J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 5 Happy New Year! Malinda Jalbert, 3 year-old-class mom and talented designer has created a new logo for the playschool. Up until now, we’ve been using some variation of sunflowers and nature scenes but thanks to Malinda, we now have a look that is all our own! When you see her next, please join me in thanking Malinda for the hours of work she spent – I’m sure you will be impressed with her ability to draw together so many elements of our program into one fantastic image. Malinda is now incorporating the logo into all our advertising and promotional material. The next step is to produce some outdoor signage just in time for our playschool open house! For all returning families, alumni registration will open up on February 17th. Be sure to get your registration packages in before our Open House on February 28th because we will fill up quickly after that! Word-of-mouth is how most of our families join us so if you know friends, neighbours or family who have preschool-aged children, be sure to recommend our program. I’m looking forward to a fun new initiative that Jill Merrett, our Fundraising Coordinator has added for the spring - a bulb fundraiser. In addition to tulip bulbs straight from Holland she also plans to include flowers, veggies, herbs and possibly strawberries. She’s awaiting confirmation from the organization but it looks like the end of March – perfect time to be planning your garden! Following the bulb fundraiser and just in time for BBQ season we’ll be running the ever-popular Spolumbo’s fundraiser. Please keep in mind how important fundraising is to our program. Although our fall fundraiser was successful, Jill has pointed out that only about half of our families actually participated. Please remember that fundraising is a really important part of our financial calculations and it’s only through fundraising that we are able to keep our tuition fees low. With your participation, we can do extras like field trips and guests, buy new art supplies, update the classroom (like getting a new coat of paint) and provide professional development opportunities for our teachers. Jill will let us know the timing as soon as it’s all booked so please keep your eyes peeled for more information from her! That’s it for this month, Ingrid Our Christmas party was wonderful fun! Everybody pitched in and all had a great time. We have started the new year with some good weather. So we will g outside to enjoy it as often as we can. We appreciate that the children are coming prepared and ask that snowpants/hats/mittens come everyday just in case we want to take advantage of the nice weather on other days. We are observing the 3 year olds interacting more with each other as they gain confidence. We are exploring different are ideas and introducing different tools in the art area (for example, hole punches, collage materials, and different kinds of paint). They all love it when we put on some music and start dancing! The 4 year olds are now working together as a team to create things, especially the block and rolled newspaper structures. It’s great to see this team-work and to hear them communicate with each other. We look forward to continuing with guided drawing and exploring different art media. One quick note for those going on to kindergarten in September. It’s a good idea to get your child’s eyes checked before starting school, just to make sure everything’s good to go! Jane and Kelly Sue