Older Floor - June Update

Wow, June is over and summer break is here!  The children have had a wonderfully busy month.  Our Kinderstart friends have graduated Kinderstart and are excited to move to the school age room and kindergarten in the fall.  We said good bye to some friends who will be missed.  We had many dance parties, we did lots of yoga and meditation.  We are so grateful for the amazing weather we’ve been having.

In the beginning of June we talked a lot about emotions.  We did emotion BINGO, an emotion was called out and the children had to identify the emotion on their BINGO cards.  We drew faces about how we were feeling another day, lots of happy/excited faces that day!  At the end of that week we had show and share.  It was wonderful to see what they brought in and hear all about what made it special to them.  We had a special visitor come in. One of younger floors fathers is a police officer.  He came in to talk to us all about being a police officer.  The children had great questions, “do you ever get hurt?” “How many bad guys have you caught.”  After explaining that police, fire fighters and paramedics all work together.  One of the kiddo’s exclaimed “my daddy can do everything like that too!”

The next week was the week before Father’s Day.  We talked all about families.  We learnt that all families are different.  The children were so understanding, thoughtful and interested to learn about their classmates families.  We worked on our Father’s Day gifts.  It was so fun to hear all the children’s answers when we were making the cards.  One of the questions was about what makes your daddy happy.  They all had amazing answers, some were.  “I make my daddy happy.” “My mommy makes my daddy happy.”  We all hope you enjoyed your gifts, the children were so proud of all the hard work they put into making them!  We ended the week with hat day, we saw some really fun hats, a hat crab even came to visit!

Last week Sheryl came out and sang with us.  She really gets us up and moving with fun new action songs!  We had our last Fit Kid’s, Healthy Kid’s class.  We are sad it ended but we all learnt so many fun new games to continue to play together.  We went on a nature colour scavenger hunt.  The children each got a bag with a list of colours to find on the outside of the bag.  We walked all around town to find the colours we needed to finish the scavenger hunt.  When we started we made predictions about the colours that would be the hardest to find.  We guessed pink and purple would be the hardest to find.  As it turns out pink and purple were some of the easiest ones to find, orange, grey and blue were pretty hard to find.  One of the kids pointed out that they could see the blue sky, but they couldn’t fit it in their bag.  We saw a robin which had an orange chest but we couldn’t fit it into our bag because it flew away.  When we came back to our room, we emptied our bags and made a poster with all the colours we found.  The children had amazing observations about everything they learnt on our walk.  Like green was the easiest to find, it’s everywhere.  Another child shared that robin’s eggs are very small and blue.  One child pointed out that they saw lots of things that aren’t naturally occurring in the colours we needed but it was a nature walk not a people made walk.  They came up with an idea for another day to go on another walk and find stuff people made in the colours we looked for this day.  We ended this week by making a huge bowl of fruit salad.  Thank you so much for bringing in some of your children’s favourite fruits!  The children each got a smaller plastic knife and helped cut up some of the fruit for the salad. 

This week has been all about summer and Canada, we made hand print Canadian flags and fireworks. We talked about where we live.  We will be painting rocks and hiding them around town, keeps your eyes open for where we hide them. 

Just a reminder we go outside every day but with the heat and UV in the afternoons we may not be able to make it outside and if we do it will be for a shorter period of time.  Please don’t forget your children’s water bottles, sunscreen and bug spray (if you’re not using daycares), sun hats, indoor and outdoor shoes and now that we will be having water days, a towel and bathing suit.  We hope you’ve been enjoying seeing the children’s art works around the room and some of the room changes and toy changes we’ve been making.  Lets get July started!  Happy Canada Day!   

School Age - June Update

Our school age group has had a very creative month with fuse beads! They have moved past basic shapes and into beautiful patterns, animals and even game boards with game pieces (tic tac toe). Outside, the children have organized their own version of American Ninja Warrior style challenges. For example; going across the monkey bars and skipping every other bar and balancing as they walk along the border of the playground. They are competitive but also very supportive of each other and are often heard encouraging each other. Even though it’s an individual activity, they have really shown the spirit of team work.
We have also had the opportunity to observe some tadpoles this month (thanks Sheena!) We posted the life cycle of a Frog in the science area for the children to compare the tad poles to, and they were very excited when some of them began to grow legs. What a great month it has been, we are very excited to see what our summer programming will bring us!! J

Kinders - June Update

This kindergarten group really enjoys dramatic play! We were setting up an office themed play space for them but this quickly evolved into a hair salon/barber shop. They often will request the staff that come in the room to sit down and have their 'hair done; washed, cut and styled.' What great use of their imaginations!
Their creative building has also caught our attention, as it is so complex and creative; sometimes it is a fort with multiple rooms, a parkade with a ramp system, or a miniature model of the school. They take pride in their work and often save it and come back multiple times a day to add or make changes to their projects. They have been enjoying the community walks and have begun to notice things like bird sounds and changes in familiar gardens. Zoey shared with us that they planted a new tree in their front yard so as we walk by, the children always check and discuss it's growth.
At the end of June, the children went on a nature/collecting walk. They ventured out around the community and each found different nature items to bring them back to the center and as a group we discussed their findings.

