School Age and Kinder's - March Update

We cannot believe that March is done, that means only 3 more months of school left until summer holidays!

The children have been doing much of the same things in the morning as in the past couple of months; kinetic sand, creating buildings for their LOL dolls, Beyblades and we have been noticing some of the children bringing in books from home and having some quiet reading time. With the gardening club that Heather started we have been noticing the children taking on those responsibilities and ensuring their plants are being “fed” and taking turns watering them each day. We have been bringing in more recycled materials for the art shelf, encouraging the children to use the materials we have on the shelf, and to use both sides of their paper so we don’t waste as much. 

The kindergarten group has been really interested in building lately. The children have been mastering using cardboard to build houses, cars, TVs, and so many more things. Spring break gave us an opportunity to expand on building and make things such as, mat forts in the gym and a new Beyblade stadium. There has also been a lot of learning that stems from their interests in Beyblades such as learning how to score keep using a tally chart, using egg times and experimenting with other things that spin.

Spring break was a lot of fun. Although it was rather quiet we were able to spend some quality time with each of the children and they enjoyed helping to create fun things for the preschool children.
On Monday we had Ryan Price the magician come in and we were pleasantly surprised at how well the children did; they laughed, they raised their hands to ask questions and some participated as volunteers for the show. We believe this helped to keep the younger children engaged as well!
On Tuesday morning we had a few different activities for the children to do; we had a small baking club (the group of 8 children made sugar cookies for all of the children in the center), we had a come-and-go Easter egg decorating activity using hard boiled eggs (some the children ate their egg the next morning), and we had a hockey game going on in the gym. In the afternoon, we had our Easter egg search. They had to find 2 different types of eggs; one with chocolate and one had a paper that gave them a task to accomplish (a few examples were; read a book with an opera style voice, find someone who is going swimming over spring break, make up a new language and talk like that for 2 minutes, pick an activity for the children to do tomorrow) most of the children thought it was funny and willingly participated, we all had lots of laughs!
On Wednesday, we had PJ day where we had a very chill day; the children picked out a book for a staff to read and we read a few chapters at a time before meal times. We had the art area opened all day for whatever creation the children wanted to do. The school age children also set up an obstacle course that they invited preschool to come try out (Jana and Sheena came to test it out as well!) In the afternoon the children made their very own Beyblade stadium using the round table. The children decorated it before it was taped on and it looks great...come and check it out! J
On Thursday, we had an obstacle course bouncer come in and the children spent over an hour having races and had a great time. Heather and Devon really had them working all their muscles to climb up the big stairs to the slide. Devon was looking more exhausted then the children close to lunch time. HAHA J