camp fire, roasted marshmallows and slept in a real tent. We engaged in creative art exploration, we read many children story books and engaged in several group discussion, celebrated how special our children are through our special child show and tell activities from which we gained much knowledge.
November is here and we are still busy planning and implementing our curriculum through centre based and community activities. We visited the Lessard Dental Clinic, Callingwood Safeway grocery store where we purchased ingredients to make fresh fruit smoothie and we made the most delicious cupcakes for two days of snack. We are also currently doing a bottle drive to raise funds to donate to the Children,s Stollery Hospital. We have a very busy program, supportive Parents to whom we are very grateful.
Thank you for your invaluable support and please feel free to visit the program with the staff anytime.
Janice, Eunice and Nikki
Kindergarten
The months of September, October, and November for our children were full of excitement. Our focus in September was getting to know each other and classroom routines. We learned how to interact with others as well as make new friends. We learned new songs, read books, and expressed ourselves through our artwork. We focused on cooperation, sharing and helping others. We encouraged the children to share their thoughts and ideas through language enriched activities. Also, we thank you to all the parents who attended our "meet and greet".
October has come and gone as fast as the changing leaves. We walked to the river, went to the forest and collecting some fall leaves. We filled our room with beautiful fall decorations. We decorated pumpkins and fall leaves, made apple paint using pine cones. We visited Lois Hole Public Library where children participated in action songs and listened eagerly, patiently
during their family story time. Trick or treating is a Halloween ritual costume for children. Our kiddos were in costumes visited some of our neighborhood asking for treats. They had fun!
November is a busy month, we celebrated Remembrance Day, our children made poppies wreath craft, to remember those who have given their lives in battle is because they are the flower which grew on the battlefields after World War 1.
During a PD day, we went to the M.A.K. playground. They spent lots of time playing with the snow and have done some painting. All of the children got involved and had lots of fun developing their fine motor skills through painting and cutting. We have a routine that we are learning and everyone takes part in it. We had also spent a lot of time reading new books during our circle time.
We learned about the letter "A" and how this letter sounds. We will have lots of arts, writing, painting and sensory experiences to help the children learn more about this letter.
Our bottle drive ended last November 11 and I would say thank you so much to all parents who donated their empty bottles. And to the parents too who donated cash, thank you very much. All the proceeds will be donated to Stollery Children's Hospital on November 28, 2019.
Reminder:
The weather is getting colder and we want to make sure that your child is prepared. We will still be going outside if the weather permits. So, please send your child to daycare with whatever they need to stay warm when out on the playground like snow pants, winter gloves, toques, snow boots, and winter jackets.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to talk to me.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Raquel Conol &Marjie
OSC Room
We made new friends this year in September as we welcomed INAYA, CLOE, SILAS & XAVIER as new addition to our Lessard daycare family. We set up a greet and meet event to get to know our new children and their families and bond with our old ones. In October the center provided a thanksgiving lunch that the children enjoyed. We spent our time having outdoor fun at Lymburn park during PD day. Children had fun dressing up for Halloween and had a blast trick or treating in the neighboring businesses. Back at the center the children played some Halloween games and got more candies as prizes, it was a fun day!!! In November we joined the whole nation as we celebrate Remembrance Day by making poppies and wearing one. On PD day we had fun at Michael A.Kostek as we played with snow. The children got creative as they build snow man, towers and barricades for snow fighting, everybody had an awesome time. On the second PD day we went to the library and enjoyed reading time and computer games. Olivia, Katrina and Isaac joined the scavenger hunt and made their Pokémon boxes, it was a productive morning. And on or last PD day to incorporate our Christmas theme we went to the mall to enjoy the Christmas displays and let the children shop for Christmas sweets.
As the season of giving is coming, we in the OSC are doing a humanitarian project. We will be collecting new or slightly used mitts/ gloves, scarves and toques to decorate our Christmas tree and also food items for our Christmas food bank. At the end of the season we will bring all the items to an organization that helps struggling families. We hope that you will join us in this endeavor and together lets spread love and giving in this yuletide season.
WE WISH ALL THE FAMILIES A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON AND HOPE THAT AS WE MOVE INTO 2020, ALL ENJOY A NEW YEAR WITH HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND LOT OF FUN.
Enjoy the next few months… Our next news will be in March.
