Baby Care Shop

January was gone in a flash! We started off the new year with a party! The children went to the gym with some glow sticks, they had a dance party and the had ICE CREAM! This month we baked “Monster Cookie Oatmeal Bars” for the centre for centre baking week! Every month we will most likely be preparing some type of food (healthy and “treats”)! I value the importance of baking/ cooking with children and I remember baking as a child and I recall having so much fun! Next month we will be making chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting topped with a candy topper for our Valentine’s Day party! Stay tuned for a list of the fun activities we will have planned! We have had a cold January (the ending at least) and we are looking forward to getting outside more in February! Thank you so much to the Ogilvie’s for donating battery powered string lighting! We are just waiting for the next shopping day to get batteries J Also thank you for donating 2 oils for our diffuser! So far it’s going grea...

December was a busy month with plenty of Christmas crafts and activities. Santa generously asked if the Elf on the Shelf and The Moose on the loose could place many presents under our Christmas tree for him! The children were so excited to unwrap the presents and play with all of the new toys. We got new trucks, cars, books, babies, stacking cones, Magnetiles, plenty of special paints and much more!   There wasn’t a lot of days where we had to stay in which was awesome because we enjoy our play time outside. We made snow angels, slid down the snow hill, had pretend camp fires and we made snow balls to smear on the wall of the school! There was a lot of imaginative play where the “bears” would hide in their caves and the huntsmen had to catch them. We made our friendly birds some new bird feeders by spreading sun butter onto pine cones and rolled them into bird seed! I observed a lot of the children helping each other out when it comes time to undress/ dress to go outside and th...

Our kindergarten group had a lot of fun with music throughout the holidays! They love having music time with De, especially when they get to try the Ukuleles, and often ask to play with instruments or listen to music and dance. They were very eager to take part in our talent show over the holidays and seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight! We are also working on understanding and developing empathy through stories and play tutoring (when a staff joins in play to demonstrate kind or appropriate behaviour).   We are hopeful that the children will benefit from this and build even stronger friendships both here at the centre and everywhere they go! It was a blast having the school agers over winter break! This is when we really get the time to find out what they like so we can provide the best activities and material possible for them before and after school! We weren’t surprised to see a lot of art happening, and with the holiday season there was plenty of inspiration! The art area n...

The kinderstarts/butterfly group has definitely been in the holiday spirit this month! It is so much fun hearing them sing their versions of the holiday classics (for example, “Up on the housetop reindeer CLAWS”)! They have also made many of the decorations around the schoolage room, decorated our little tree, and worked hard on some special gifts for their families! We have continued to work on spelling and writing first names through songs, games, and activities! We will continue this over the next few months and branch out into more letters and words as the children feel ready. This group also loves being read to and we are always updating our library area to keep them interested. We are fortunate to have many winter and holiday themed books and they also really enjoy anything by Robert Munsch! Some other interests we have observed over the past month are categorizing and matching, organized physical activity (like hockey or yoga), and dramatic play based around school (“reading...

December was a busy month filled with fun Christmas activities!  We made reindeer, candy canes, Christmas trees, snowmen, snowflakes and played fun Christmas games.  We also sung lots of Christmas songs and had a dance party!  We took many trips to the "mountains" beside the Rec Center.  The kids played 'King of the Castle', had competitions to see who could jump furthest and, practised climbing and sliding.  The kids (and adults) had so much fun!! We did many science experiments from the traditional baking soda and vinegar, where we watch it explode and fizz all over the place to a brand new science experiment that taught the kids about water pressure!  In this experiment, we pushed 15 pencils through a large ziplock bag that was filled with water.  The kids were amazed each time another pencil went through the bag and no water seeped out.  The children are always so excited and engaged when we bring out both ne...

December came and went in the blink of an eye!  We said good-bye to tow of our little friends; Max and Calix, and welcomed two new faces, Roxul and Walker. The children love to spend time outside so we try to get outside everyday, sometimes twice a day - as long as the weather is nice enough!  They all love to get pulled around our yard in the toboggan.  They always have smiles on their faces from ear to ear.  We have also noticed the children love to use their hands to smash things.  Outside, they sit at the picnic tables and we make snow castles using our pails then they all race to smash them!  So, because we noticed they like smashing things we started to think of other activities we could do with them to build on their interest.  One day we offered the children play tools to smash cheerios and another day, we made a volcano and the children enjoyed touching the fizz that came out and breaking the volcano after.  Later in December we started t...