PELC - Preston

06/11/2024

Playing in Puddles!

With all the rain we have had, it has created some great puddles in our yard.
Cohen (age 2 years, 8 months) spent a long period of time playing and exploring the water in the tunnel.

He found a dump truck and filled it with water using a loader. He concentrated on moving the dump truck filled with water through the tunnel.

When the Educator asked if he was having fun he looked up and smiled and gave a thumbs up.
Cohen was completely covered head to toe in water and mud. The Educators observed that he was very comfortable in messy play as he did not seem bothered by it at all.

When mom came to pick up one of the Educators apologized for him being so messy and dirty to which mom replied, “We love it, we spend a lot of time outside, he loves getting dirty. We would not expect anything less!”

There are so many benefits to letting children play in mud and getting messy. Mud play encourages creativity, builds problem-solving skills, uses both fine and gross motor skills and builds immunity.
“At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling” -Shanti

05/30/2024

Chicken journey …: Wow… what a wonderful learning journey we had. After patiently waiting 21 days for the chickens to hatch, learning the facts, asking questions and observing very closely the whole development process, the chickens finally arrived. 🐣

We had great two weeks with them. Learning about chicken anatomy is so much fun. The children would come each morning full of excitement to greet the chickens.

Each day we would have long, deep conversations about them and the children closely observed the chicken’s growth, behaviour and “silliness” as kids would say.
Some of the best moments were when the children invited their families to visit the chickens. It was a wonderful experience for everyone.

We will continue our learning journey about the chickens, even though they are moving to an acreage where they will have more freedom to roam.

05/30/2024

Baby Chicks!

We read books about chicks and showed the children a video, which the upstairs teachers shared with us. In the video, the Educators captured the moments when chicks started hatching.

The chicks remained in the incubator until their feathers dried a little. After their feathers dried, the Educators moved the chicks to a box with food and water and a hanging heat lamp above the box.

After showing the video of hatching the eggs, we invited our children upstairs where they could see the real chicks. When they saw the chicks they were so excited to touch and pet them.
The children took turns interacting with chicks and petting them gently.
They used their sensory skills while they felt the texture of the chicks. They all developed their social skills and language skills playing with the chicks. Their expressions were priceless, as they touched chicks with their gentle hands.

05/17/2024

Hello everyone!

Just a reminder that All Preston Early Learning Centre's will be closed on Monday, May 20, 2024, for the Victoria Day long weekend!

Enjoy!

05/12/2024

05/01/2024

Our Toddler Classroom!

We’d like to share one of our activities in April. Children in our room have been interested in ladybugs these days. So we will keep working on this and expand their interests in spring.

Watch a ladybug in our room!

We found one cute ladybug showing up in the morning to join our room so we put it in the glass magnifier container and invited children to the light table with magnifiers.

Children welcomed ladybugs with excitement and wanted to see them closer using magnifiers.
A bee figure in the glass container was also provided so they could open the container and touch it with their hands.
When they asked us to open the container which had a ladybug, we told them that we would let it go when we went outside in the afternoon so that it could fly away to go back home.

Everyone enjoyed watching it move and looking through magnifying glasses saying “I see a ladybug”, “Wow, bee” “Open it” and “Fly away”.

After saying hi to the ladybug in the afternoon, we set it free to the sky and it flew away fast.

05/01/2024

Here is the continuation of our egg project journey…

After arranging the eggs to come to our Centre, we were in need of an incubator.
After thorough research, we found a high-quality incubator and shared our excitement with our families.
When we shared this information, two of our preschool families the Kohlenberg’s and the Chavady’s offered to help purchase an incubator for our classroom, so we could continue our egg investigation and wonder.

Before we proceeded with the next step, we made sure the children learned the steps we needed to take before the real eggs arrived. The children had an opportunity to learn about an incubator's functions by pressing buttons and placing fake eggs inside and watching them automatically turn.

The next step was to prepare the incubator by washing it and setting the right temperature and humidity level.
After we finally placed the eggs into the incubator, each morning the children were asked to see the eggs, ask questions about them, and wonder when will the chickens hatch, they would touch an incubator, making sure the eggs were safe.

We are excited to see where will this journey take us…

We are sending a big Thank You to our families who helped us further our project.

04/30/2024

Our Egg / Chicken Project!

As the children’s curiosity and interest in eggs grew, we explored and learned new information about them through encyclopedias, books, hands-on experiments and conversations.

Our classroom decided to further investigate this project by adding real fertilized chicken eggs into our classroom and continuing our research together.

We would like to say thank you to the Young family who helped us get the eggs which provided a great opportunity to further our wonder.

Stay tuned...

03/28/2024

Just a reminder that All Preston Early Learning Centre's will be Closed on Friday, March 29, 2024, for the Easter long weekend.

Wishing everyone a wonderful long weekend!

03/27/2024

Puffy Painting; Melted Snowman!

These days, children were interested in snow and continued asking to make snowmen.

We decided to create a melted snowman, this is a funny way for them to create a cute piece of winter art.

Kids dabbed or spread around snow paint which is a mixture of glue and shaving foam onto the paper with paint brushes.
After that, they decorated their snowmen with some paper cutouts, buttons and googly eyes.
Also, an extra sprinkle of sparkles was added over their melted snowman. Some of them said, “I will make a hat.” “Look! snowman” with excitement.

They had a lot of fun adding in their snowman details even if it can look messy. Their artworks were displayed on the window in our room so that everyone could see how they did a great job.

03/27/2024

Dinosaur’s Breakfast Club!

Children’s imagination and creativity are limitless…

For a while now our preschoolers have been demonstrating a deep inquiry about dinosaurs and kitchen dramatic play.
This time the two activities merged. Dinosaurs had to wash and dry their hands, teeth and body before they sat at the table to eat breakfast.

Children set up the table, making sure there were enough utensils, plates and food for each dinosaur.
Finally, the children agreed that dinosaurs can have pasta and milk for breakfast.
They shared food for each dinosaur and later on, discussed that some dinosaurs need to have a nap after.

While playing, interacting and sharing thoughts, the children transferred very important skills they learned at home and at the centre regarding family/dinner time and routine.