What a wonderful way to wrap up an incredible school year!

This week, we soaked up the beautiful summer weather and enjoyed popsicles with our friends, making the most of our final days together. We also had the opportunity to attend Primary’s Field Day, where we cheered on some of our older siblings and enjoyed watching all of the excitement and fun.

One of the most special moments of the week was our Moving Up Ceremony. We celebrated eight of our classmates as they crossed the bridge and moved on to the next stage of their journey, leaving the toddler years behind and preparing for all the adventures that await them in Primary. It was a joyful and emotional celebration of how much they have grown.

As we close out the year, I want to thank all of our amazing families for entrusting me with the most important people in your lives. It has been such a privilege to love, care for, teach, and learn alongside your children. Watching them grow in confidence, independence, kindness, and curiosity has been one of the greatest joys of this year.

To our students moving up to Primary, and to those families beginning new adventures beyond Fraser Woods, I wish you all the very best. I know your children will continue to do wonderful things, and I am so proud of each and every one of them.

To my returning toddlers, I am going to miss you so much this summer! I can’t wait to hear about your adventures, see how much you’ve grown, and welcome you back in a few short months.

Thank you for a truly memorable year filled with laughter, learning, friendship, and love. Have a safe, happy, and fun-filled summer!

What an exciting week we had as we celebrated Field Day! The children were thrilled to wear their special Field Day shirts (which will be coming home next week) and participate in a morning full of fun activities.

The children had a wonderful time moving their bodies through obstacle courses and cooling off with water activities.

There were lots of smiles, laughter, and happy squeals throughout the day!

Field Day also included some exciting sensory art experiences. The children painted with shaving cream and experimented with spraying paint from pump bottles, creating colorful masterpieces while strengthening their hand muscles and coordination.

Before heading back inside, everyone enjoyed a popsicle in the sunshine while drying off from all the water play. It was the perfect ending to a fun-filled morning.

We also got to celebrate a birthday in class and have chocolate chip cookies!

As hard as it is to believe, next week is our last week of school! Summer vacation is right around the corner, and we are looking forward to enjoying one more week together before the school year comes to an end.

Reminders:

• Next Friday, we are having our Moving Up ceremony. If your child is going to Primary next year, we will see you there!
• Friday is an early dismissal. Children will be picked up from the classroom, and I have a small gift for each family.

Oh boy, this week brought some very hot days! We still enjoyed plenty of outdoor time, but in shorter chunks to help everyone stay cool and avoid overheating. Thankfully, popsicles helped make the heat a little more fun!

This week, we brought out the car mat, and it quickly became a favorite activity. The children had so much fun zooming around toy cars, buses, and emergency vehicles.

We also introduced a new colored salt activity to our shelves. The children traced shapes with glue, then carefully sprinkled colorful salt with salt and pepper shakers. This was wonderful practice for hand control, coordination, and concentration. The finished creations were beautiful!

We were lucky enough to attend two school performances this week! Upper Elementary and Middle School performed Willy Wonka on Thursday, and Lower Elementary performed Jungle Story on Friday

The children did an amazing job being part of the audience. They stayed quiet during the performances, loved clapping for the actors, and excitedly shared their favorite parts once we returned to the classroom. It was such a great practice in learning how to be a respectful and engaged audience member.

It has been a busy week filled with creativity, imagination, and exciting new experiences.

Important Reminders:

• No school on Monday
• Next week is Toddler Activity Day! Thursday, May 28, is coming fast. Make sure your child has a bathing suit and a towel ready to go!
• Next week, the weather will warm up again. Please bring water shoes or sandals for outside play and extra summer clothes in case we do water play.

This week we have been enjoying the ever-changing weather from warm sunny days to chilly, cloudy, and rainy ones. No matter the forecast, the children have certainly found plenty of ways to get their energy out!

Outside, the children loved:

• running around with the dump trucks
• swinging
• drawing with chalk
• chasing and playing with friends

There has been lots of movement, laughter, and fresh air as we embraced all kinds of spring weather.

Inside the classroom, we focused on activities that help build hand strength and coordination. The children practiced:

• scissor work
• peeling and sticking different-sized stickers
• gluing felt clippings onto a caterpillar to create a fuzzy little friend

These activities support fine motor development while also allowing the children to be creative and expressive.

We have also been spending time practicing communication skills and encouraging the children to use their words and voices to let friends know what they need. Learning how to communicate with peers in kind and respectful ways is such an important part of growing together in the classroom community.

For food tasting this week, we tried cantaloupe, and the children really enjoyed the sweet, juicy fruit. There were lots of happy faces and requests for more!

It has been a very productive week full of movement, creativity, learning, and growing friendships. Very busy hands and busy bodies!

Cars, Trains & Planes… Oh My! 🚗✈️🚂

This week, we began learning about different vehicles and community helpers, and the classroom has been full of movement, building, and creativity!

The children have been especially excited about our wooden train tracks and new Magna-Tile roads. They worked together to build tracks, roads, and pathways while using their imaginations to create busy little worlds filled with vehicles and transportation.

We also explored different ways to “paint” and decorate vehicles:

• Dot stickers were used to decorate cars
• Yarn was used to create textured busses
• Red paint helped bring fire trucks to life

The children loved experimenting with these materials while strengthening fine motor skills and creativity.

