Water Balloons

What can you do with left over water balloons? Here's a start:

AND WE STILL HAVE MORE!!!!

A Little Bit of Animal

So i'm all for animal play, I mean that's pretty fun right? It gets us in touch with our carefree side, but this took it to a whole new level!

like little cats sleeping in the sun.... looks cozy doesn't it?

Changing things up... again!

Okay children, your voices have been heard! The photo below is one of the very few times that the children actually played in the 'block room'. 

Before

The children tend to gravitate to the constructing materials, and really enjoy building and creating with the blocks and the cars, but quite often the entire room of materials gravitate towards the 'big room'. The children are most welcome to blend the materials together. The play that the children engage in when this happens is wonderful to see, and explodes into creative, open-ended, imaginative play. I love seeing the lightbulbs click, and the whole group engaging in play that was created right from their imaginations! So on that note, over the last few weeks I had been mulling over a major change in the environment. I had been observing, more and more, the children taking nearly every piece out of the block room into the big room and I wondered why. I had my theories, I thought it had something to do with the lack of natural light, and the lack of space. I asked the children in a group meeting last week, and I wasn't too far off the track. The children told me that they like playing near the windows (lack of natural light). They also told me that they didn't like it when others knocked over their towers (lack of space). SO, on Friday morning the children helped me move the block room into the big room. Since Friday, the centre has continued to transform to where it is now. I cannot wait to see the reaction of the children tomorrow! I'm interested to see how it flows and how it functions!

After- the block room is now an atelier (workshop of an artist), with a little more softened lighting. 

a little inspiration from Van Gogh and Monet, with space for the 'real artists' down below!

Before- this was our art space/ sensory/ eating area

after- Tinkering table

Block area (this was where our eating tables used to be). Lots of space to create, build, plan, and construct!

Murals hanging from the ceiling (it's double sided- well... two murals hung back to back), and some flowy material hanging from the ceiling.

Display shelf for all our creations

A table for illustrating plans/ clay table!

The environment has gone through changes over the last few months. It's important to listen to the children's voices, and to understand their needs. Because the children in this program are really into constructing and building, it is important for them to have the space to create! It is also important to give the children a change of scenery every once in a while. Our environment has undergone quite a few changes over the last few months, we are still new, so we still have bugs to work out! It's been a wonderful learning experience to learn from the children. The layout of the environment may work for the here and now because of the dynamics of the children, but come a few years down the road the dynamics of the children may change the environment again. It's all about listening to the children's needs!

Now it's time for bed... need to be ready to play!

Embracing Our Inner Huck Finn

There is nothing worse than wet socks inside wet boots! Ok, there probably is worse things, but it's just not comfortable so this was our solution today!
It was wet, and it was fun And yes, I got in on it too!

Dads

As is the case at this time of year, this week is all about dads.

So we read a really neat book called "Some Dads..." by Nick Bland. In the book it tells us what some dads do. Not every dad is the same, but they are all still dads. 

So I posed the question: How do you know who your dad is?

I thought i'd share the list.

"His hair is like my brother's, and he wears GIANT slippers."

"He has lots of hair, he's grown up, and he has big feet and arms."

"My dad has brown and white hair, but he's not grown up, he just has big feet."

"My daddyhasbig arms, bigfeet, he looks like my mommy. He also looks likea rockstar."

 "He has sticky-up hair, like mommy's. Sometimes he gets mad. He has long arms, almost down to his feet. He can't run very fast, I can run faster."

So what does your dad look like?

More on our Sensory Garden

A couple weeks ago we told our readers about our little project we've started. Although it's not 'complete' we wanted to give you a little update on our sensory garden. We've really enjoyed this project and it has been really neat to watch the children take ownership of the garden. They are dilligent weeders, and waterers. They are well aware of the hard work it took to get our garden going, so are very careful to watch where they step in the garden. The sense of pride that the children have with the garden is so wonderful to observe. I'm really glad we have done this project.

It's a lovely area to take a break in, and many children just like to sit in the garden with a little shovel to hunt for worms. As we near the warmer, drier weather, we hope to make more use of the garden for some 'chill out' time.

We planted smaller plants so we could watch them grow, and to make sure that our garden was not overgrown to quickly. We've planted hostas,a variety of grasses and even one called a 'unicorn plant' which has an amazing texture to it. We also have lots of lavender, and other lovely smelling flowers in it, as well as some creeping thyme, that when the children step on it, it expells a lovely smell. 

We still need a little fence of some sort, or edging to be put around the garden (we keep getting balls kicked into the garden) and we picked up some gazing balls that we need to find a way to 'display' them. We will be making some stepping stones to add a little personality to the garden.

This is our 'gathering circle' where we can have some meetings and have some story time. I would really like to paint them to look like little toadstools, but we just haven't got to that stage yet.

This is our newest acquisition: It's our 'Bean Hut'. We've planted some beans that hopefully will climb up the poles to make a little hiding spot.

On the other side of our yard, we've planted some vegetables, and we're excited to see that a few of them have not disappointed us, and are growing like crazy!  

We've got potatoes that need to be covered with another layer of soil!

A little patch of peas. This is in our garden box that we planted lettuce, carrots and radishes. We fear that the crows have gotten to our radishes and lettuce, we'll see!

We've also planted some Kale and Green Onions. We can't wait until the harvest!!!!

Butterflies!

Last week or so we shared the exciting news that we had caterpillars in our classroom. Nine in fact, nice sneaky, and hungry caterpillars! They ate and ate and ate for it seemed like, FOREVER!!! But all nine of them did exactly as they were supposed to do and made themselves a cozy little chrysalis. They sat their for over a week, and the children began to tire of watching them. It's so hard waiting!

One morning I came downstairs to find that one of the chrysalis' had changed to a dark brown rather than a light brown colour. You could also see the colours of the wings through the chrysalis. I was no expert, but I figured it must be time!

So we got some sugar water ready, just in case!

Then we noticed this red 'blood' on the table... long before we even noticed that not one, but two butterflies had emerged while we had been outside. We read up and discovered that this blood was essentially the butterflies waste that had gathered during the chrysalis stage.

There's one!

The interest had started again, and the children enjoyed reading the butterflies stories. I have to point out that we had to fashion an 'addition' on the outside of the enclosure, because one sneaky caterpillar squeezed out of the enclosure and made a nice little chrysalis on the outside!

Some children even drew pictures of the butterflies....

.... and hung them up for the butterflies to see.

Then came the day we had to say goodbye. They had been flying like crazy in the enclosure, so it was only right to set them free. So I let a few go on Sunday, but we had a couple more that were ready as well. It was a bit overcast and perhaps a bit chilly, so they hung around for a while. But off they flew.

Some children were even able to hold one of two on their hands.

Which meant everyone wanted a turn.

Eventually the ones that have emerged (we still have two more in their chrysalis) were set free. We are sad to report that in all the excitement, one got overlooked and accidentally got stepped on :(

We think they're pretty happy outside.

We're also excited to share a video we captured of one of our early butterflies that had just emerged and was pumping the blood into it's wings!