Monster Mush

In the spirit of Halloween, Sam put together a unique sensory experience for the children. She grated a bar of soap, ripped up some toilet paper in small pieces and then added some water as the children helped her mush it all together.

The children loved it and made a wonderful mess enjoying it! It was enjoyed so much that it lasted for a whole week! :)

3/4 Year Old Room Update

We have rounded out our "Fire Safety" theme this past week. We have talked about "stop, drop, and roll", when and why we call "911", and how to stay safe when practicing fire drills, and in case of fire.

We had a great field trip to the Fire Station on Manchester Ave. The fire fighters that showed us around the station were very nice, and patient and answered all of our questions. They let us get into the fire trucks , and they even turned on the flashing lights for us! :) We have pictures to share with everyone, they are all ready to be picked up at the daycare.

We practiced a fire drill last week at the daycare as well. Everyone did a really great job staying calm, and using their "walking feet", but moved quickly to get out of the building to our meeting spot.

We had done all kinds of reading about fire fighters and fire safety. We have also done all kinds of art around our fire safety theme.

We have now moved on to a new theme - "music/musical instruments". But our "fire safety" theme will be revisited soon. We are going to have a fireman visit us at the daycare soon (probably the week of the 7th of October as is it Fire Safety Education week). We are hoping that he might bring a truck with him and will show us his equipment and maybe even let us try it on! ;)

Celery update #4

"Our celery is getting huge!" an excited boy at daycare tells me. I turn to look at it and say, "Oh my, I guess it is!!! I need to take some pictures!"

I just realized as I'm typing this that it will be a month since we started growing out celery tomorrow. Where has the time gone??

It has gotten extremely large in that time - about 8" now!! It is also very robust, we have discovered, as it's been pulled out by the little ones several times now LOL.

In pulling it out we have discovered that our celery has grown quite an extensive root system ( picture to follow as I didn't get one today when it was out, but I will be sure to get one tomorrow when someone pulls it out... Hehe).

Our celery growing experiment had prompted the growing of a second celery- this time we have put blue food coloring in the water. The celery was only planted last Friday and the food coloring was only added to the eater today. As you can see, tube color is already traveling up the stalks and the tips are slightly colored as well :)

Celery update #3

Our celery is continuing to grow bigger each day - tube children are amazed at how big it keeps getting.

The children remind us each day to water it, so we hope that we can grow it into full stocks and have a celery snack soon !!

This picture is our celery as of today - August 29th. About 21 days after we started it. The measurement is a itte inaccurate as we were measuring from the bottom up before (when it was in a dish). This new measurement is only from the soil up as some of the bottom of the stock base is buried...so it has grown even more than the measurements are showing that it has :)

The church burnt down :(

So last Friday, August 17th, we arrived at the daycare (via an alternate route because Church Ave. was shut down) early in the morning to find our power was out. We quickly discovered that the reason was because in the wee hours of the morning The Torch For Truth Tabernacle Church (which luckily, had been abandoned) was on fire. So for everyones safety, neighboring buildings and businesses were left in the dark.

This affected our services, as we obviously couldn't take children into the daycare without power. My son had been at the daycare first thing with us that morning, and experienced the darkness first hand. The other children, arrived shortly after lunch, when we got our power back, were all curious as to what had happened as well.

The next morning the story was in the newspaper. My mother showed my son (who is 4) the pictures , which helped him picture exactly what had happened. He then insisted on carrying the pictures around with him everywhere he went. He would show everyone he would meet and tell them the story about the church that burnt down.

Today all of the children went for a walk up to the old church site - which is now a construction zone. They watched the big back hoe lift the rubble into a dump truck to tow it away. They were very excited to see the heavy machinery at work :).

The pictures below are pictures that I had taken on Sunday, when I walked my son up to see it in person. He had driven by it with us a few times and wanted to see it up close. There has been much activity since then and not much of the rubble remains. In one of the pictures you can see him holding the pictures that nana laminated for him ( because he's a little rough on just plain paper lol).

Out of this tragedy there is an important lesson that we can teach the children - fire safety. The children have now seen first hand how destructive a fire can be, as well as how dangerous. We are going to be contacting the local fire department tomorrow in hopes that they will be able to come in to talk to the children and kick off our "Fire Safety" theme. Since everyone was very excited about the back how they will probably all be playing construction around the daycare and begin a "Construction" theme soon as well! ;)

See a story about the church fire here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2012/08/17/nb-saint-john-church-fire-556.html

Caterpillars & Butterflies

We went for a little walk around the areas around our daycare on Friday, after our power outage extravaganza ....and we found CATERPILLARS!!

The children were very excited and we ran back to daycare to get containers for them. We collected two caterpillars, along with some of the leaves from the trees we found them in. We are hoping that they will turn into butterflies for us. :) well, maybe moths - either way the metamorphosis is sure to prove fascinating for our eager little minds to watch!

It's an exciting thing to read about it in a book , and even more exciting to witness in person ( as we did last year at the "old" daycare). We will document the progress of this exciting science observation on the blog and will be releasing the moths once they have turned ;)

Stat tuned....

Celery update

Our celery is going strong - its been about a week and a half since we started growing it! As of yesterday (Friday the 17th of August) it was 4.5 inches tall!! (from the bottom of the dish up)

We noticed some roots growing out of the bottom and decided to plant it. The children were very excited to get their hands dirty! We have it planted in a large pot and are going to continue to watch it grow.

We asked the children of we should eat it when it got big and they thought we were silly to think of such an idea - so this has sprung into talking about farming. :). What a perfect topic considering harvesting season is creeping up on us! We will be researching a possible field trip soon ! ;)