Wow, it is hard to believe this is our last month of preschool before we transition into our summer fun program! We are looking forward to seeing those of you who are continuing on in the program for summer and next fall. It will be hard for us to say good-bye to many friends who have been with us for the past few years. We know it is the natural process of life, but we will miss you all.

A few calendar reminders for you for the month of June. We will be having one of our parents, who is a San Diego Life Guard, coming in on Monday and Tuesday, June 9 & 10 to teach the children about water safety. Thank you Mr. Sanders! Monday, June 23, 2008 will be the last full day for our M-W-F children and Tuesday, June 24, 2008 will be the last full day for our T-Th and 5 day children. On Wednesday, June 25, 2008 we will be having an all school picnic at Lindberg Park, from 10:00 a.m.. – 12:00 p.m. Please bring your lunch and we will see you there! PARK IS ON ASHFORD STREET. THE BACK FENCE OF THE PARK RUNS ALONG THE 805 FREEWAY.

View Larger Map

We will be having a quilt raffle at the picnic. The children created their own art squares and we had a generous grandmother donate the material and her time to sew beautiful quilts of each rooms art work. Thank you Audrey Continelli’s grandmother! They will be displayed in the classrooms the week of June 16, or sooner. We will be selling raffle tickets June 16, 2008 – June 24, 2008. You do not need to be present to win. If we pick your name and you are not at the picnic, we will call you on Monday, June 30, 2008 and let you know you won.

The entire staff of Northminster Preschool would like to let you know how much your children have meant to us this year. It has been a pleasure to watch them grow and mature. Thank you for all you have done to help us make Northminster Preschool the best preschool in San Diego!

Shelli Harder

Wow! What an amazing event we had last night at Northminster. Thank you to all the families who were able to attend our annual Northminster Preschool Celebration of Art. I was pleased to see so many families, siblings and grandparents at the event. A special thank you goes out to Pastor Markus Watson, Tom Wickstrom, John Crow and Vance Belliston from the Church, for taking time out of their evening to help make our night a huge success. We could not have done it without them!

It was a wonderful thing to hear your children sing 5 Little Speckled frogs a cappella! They practiced their little hearts out for the past 3 weeks. You may listen to their rendition via the pod cast feed on the right or via the link to the audio at the bottom of this post.

I hope you all had the opportunity to visit all the classrooms. Mrs. Keri’s class went back to nature in her room. Weren’t those ducks in the pond just the cutest things?

Mrs. Marcella’s class sure reflected the great outdoors with their plants, kites and huge sunflowers. They were taller than the children!

Mrs. Vela and Mrs. Frank’s classes read a lot of books and the displays of your children’s art made it easy to see how creative they are!

Mrs. Allen’s class studied some famous artists and learned about the several types of mediums used in art. It was amazing to hear your children tell us about Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh, Pollock, Johns, and they knew the difference!

Mrs. Alcala’s class used plain old cardboard boxes to create magnificent Zoo animals. Weren’t their animal creations marvelous?

Mrs. Durst and Mrs. Martin’s class took us on the wings of butterflies back to the age of dinosaurs. I hope you were able to read the children’s description of what type of dinosaur they wanted to be and why!

It is easy to see from last night’s event why the staff at Northminster Preschool has been here a combined 162 years.

We LOVE what we do!

 

 Standard Podcast [1:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (66)

When these little folks put their minds to it, just look out! The word went out that the Preschool would be collecting peanut butter (… and jelly) as a mission project for CCSA. With “Peanut Butter Enthusiasm” those little people jumped into the mission and the jars came rolling in. We ended the month with over 120 jars of peanut butter! ( … and some jelly.)

Curriculums this month are varied. Some classes are investigating the community around us, with trips to the grocery store, fire house, post office and pet store. These aren’t isolated projects. They are integrated with math skills, reading, socialization and motor skills. It takes a talented staff to put this all together.

With funds raised by the Preschool parents, the Pacific Animal Productions will present two programs with hands-on touching in the animal kingdom.

Pastor Markus will accompany the children on his guitar at the Art Celebration on Monday, May 19, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. This is a popular event with both children and parents, so the sanctuary and classrooms will be full with participants. All are welcome.

Come by and visit and see what we are up to at the preschool!

Can you believe it is May already? We have one more month of preschool and then it is Summer Fun time! I just want to remind all the parents that this year school is going until June 24th and the All School Picnic will be June 25th. More information will follow in June.

There are a couple of dates to mark on your calendar. Our 2nd annual Northminster Preschool “Celebration of Art” Night is Monday, May 19th from 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. It is a combination singing production and art open house. Please feel free to invite grandparents and siblings, and make sure you bring your camera. We will also have a surprise presentation for you! Bring your children to the church sanctuary and have them sit with you until we are ready to sing. Then after they sing you will take your child to the preschool to tour the classrooms. Make sure you tour all the classrooms so you can see the different ways art is interpreted depending on the age of the child. It will also give you the opportunity to see who the other teachers are here at Northminster. The entire preschool staff is extremely excited about this event, so please join us!

The preschool will be closed on Monday, May 26, 2008 in observance of Memorial Day. Also, please keep an eye open for the Summer Fun letter and room assignments. The letter will be going home with your child on Tuesday, May 27th and Wednesday, May 28th.

