My dear StrongStart friends, 

During our time at StrongStart we had many special moments together. I have many memories and pictures of you creating and exploring, learning about different materials and textures, building the structures and knocking them down, playing with your grown-up, talking, telling the stories that matter to you and sharing the ideas though your play, using your hands and bodies in different creative ways and making many friends along the way.  

For privacy reasons I cannot post pictures with children faces but am posting some pictures of their creations and playful learning moments. 

Some of my favorite memories are of us singing together. 

I hope you will join me in singing your favorite song and doing all the actions. Maybe you and your grown-up could come up with some ideas for NEW actions!  

Monkey See, Monkey Do (click to watch the video)

Here are some of my suggestions:  

• When you wave, wave, wave your hand; The monkey, wave, wave, waves his hand 
• When you stretch, stretch, stretch your arms: The monkey stretch, stretch, stretches his arms 
• When you touch, touch, touch your toes; The monkey touch, touch, touches his toes 
• When you roll, roll, roll your hands; The monkey roll, roll, rolls his hands  
• When you kick, kick, kick your leg; The money kick, kick, kicks his leg. 

This song is helpful to release our energies and get our bodies to move and it could be done with children of all ages.  I hope you will enjoy it together! You can adapt it into a calming song, singing it slowly and softly to your child to calm body and soul. 

• When you take a deeeep breath (AAAH and then exhale); The monkey takes a deeeep breath (AAAH and exhale) 
• When you hug, hug, hug yourself; The monkey hug, hug, hugs himself 
• When you give your mom (dad, baby…) a hug; The monkey gives his mom a hug 
• When you curl up in a ball; The monkey curls up in a ball 
• When you lay down quietly; The monkey lays down quietly. 

Dear parents, please don’t forget to leave your comments or suggestions (those will not be posted for everybody to see and I will be the only person reading it). You can also e-mail me at: lillian.kocmaruk@burnabyschools.ca 

Our StrongStart time together will look differently but my passion to support you and your children is always the same. 

Take care everyone, 

Ms. Lillian 

Dear friends,

I hope you are all healthy and doing well during these trying times!

I miss everyone of you!  I miss our time spent in the StrongStart, all your hugs and smiles, I miss seeing your amazing children grow, explore and learn through play and above all I miss our connection.

Welcome to OUR blog! I hope this will be a place where we will re-connect. These challenging times are all about connection.  While we all stay at home as much as we can with our family, we can turn everyday activities into special moments, share stories and warm cuddles. We can also enjoy our backyards or re-connect with nature and explore our neighbourhoods (keeping the safe distance from other families!).

On our blog I will be sharing resources, songs, activities and stories that will, I hope, help you enjoy your time together even more until we can meet in person in our StrongStart again.

We will get through this together as I believe together is always better!

Take care everyone, much love,

Ms. Lillian