Welcome Welcome Welcome

To all our new families joining the House this week, we are excited to have you and we hope you enjoy the ride!

If you are reading this, be proud of yourselves, you have made it through the visits and the transition period 🙂 It can be a big change for your little ones, but for you too! We look forward to having you join in on this adventure of ours.

To our new families, welcome to your first blog post – this is where you will get to have a closer look into all the happenings of the house on a weekly basis.

To those who continue to be on this ride with us, let’s keep exploring your child’s weekly doings and get to it.

To start off the 2021/2022 School Year, let’s dive in and see what was happening this week at the House: from fine motor to gross motor, to indoor to outdoor play, from colours to letters to numbers to shapes to butterflies too we’ve got it covered!

Fine Motor Skills + Letter/Name Recognition:

Shapes + Colours + Sorting + Number recognition:

Sensory + Sand Play:

Eye spy with my little eye:

It may have been a short week but it was nothing short of action packed! With new faces, and new spaces it can take some time to adjust but we will continue to learn new routines and conquer all new transitions together, and will have fun doing so!

Enjoy your weekend, and we will see you back next week 🙂

The Chartwell House.

Friday Photo Dump

If you don’t know already, the “photo dump” trend has made it’s way on to social media and it’s time we introduce this trend to the house. Your educators capture moments of your little scholars that show them conquering tasks, creating art master pieces, building, constructing, sorting, matching, working with numbers and letters and the best Kodak moments that are captured are during PLAY. And so here is a collection of photos provided by your Chartwell educators over the past few weeks.

The Arts —

The Number, Letter & Shape Recognition —

The Fine Motor Skills in action —

The Fun —

The Carnival — (put on by your Toddler Educators!)

And when life gives you Lemons —

You make it Lemonade Day!

That’s a wrap on this weeks fun – we return next week for the last full week of August!

The Chartwell House.

’cause a little bit of summer is what the year is all about

Ready for the lowdown on one of nature’s most beautiful insects? We all know and love the butterfly for their brightly-coloured wings, but it’s the amazing transformation they go through that makes these flyers awe-inspiring. This process they take on is known as metamorphosis. And thanks to Ms. Costa we got to follow, observe, and see the stages of the butterfly’s life cycle.

Stage One: The Egg

Stage Two: The Larva (Caterpillar)

Stage Three: Pupa (Chrysalis)

Once the hungry caterpillar is full and stops eating, it will become a pupa, also known as a chrysalis. The pupa of many moths is protected inside a cocoon of silk. On the outside, it doesn’t seem like much is happening, but special cells that were present in the larva are now growing at a rapid pace. They will transform into the legs, wings, eyes, and other parts of the butterfly over time.

Stage Four: The Adult Butterfly

Once the butterfly is ready to emerge, the case around the pupa splits open. The butterfly isn’t quite ready to take off, first the butterfly has to wait for it’s wings to dry off and while they wait they are pumping liquid called hemolymph into them so the wings can become big and strong. Once fit for flight, the beautiful butterfly will take to the air in search of flowers to feed on.

And just like the butterfly, we too go through stages. Ages and stages – currently your little is going through the early childhood stage, where growth and developments are the most obvious. From learning how to walk, talk, build friendships, to potty training, to learning their ABCs and 123s, the early childhood stage is a very important stage in your child’s overall development, and we are here to support it!

From shapes, colours, self-help skills, fine motor to gross motor skills, to matching, sorting, letter and number recognition – it is our job to provide learning opportunities that will help support your child’s development and increase their curiosity.

But tt is also our job to create a fun environment where learning just so happens to happen.

That’s a wrap on the week – which means we are at the weekend stage!

The Chartwell House.

Sun + Fun = Summer!

Summer days are the best days! The warm sun makes for a perfect water day, camping trips become essential, and the best part is spending these days with your best mates.

While Preschool was camping, the youngest of the house kept their interest in Dinosaurs going from last week….no extinction here.

The toddler dinosaur hype spread into Preschool – where they stomped dino feet into paint to leave tracks across the paper to create colourful works of art.

It’s summer
The sun is shining
And it’s Friday
All is good at the house 🙂

Before you go, look at our garden grow…

Have a good weekend!

The Chartwell House.

162 days till Christmas

This week, we are going back, waaaaay back, like I am talking 230 million years back, to when the Dinosaurs first roamed Earth. Did you know there’s over 1500 different species of dinosaurs? No? Either did I. Out of those 1500 species, there’s really only one top dino, and it lives in the six – LETS GO RAPTORS! But if you walked through the toddler district it would have sounded like 1500 dinosaurs were roaming because the toddlers were letting out their best roars all week!

Although dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years, they always seem to make a come back in the classrooms. Their size, sound, and look capture the children’s attention, and the next thing they know their classroom turns into Jurassic Park.

WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK

Let’s bring it back to the present, and into the Preschool classroom where they focused on one of the most important skills for children: letter recognition.

