Welcome to our June newsletter! This month, the Preschool 2 classroom at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Patrick centered around the beautiful themes of love, friendship, and celebrating our families, perfectly tying into Pride Month and National Indigenous History Month. These concepts are all about understanding that we live in a world filled with amazing, unique families who love and support us. We consistently used the magic of colours, rainbows, and hearts to show that just like every colour of the rainbow is special, each one of us is special too! We talked about how even if we have different favourite colours, we can all be wonderful friends. Our daily story times brought these lessons to life; we read three books all about the diverse beauty of families, including Stella Brings the Family, Families Share Values, and A Family is a Family is a Family, alongside books focusing on kindness and our connection to the environment, such as On Our Nature Walk and The Wonder You See.
Our hands-on activities this month were packed with colour and cooperative fun! To explore Indigenous culture, the children teamed up to paint a vibrant orange poster. The children also loved expressing their creativity through multi-coloured handprint painting and watercolour rainbows, exploring both bright combinations and stark black and white designs. Friendship and fine motor skills came together beautifully as we used beads and pipe cleaners to create special friendship and family bracelets.
One of the absolute highlights was crafting our own rainbow heart wands! Because each wand is completely unique, they became a beautiful, tangible reminder of how special every individual child is in our classroom. By choosing their own wand colours and decorating their hearts exactly how they wanted, the children got to express their personal creativity and celebrate their own favorite colours. What makes these wands extra magical is the personal touch on the back; having their own smiling faces glued to the wands brought an immediate sense of pride and belonging to each child. When we attached the ribbons and started dancing, the room truly came alive! The children loved waving their wands, watching the ribbons dance through the air, and seeing their friends' faces spinning around. It was a joyful, sensory-filled way to celebrate our friendships and show that while we are all wonderfully different, we can all dance, play, and shine together as one big, loving community.