I want to thank all the parents who participated in the Ice Cream fundraiser and the Kids Art fundraiser. We appreciate everything you do that continues to support Northminster Preschool and the children. I also want to thank you, on behalf of CCSA, for your contributions of peanut butter and jelly. We collected over 125 jars of peanut butter and jelly to help fill the food shelves at CCSA. Your generous contributions will help needy families here in the Clairemont area, so THANK YOU!!

On behelf of the entire staff, we would like to thank you for bringing in snacks to share, contributing your time, skills, paper bags, and any other little or big thing we need! You are always so generous when we ask for your help. It does not go unnoticed and we thank you for all of it. You make it easy for us to love what we do!

Shelli Harder

Spring is here! We are so lucky to live in a part of the world where spring means no snow! Our classrooms are transforming as we speak.

I have a request/reminder about the sign-in/out books. Most of you are really good about signing in and out appropriately, thank you! Please remember that you need to be signing the time, not an x in the appropriate box for checking your child in and checking out. For example, if you drop off at 8:30 a.m., there is a box that has 8:30, please write the 8:30 in that box. This also applies when signing out your child. Please continue to sign out in the signature box you have always signed out, not on the line where the time is. I have attached an example to help you out. The State Licensing is requiring the time in the box and your signature. It is not an option. Also, it helps the office when totaling time for billing if you use the box instead of a random place to put the time. We have 140 sheets to review at the end of the month and it can become confusing for us.

I would like to thank an anonymous donor, who helped make it possible to paint the entire preschool during spring break. I know the poles and doors were obvious, but the entire school was painted, stucco was repaired and the trim was repaired and painted as well. It has been over 20 years since the preschool has been painted. Jeff Ostrowski gave the preschool an amazing price and his workers did an amazing job. We had over 5600 square feet that needed repairing and painting and they were able to do it in a week! I highly recommend his company to anyone who needs painting done now or in the future.

I want to remind parents, since it is now spring, if you would like a conference with your child’s teacher to chart their progress please ask for one. We don’t set up specific days for a conference; we leave it up to the parents to ask their teacher for one if they would like one. This is available the entire year.

We are working on classroom assignments for summer and fall. We will be sending out a letter at the beginning of June with classroom assignments for summer fun. Please note that school is going through June 24th and the picnic is on June 25th. For those of you who have been with us for awhile, this is a change from previous years. It is on the calendar we gave you at the beginning of the school year.

Our next big “event” is our Art Celebration night on May 19th 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. We have some special things planned, so please mark your calendars for this fun and memorable event. We had an amazing turnout last year and would love to see you all again this year.

I would like to thank all the parents who attended the pancake breakfast last month. What a beautiful day we had! This event was sponsored by Fred and Janet Schwend. They are both members of Northminster and Janet was the Director of the preschool for many years. We had a great turn out and the church members and Pastor Markus would like to thank all of the parents for attending.

The Director’s door is always open. Please stop by anytime if you have any questions, concerns or comments!

Congratulations and Thanks to Northminster Preschool for re-painting the preschool! This is truly a blessing for both the preschool and the church. It provides a more beautiful campus and play area for the children and teachers of the preschool. It also improves the appearance of our church and, well, even the value of our property! So, again–THANK YOU!

Pastor Markus Watson

Just a reminder that this Sunday, March 9th, we will be having one combined church service at 9:30 a.m., where we will be joined by the preschool families in honor of the beautiful new lawn that has been installed in our preschool playground area.

Our 9:30 service will be followed by a brief dedication of our new playground turf and a delicious pancake brunch! Please join us for this special occasion.

… and remember to turn your clocks ahead one hour this coming Saturday night or you may arrive at church a bit late…

Today the children were delighted by a wonderful display of fire and ice put on by Mad Science of San Diego. As one of our many enrichment programs provided for our children by our parent group, Mad Science has been coming for many years to teach us the wonders of science.

Happy New Year!

We wish all of you a happy, healthy 2008.

Welcome back to school! I am sure everyone is excited to get back into the routine of life. We are excited to be back and are looking forward to a great 2008 with your children.

On Monday and Tuesday, January 14^th and 15^th Mad Science will be here doing a show on Fire & Ice and Movie Special Effects. This enrichment program is courtesy of the fund raising efforts of the Parent Group. The preschool will be closed on January 21^st honoring Martin Luther King holiday and January 22^nd for a staff development day. Pizza days this month are January 10^th and January 18^th.

Thank you to everyone who donated toys and food to CCSA. We were able to provide toys for CCSA to give out to families who came off the street asking for something to give their children for Christmas. CCSA was extremely excited as the donations they had were already given out to other families. Thank you for remembering the reason for the season.

You will notice a transformation in the rooms to reflect winter. Even though we do not get snow on the ground here in San Diego, you might see some in the classrooms!

We would also like to remind the parents that if you exit the preschool onto Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, it is illegal to make a left turn as you exit from the parking lot. It is a blind corner and there is a double yellow line. Please make a safe right turn out of the church parking lot. We do have police on occasion who will cite you if you make a left turn while exiting the parking lot. Let’s make it a safe year!

We have a lot of jackets and other items in our lost in found in the office. Please stop by and see if any of it belongs to your children. We will be donating the bulk of them to Goodwill at the end of the month.

On behalf of the entire staff at Northminster Preschool, happy 2008 and we look forward to exciting things this New Year!

The Northminster Preschool has a very active parent group that does fund raising to provide things such as enrichment programs for our school. As part of this program Eric Runningpath of the Navajo Nation has been coming to perform for our children for many years.

Eric is a Native American culture story teller and dancer and he enthralls the children every November.