Hello Everybody!

As we head into the holiday season, we have a lot of news to give you, and ask that you kindly take note.

Grand Opening of Kids & Company at Stockyards

We’ve made new friends this year with Kids & Company, an incredibly reputable child care company in Canada.  Started by a mother of 8 (!), these experts are opening their 94th centre at the Stockyards, at Keele and St. Clair West.

All of our families are welcome to visit the grand opening – we’ll be there and would love to see you!  Be sure to check out the link to the event on our Facebook page.

Kids & Company Stockyards Grand Opening

ABOUT THE NEW STOCKYARDS CENTRE

The new Stockyards centre is at the intersection of St. Clair Ave. W. and Weston Road. This much anticipated location will be our 94th child care centre and 11th in Toronto, and is expected to be open January 1st. We are excited to join the vibrant community and offer flexible, high-quality child care options to its families. Our centre can accommodate up to 82 children ranging from infant to preschool in bright and sunny learning spaces with huge windows. Our large playground is right outside of our doors so that we can enjoy unstructured play and the great outdoors year round. 

ABOUT KIDS & COMPANY

We are a reputable early learning and child care provider with locations all across Canada and the US. At Kids & Company, we use an emergent curriculum and learn through play philosophy. We’re very proud of our proprietary programs! They include Alpha-Mania (pre-literacy and early reading), Mini Masters (art), and Munchkinetics (movement) and are designed to engage our children in a learning process that encourages self-expression, creativity, coordination and most importantly, fun! You’ll find sign language in our baby and toddler rooms, and all our children participate in music, French, science, exploration, and creative play throughout our day.

All of our food is planned by a chef and nutritionist and prepared fresh daily in the Kidco Kitchen. We focus on diversity, nutrition and family-style dining in our meal options and approach to food. Part of our curriculum also incorporates learning about food, where it comes from and how our bodies use it.

Does your family have an nontraditional or rotating work schedule? Not to worry, we’ll work with you to accommodate your needs! More than just daycare, we offer flexible child care and early education to help families achieve a greater work-life balance.

Surveys to Help ABC & Music Together

There are two surveys we’d like to ask for your help with.

The first is an ABC satisfaction survey that you may had our co-op student, Hillary, do with you over the phone.  If you spoke to her, then you do not need to do this a second time.  If you haven’t spoken to anyone, please take 2.5 minutes and complete this survey.  It will help us to make sure we are doing the best for you – our top priority!

The second is a survey from Music Together about the new books and curricular revisions.  Music Together is a role model for us, because they really do take our feedback to heart, and implement when/where possible to enhance the experience.  This survey they are conducting is to find out how you are enjoying the new materials.  It is super important to get your feedback.  Believe it or not, your feedback will likely not be incorporated until January 2020, as they are already in pre-production for the Fall 2019 collection.  Don’t let this dissuade you!  Your feedback affects people worldwide and is super important.  Thanks for doing the survey.

You Are Registered for January 2019

We’d like to remind you that you are pre-registered for the remainder of the school year.  For Mixed Age we are starting the Drum collection, and for Rhythm Kids we are starting Tree Frog.  If your schedule has changed, please call us right away so we can accommodate you.

There is great new music in both collections, and we can hardly wait to dig in!

Rhythm Kids please note: While our start date is January 5th, it is most likely that this will be an 11th week of Alligator, rather than week 1 of Tree Frog.  This is because as a new program the materials are all in production for the first time and they are on a very tight schedule for production that will be cutting it really close.  As teachers we’ll have access to the music in advance, so if we get the books in time, we will do week 1 of Tree Frog.  Please note that the extra week is within Music Together’s guidelines of classes running 8-12 weeks per collection.

CD-Free!

We have decided to cut our waste footprint and go fully digital beginning this January, 2019, by no longer distributing CDs with our collection materials.  The Hello Everybody app allows everyone to have mobile access to their phones, and the Family Music Zone at musictogether.com allows you to download the music to your desktop and other associated devices.

Want CDs for you or other family members?  Simply email [email protected], and for a small fee and shipping they will send you the corresponding CD for your collection.  We suspect that you will likely need your digital access code to confirm your registration.

Con Español for All Families

We are pleased to announce that we are rolling out Music Together con Esapñol to all of our families in Mixed-Age classes starting this January.  This is free and we hope you take advantage!

You will now receive 2 books with two separate download codes: Your Music Together book with English music access code, and a Spanish Language book with bilingual access code.  Your access code in each book is different.

We recommend you listen to the bilingual music at home, using the code from the Spanish language book.  Hearing this bilingual English/Spanish music will deepen the learning experience for your children, as they build an understanding of this extra dimension of auditory information alongside the music and most commonly spoken language at home.

Do not forget to pick up both books at your first class for Drum this winter.