Mahmowenchike Family Development Centre provides programs for children from infancy to age 12.

Our centres are both open five days a week: Monday to Friday. Our hours of operation are from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM.

Closures

Mahmowenchike observes the following holidays and will be closed on these days annually:

• New Year’s Day
• Family Day
• Good Friday
• Easter Monday
• Victoria Day
• Canada Day
• Civic Holiday
• Labour Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day
• Boxing Day

Our centre closes for 2 weeks in accordance with the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board calendar.
We also closed for 1 week at the end of the summer for professional development and preparation for September.

Professional Development

Mahmowenchike will be closed on designated Professional Development days as determined throughout the year. Parents and guardians will be given ample notice in advance of these closures to ensure they have time to make alternate care arrangements.

Curriculum

Our centres follow an emergent curriculum. Emergent curriculum is a way of planning curriculum that’s based on the childrens’ interests and passions at a certain point in time. Children thrive and learn best when their interests are captured.

Planning emergent curriculum requires observation, documentation, creative brainstorming, flexibility, and patience on the part of the educator. Rather than starting with a lesson plan which is repeated every year regardless of age, developmental level, or interests of the children, emergent curriculum starts with the childrens’ interests. In short, it is a child-directed and teacher-facilitated approach to planning the curriculum.

First Nations culture and traditions are also woven into the fabric of the emergent curriculum supporting the interests and developmental goals of the children in care within the philosophy of the centre.

HiMama

Our centres use software called HiMama which allows parents to communicate with their child(ren)’s educator(s) throughout the day. In addition, HiMama has features that allow parents to view our centres menus and calendars, see photos of their children throughout the day, get updates about their eating, sleeping, toileting, and resting habits, and see the observations being made that include their children.

Each program has a tablet explicitly for this purpose and you may see your educators using it to document or take photos of the children as they engage in learning and play.

When your child is enrolled at Mahmowenchike, you will receive a permission form for this service and we will require your email address in order to invite you to be linked to your child’s profile. For more information about HiMama, please visit https://www.himama.com/users/parents.