Butterflies - September Update

It’s hard to believe that September has finished so quickly, where has the time gone?
We said Good bye to Mackenzie, Emily, Olivia, Abel, Owen, London and Aubrey who moved over to the school age room and each time we spend time with them they are enjoying “the BIG play structure” that is outside of the school! J

The Butterfly group has started their program with the kinders on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, in the school age room. We start around 9am with calendar time (do your children come home singing the “days of the week songs?” Haha) the children take turns putting on the number on the calendar.  After calendar time we offer snack or free play and get outside as soon as we can.  After lunch we have a few pre planned activities available for the children and we also have activities building off of the children’s interests. We are working on observing the children to see what interests them. This month they have been working hard at building different creations with the Lego, Gak/Slime has been a huge hit (they really enjoy when it is super stretchy!!) and practicing those fine motor movements with the fuse beads as well as the regular pony beads. The weather has been so great that we often take the children outside during this time as well. Outside some have been testing their strength and I have observed Rylan, Declan, Jacob and Jack pull themselves onto the monkey bars with huge smiles on their faces...”Hey Kerri, look, I can finally do it” a few of them said!! What a great accomplishment for them.
After lunch some of the children have been very interested in reading some of the longer chapter type books so we have found a few that are appropriate and a little longer and the children have been loving sitting on the big pillows and listening to them. 

Toward the end of September Austin and Austin started attending the “forest school” at the FortWhyte Centre and they have been excited to tell us some of their stories and the exciting things they do there.  This did provoke the children to start some conversations about being outside in nature. We decided to take a walk around the center we walked past the post office, down towards the monument, across to the rec center where we stopped to have discussions about what we saw, felt, and heard. As we walked I would document some of the conversations and things the children were noticing. They were very excited about some of the changes (falling leaves, swaying trees) and this took us into how things can change so quickly. We decided we were going to go for the same walk on Mondays and Fridays and see if there were changes and anything new. Before the end of September we found 2 buildings with pumpkins, the children kept trying to look for more. We will continue our nature walks and see what changes, note any new observations and if/when the children lose interest we will update you all. We cannot WAIT to see what changes will be noticed in October!!! J

We are all very excited about October, with Ashlea starting we cannot wait to show her all we have been busy with.

We have been writing on our white boards daily (on the accordion wall) so be sure to check it out. We will also be displaying art work on the wall. If you have any questions please let us know!