For food tasting this week, we explored a watermelon. Before cutting it open, the children knocked on the outside and wondered why they couldn’t smell anything yet. There were lots of smiles and excitement when we finally sliced it open and revealed the bright red inside, instantly filling the classroom with that sweet watermelon scent. The children enjoyed eating triangle slices, carefully noticing where the juicy red part ended and knowing to stop biting once the fruit was gone. It was such a fun sensory and tasting experience!

It has been a wonderful week full of building, creativity, and curiosity. We can’t wait to continue learning about the many helpers and vehicles that keep our communities moving!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of our wonderful mamas! We hope your weekend is filled with love, snuggles, and special moments with your little ones.

Toddler Activity Day is almost here! Art. Water. Sunshine. Thursday, May 28, from 9-11. Start thinking about where you packed that swimsuit and towel!

The last two weeks have been busy, busy, busy in our classroom! The children have been exploring nature, celebrating special moments, and engaging in so many hands-on learning experiences.

We celebrated Earth Day by reading stories about our planet and talking about how to care for it. The children created different Earth-inspired crafts, using a variety of materials to represent the world in their own creative ways.

We’ve been learning how spring brings the Earth back to life with baby animals being born, insects emerging, and nature becoming more colorful. The children explored this through art, using stickers, paint, and tissue paper to create different creatures and spring scenes.

One very exciting highlight was visiting the Primary classroom’s baby chicks. We were able to watch them hatch and, once they were ready, gently touch and hold the chicks. This was such a special and memorable experience for everyone!

Food tasting has been a big hit! Last week, we tried asparagus, which was surprisingly loved by many of the children. This week, we explored blueberries, cutting them open to observe the difference between the inside and outside. The children practiced mindful tasting, eating them one at a time and noticing how some were sweet while others were a little sour.

A favorite moment was making fresh-squeezed lemonade. The children helped press and turn the lemons on the juicer and add sugar. Hearing their excited slurps and gulps as they tasted their hard work was so much fun!

We also celebrated a second birthday in our classroom! Our birthday friend took two trips around the sun and enjoyed blowing out candles with all of their classmates cheering them on.

We ended the week with Grandparents Day and invited special guests into our room to work with the children and explore their favorite things. They loved showing off everything they could do, and the Grandparents were filled with pride and love watching them. It was a very sweet event.

It has been a joyful couple of weeks filled with discovery, creativity, and celebration.

What a busy and exciting week we had! The children explored many new works and continued to grow in independence and curiosity.

A favorite this week was our insect object matching work, which included a magnifying glass for close observation. The children loved taking a closer look, noticing details, and carefully matching each object.

We also introduced sea creatures preserved in acrylic, and this quickly became a high-interest activity. The children enjoyed holding them, turning them, and exploring them from every angle with curiosity and wonder.

For art, the children created spring trees by crumpling tissue paper into small balls and gluing them on as “leaves.” This connected beautifully to nature, as we’ve started to notice the first signs of green on the trees outside on the playground.

We spent lots of time outside enjoying the warm, almost summer-like weather. The children were excited about the new swing, which has quickly become a favorite spot to relax. Our mud kitchen also got a fun update with painted food rocks, and we’re so grateful for the creativity and generosity of our families! I think even more are coming!

With their growing maturity, the children practiced more independence by carrying their own snacks and water bottles outside. We even enjoyed a picnic-style snack together, which was such a special way to spend time as a class.

Food tasting this week included lemon and lime. The children loved them! They devoured the wedges. I was hoping to get some pucker photos, but this class loves citrus.

It’s been a week full of exploration, creativity, and growing independence. We are so proud of the children and all they are learning each day!

 

Reminders:

– On the very sunny days when the children have a lot of skin exposed, make sure to apply sunscreen before coming to school.

Spring was truly in the air, and in our classroom, this week! The children were busy exploring seasonal changes through art, science, and hands-on activities.

We worked with six different paint colors, using Q-tips to carefully dot and match colors on a rainbow. The children also finished their egg decorating with fabric, continuing to build creativity and fine motor skills.

We began talking about how spring brings baby animals, and introduced a new chick project. The children painted glue inside a chick outline and used tweezers to pick up yellow yarn “feathers”, placing them one by one. This activity was great for strengthening hand muscles and coordination while connecting to our spring theme.

We’ve been reading many books about spring weather, growing plants, and insects returning. To go along with this, we introduced bug-themed 4-piece jigsaw puzzles, which the children have been loving. They are feeling so proud as they complete them independently!

We did some exciting planting this week! Together, we planted mint, celery, and carrot seeds in a special root viewer so we can watch how roots grow underground. Each child also planted their own tomato seeds in a small pot. We’ll care for them in the classroom before sending them home to be planted outside.

Food tasting was a big success this week! The children really enjoyed trying hard-boiled eggs and kept asking for more. This led to a wonderful conversation about how store-bought eggs won’t turn into chicks, but eggs that stay with mama chickens can grow into baby chicks and hatch.

It has been a very busy and exciting week full of discovery, growth, and curiosity. We love seeing the children so engaged and can’t wait to continue exploring all the wonders of spring together!