Letter recognition is a fundamental part of learning how to read. It is important because it enables beginning readers to understand how printed text is associated with the spoken language, that letters and sound are related. Letter recognition is an essential skill, and takes practice. Below you will see the Preschoolers take on different ways in which to practice and master letter recognition.

In the Coach House the Preschoolers took to the stage! The arena was sold out, and the snack bar was not the only hit. The playlist was loud, and seemed to have “Let it Go” covers on repeat. The louder the better!

When they weren’t being artists on stage, they were creating art masterpieces, and puzzle pieces.

Things started to really take shape in the classroom, 2D shaped.

Sensory play is a type of play that activates and stimulates a child’s senses. Using their senses, the preschoolers guessed what hidden loose part matched the photo. Sensory play supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem-solving skills and social interaction.

What do I sense? The weekend. That’s right another week complete. We will see you back at the house next week.

The Chartwell House.

Summer vibes only.

Just because school is out, does not mean the fun stops here at the House. We have Suzie Sunshine returning, water days plugged in, carnival fun planned, and a Chartwell Camp-out all happening soon. It’s summer time, and we are here for it.

Let’s take a look at what happened this week at the House:

The Toddlers worked their fine motor skills while gripping the paintbrush to create masterpieces, feeling out the sensory Ziplock bags, puzzling, and while sorting, scooping and pouring out the bugs. Fine motor skills refer to the coordination between the children’s small muscles, like those in their hands, wrists, and fingers in coordination with their eyes. Building, practicing and fine tuning the fine motor skills help develop strength, and dexterity.

Right next door, Toddler Two kept the Fine Motor Skills going as they gripped and squeezed sponges to give the babies a bath, they used their pincer-grasp to paint and create, and worked together to build a LEGO castle carefully placing the pieces together snapping them into place.

When the rain stopped, and the inferno like temperatures cooled, the Toddler Two’s took to the outdoors to not only get fresh air, but to get their gross-motor skills on. Gross-motor skills are abilities that let us do tasks that involve large muscles in our torso, legs and arms, these skills involve whole-body movements. What better way to build the gross-motor skills than riding a bike, or conquering the scooter.

When a child is painting, they are tuning their fine motor skills, but they are also embracing their imagination, developing their problem-solving skills and enhancing their hand-eye coordination. The child becomes more engaged in the process of creating a painting or a piece of art rather than the final product. They enjoy experimenting with a variety of media and tools, using the materials to express feelings and ideas while honoring basic skills. The Preschool children expressed themselves during open-art, showing off their skills as they put paint brush to paint, and paint to paper.

Both Preschool classrooms experimented with different ways to express emotions and creativity, allowing the children to choose their materials gives them a greater sense of confidence.

The Preschool classroom welcomed their favourite stuffy because today was the day the Teddy Bears had their picnic!

What was the best thing happening at the house this week? BUGS!

No more bugging, that’s a wrap!

Enjoy your weekend everybody!

The Chartwell House.

The last of June in Photos

This week’s post is short and sweet – but here is a look into the house happenings of June:

With a few Preschool friends leaving for the summer before they head off to “big school,” we had our graduation celebration and to end the big day, we welcomed back our Animal friends to join in on the fun!

To our friends who graduated, YOU DID IT!!

We wish you a very happy summer, and all the best as you take on Kindergarten!

The Chartwell House.

Mid week blog post? Crazy.

Switching things up this week and giving you a mid-week glimpse at all the happenings inside and outside of the house. From tea parties, to Teddy Bear Picnics it’s already been an action packed week and we aren’t done yet!

We expanded the classroom walls this week, and brought the learning outdoors. Turning tracing, letter and number recognition into PLAY! And we fine tuned our fine motor skills by piecing together LEGO and using our imagination to build and create while working as a team.

Loose Parts: refer to natural or synthetic found, bought, or upcycled materials, such as rocks. Loose parts can be moved, manipulated, controlled, and changed within their play. Simply by posting a photo of an idea or image, can ignite curiosity, and encourage imagination within a child influencing them to ask questions to deepen the learning experience. This is how educators impact the learning process, they provide the materials that spark the interest within the children, and then from there the learning takes off!

Providing the tools, materials, and environment for children to explore and become curious is the foundation, building on these learning opportunities is the fun part, watching the children learn and experience how things work on their own is the amazing part.

That’s your half way through the week peek of what is happening at the house!

Enjoy the rest of the week!

The Chartwell House.

Hey June.

First week of June photo dump:

Play-based learning is a type of early childhood education based on child-led and open-ended play. The educators will program and create an environment based on the children’s interests. From there, it is the child’s choice to play, it is their choice on how they will play, and for how long they will play. The educators will initiate play, by inviting or suggesting play, but it is the child who determines the rest.

For example, the children in Preschool found caterpillars outside…

Their interest in caterpillars took off, and the Preschool teachers followed their lead by providing materials to help the children follow their heightened curiosity.

Meanwhile, the other Preschool classroom had their focus on Safari life. The environment the educators create, allow the children to explore and learn how the world works around them. Play-based learning is providing the tools, but allowing the children to determine how they use them.