ESTEVAN — Early years education at Sacred Heart School/École Sacré Coeur was the focus of an open house on March 7.
Teacher Megan Vanstone said they had over 70 kids come to check out the school. Some of them are current students, others are young people registered for next year. They also had parents come to check out what they have to offer.
When the school held the open house for the first time last year, Vanstone said it was only an hour in length. This year they expanded it to two hours, which Vanstone said made a big difference because the kids were able to explore everything the school has to offer.
"We invite all of our current families to come and see some of the different programming that we offer for our earlier students, and we also invite new registrants, just so that they can come in and get to know everybody, meet some of the teachers, and meet some of the students that their kids will be in class with next year."
But they also want to have as many people at the open house as possible, in case someone is undecided about where they want to send their kids.
"We really like to give them an opportunity to come and see how things work here and meet us and get to know us, and oftentimes we find that it makes them want to be part of our community later," said Vanstone.
When the students enter the school for the open house, they are given a passport that has stations which highlight the different programs the school has to offer for early years kids. There are stations for literacy, movement, technology, the French language, sensory play and other activities that are part of programming in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten programs.
"The kids go to each station, they try some of the activities out, so at the STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] they work with robots, or they get to make straw rockets or they do some building activities," said Vanstone.
In the library, the kids enjoy a literacy campout where they hop in a tent with a parent, read a story and do some different letter recognition activities. Sensory activities were in the pre-kindergarten room and focused on dinosaurs.
"There was slime, fossils and volcanoes," said Vanstone. "There was a million things in there for kids to play with."
Vanstone's daughter is starting kindergarten this fall and attended the open house. She said it was tough getting the child out of the dinosaur area.
And since the school offers French immersion, they get to practise colours, letters and numbers. After each station, kids got a sticker in their passports, and then they brought it back to the main entrance on their way home. They show where they went and talk about their personal highlights.
The dinosaur room was a hit this year, she said, and the literacy campout is a favourite for the kids.
The open house was introduced last year because Sacred Heart didn't have many people in the school due to COVID-19, so they thought it would be a good opportunity to get everybody in the door and give them a chance to see how things work. After the success of last year, they expect it will be an annual occurrence.
