Stages Childcare Center

Our preschool and Pre-k classes rocked the house with their Christmas songs this morning. Thanks to all the parents who were in the audience and to Ms. Corrin and Ms. Kim for the amazing job in directing!!

Only 8 more shopping days until Christmas!

Just a reminder that Stages will be closed on the following days:

Tuesday, Dec. 24
Wednesday Dec. 25
Wednesday Jan. 1, 2014

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

STAGES CHILDCARE CENTER
DECEMBER 2013

IMPORTANT DATES:

December 22 Happy Birthday, Ms. Tiffany
December 23- January 3 Brunswick & Strongsville Christmas Vacation

December 24 & 25 Stages CLOSED—MERRY CHRISTMAS

INFANTS MS. JULIE & MS. MELISSA

The cold weather is here, which means we are getting even closer to Christmas. We would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday. This year has gone by so fast! Last month was a blast! We made some pretty interesting turkey footprints for Thanksgiving in addition to other cool art projects.
We would like to say “goodbye” to Tilly as she and her family are moving from the area. We hope they come back to visit. Emma has moved up to the Toddler 1 room. Both will definitely be missed. Linnaea and Colin are always on the move, crawling everywhere. They both love the time they spend together on the high table when it is just the two of them. Dan is our tiny “love bug”, he loves cuddling and those sweet smiles he gives make anyone melt. As for Zoey, she has a special wave she gives to everyone, just like a celebrity. Dave is getting faster and faster at crawling. He loves giving those tight, warm hugs.
December is going to be a fun and exciting month. We will be making decorations, Christmas trees, and snowflakes.
A great idea for the holidays is to bake cookies and let your child help decorate them. This is a tasty and fun activity that can be enjoyed by the entire family.

TODDLER 1 MS. CATHY & MS. VANESSA

We would like to welcome Ms. Cathy, our new teacher to Stages. She comes to us with plenty of experience, expertise, and fun! She will officially begin December 9 and is excited to get to know all the kids and their families.

Last month we focused on healthy food and made a lot of turkeys to celebrate Thanksgiving.
We welcomed Kiera and her family to Stages and Emma from the Infant Room to our class last month. Braeden is making awesome progress with going on the potty. Gavin shows off his dance moves to the Christmas music. Sahana and Reicher love singing songs during Circe Time. Colin has learned to spell his first name all by himself.
We are all excited about decorating for Christmas and for our Christmas Program this month.

TODDLER 2 MS. MARIA

Happy Holidays! December is here and that means winter is upon us. Please be sure your child has weather appropriate clothing in their cubbies. Keep in mind that we do go outside as long as the temperature is 25 degrees or warmer with the wind chill. This means your child will need “snow gear” for outside play, also.
November was a lot of fun, we learned about Thanksgiving and the fall season. We made lots of art to go along with our theme. December will find us making reindeer, Santas, candy canes and other winter and Christmas themed projects. Finally, we will be working on a Christmas surprise for our parents, but we can’t tell you about that, it’s a surprise!
There is always a lot going on in our classroom. Kevin absolutely loves playing with the trains. Misha and Rylan are usually busy building with our foam blocks while Caleb and Chloe play with the dinosaurs. You can usually find Henry and Joey playing together at the car table.

PRESCHOOL MS. KIM

The months are flying by and 2013 is almost at an end. We have had a great time so far!
Our ‘sharing’ items each week have been very popular. Thank you to our parents who must be having treasure hunts at home in order to find items to bring in. I hope this has helped to create as memorable of conversations at home as it has here. Keep up the good work!
December will be interesting as we prepare and share the festive season by creating holiday themed art, practice writing our names, recognizing high frequency words, letter sounds, and number order.
While reading Laila’s book, “The Naked Mole”, we had a discussion about the word ‘brilliant’. When we discovered this word’s meaning, Hayden stated that he was brilliant. We all agreed and decided that each of us is, in fact, brilliant.
Please continue with the treasure hunts at home, as it makes our sharing time so educational and interesting.

PRE-K MS. CORRIN

Happy Holidays! Wow, it is already that time of year. Soon we will be saying goodbye to 2013 and welcoming in 2014. We have a lot of fun things to do during the month of December.
I hope everyone enjoyed their time with family and friends for Thanksgiving. November was a great month. We worked on colors for a few weeks, then spent time on “fun with reading” and “thankful” themes. We had a lot of fun reading and made a goal to read 50 books. We each had the chance to become an author and illustrator as we created our own books. Cole wrote a book about sharks and Kamden wrote about his mom and baby sister. Shaymus wrote about Scooby Doo and Gavin came up with a story about a bear who builds a pink house. They all turned out amazing.
December is going to be a busy month in the Pre K room. We will be diving right into a music theme after Thanksgiving.
We will even be making our own instruments and play in a band. We will then spend a week on Heath and Nutrition and end the month with a holiday theme. This will include a party with lots of games and fun activities. We are so excited. A great activity to do at home with your kids is to bake together. What a perfect time, too, with the holidays approaching. Have your child help you get all the ingredients together, measure the ingredients, and mix them together. You can talk to your child about time and see if they can finish a simple chore before the timer goes off and the treat is done. Make this experience as fun and meaningful as you can.

KINDERGARTEN ENRICHMENT MS. HEATHER

It is hard to believe that Christmas is almost here! November seemed to fly by with some crazy weather changes. We really enjoyed learning about Thanksgiving and the whole meaning of why we celebrate it. We began the month learning about the Indians. We read lots of books about them and made our own Indians with headdresses and designed our own tee pees using sticks and paint. Since the Indians were really into patterns, we focused a lot on patterns in math. Our favorite part was making noodle necklaces using our own patterns. Next, we moved on to learning about the Pilgrims. We made our own pilgrims with top hats and designed and drew our own Mayflower ships. After learning about the 2 groups who had the first Thanksgiving, we were able to understand the real reason why we have this special holiday with our families. One of our favorite activities in November was bringing in instruments and then talking about how we would make that instrument if we were an Indian or Pilgrim.
For the month of December, we will begin with talking and learning about the value of money. Then we will begin our holiday celebrations with Hanuakkah. This is a great way for the children to explore another holiday along with Christmas. We will have the chance to play Dreidel, also. After we learn about Hanukkah, we will explore the Christmas holiday and compare the two. Also in the month of December, we will continue our focus on phonics and learn short and long e sounds.
A fun holiday activity to do with your child is to give him/her some money to buy a present for someone special. This ties in nicely with our money theme and will show the children the value of a dollar.

Parents... come join us on Friday, Dec. 20 for our Christmas Program! Listen to our festive carolers then relax and celebrate with snacks and holiday parties.
Times are as follows:
10:00 Preschool & PK
3:00 Toddlers

See you then!!