FUNDrive Profits

We are happy to share that we made just over $350.00 on our FUNDrive Fundraiser with Value Village. We would like to send a HUGE thank you out to our volunteers: Roxanne, Vern, Lori, Scott, Larry, and Laurette!! We would also like to thank our families and the community for all the donations!

FUNdrive

Do you have items sitting around at home that you have no use for and are willing to part with? Do you want to support a local not-for-profit organization? Well, do we have th fundraiser for you!! J.A. Cuddy Child Care Centre is doing a FUNdrive fundraiser with Value Village. We want what you don't! If you have the followinf items you'd like to donate, we'd gladly accept:

-clothing
-shoes
-bedding/towels...
-accessories
-CDs/DVDs
-Books
-Electrical Items
-Toys & games
-Kitchen items
-Knick-Knacks
-Sporting goods

Drop off at the centre at 5 Main Street in Sanford, MB from 7:00am-5:30 pm Monday-Friday, olr email jacuddy@mymts.net to arrange a drop off at a storage site in town. For more information, check out our FUNdrive website:

https://fundrive.savers.com/e/fundrivewewantwhatyoudont            

Drop off anytime from now until June 25th, 2018!                                                                                                                                                       

Infant Room - May blog

This month we were able to get outside a lot more because the weather has been so beautiful!  We have enjoyed a few picnic lunches - they were lots of fun!  There is so much to explore outside.  They love watching the tractors and big trucks pass by.  Last week, we watched a construction crew right out side our play yard.  They were digging out the new sidewalk so we were able to see a little tractor in action.  So cool! 

We did a few water activities with the children this month to keep them busy.  We filled bowls with a little bit of water and gave them a sponge to clean the table inside; they had so much fun cleaning the table together.  Such great teamwork!  Outside, Sherry built little water runs out of plastic bottles and cubes for them to play with.  They love putting the sticks through the hole in the middle of the picnic table and then picking them up off the ground and doing it over again and again! 

We have a jar filled with tadpoles in the room for the children to look at and they are all very intrigued by them.  We are hoping that they will eventually turn into frogs and we can let them for free, back into their natural environment. 

The kids seem to really enjoy running and climbing on things; such as the table and bookshelf so the kids love it when we bring the mat with big climbing blocks and tunnels  for them to climb all over and crawl through.  They also enjoy when we bring out the little tents and attach them with the tunnels.  They have so much fun following each other from one end to the other!  Recently we created a little ball pit in the big tent we have, and this was a total hit with all the kids.  Hopefully, we can construct our own permanent ball pit in the near future!

Toddle Bots - May blog

The month of May seemed to have flown by, starting the month off with the occupations theme. We seized every teachable moment to expand the children’s knowledge about different kinds of occupations. One day, we saw a helicopter flying in circles above the daycare and surrounding neighborhood. They were very interested in it and we talked about how the person who flies the helicopter was called a pilot. We talked about fire fighters when we had our fire drills and just recently, we had a parent volunteer his time (as well as his partner’s time) to show the children what their day consists of while being a police officer. The children really showed their excitement when the lights were flashing and they held their ears as the sirens went off but had many children smiling from ear to ear!!

 We can’t forget about how excited the children were to make their wonderful, beautiful mothers a present for Mother’s Day! They took such pride and each group learned several different learning outcomes, such as color mixing, the smell of ingredients coming together, what is for eating and what should not be ingested, how gentle we need to be with handling glass verses other materials and so much more J. We even spoke about how each family looks different with factors of having siblings or not, the age of the family and extended family. Each family is unique and different in their own way and are incredibly important.

 We touched a bit on construction/ invention as the children created whatever they desired using loose parts and several items without having a clear end product. Lastly, we had the gardening theme which for the Toddle Bots, we have yet to successfully grow anything. We attempted twice but can’t seem to get past the small little sprouts that end up shriveling up. Luckily, this past Friday, some of the children got to take part in planting the flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit in our garden beds. The children will primarily maintain the plants as we observe and provide guidance! We can’t wait to share with you all of the pictures and documentation of how they did/ how they will care for these plants.

We have an exciting month coming up and will be spending plenty of time outside! We can’t wait to share with you how much fun the children will have for our water days, June 19th and 27th!

Reminder: We are still looking for donations of socks, also if anyone has any baking sheets, cooling racks, whisks, metal or plastic bowls, or basically anything that will make a sound if we bang it with a stick or spoon for our outdoor music wall, please let us know!

 

Kinder and School Age - May blog

In the mornings, the children have been quite interested in playing board games.  Monopoly, Memory, Guess Who, Yahtzee and Honey Bee, are often played by groups of children at one time.  It has been great watching the younger ones learn from the older ones.  It's such a great opportunity for all ages to come together and connect with one another. 

Hockey play offs have been a hot topic in the school age room with all ages. Thankfully Jana purchased some soft balls for the children to be using and they have been enjoying using them during outdoor play time. They have even been making fan signs and banners in the art center.  It sure was exciting for everyone with the Jets in the playoffs! 

Heather has noticed at the end of the day the children have been discussing the ever changing weather as the summer is approaching. The older children are eager to share their weather knowledge with their younger peers.  They have been talking about the clouds and explaining to each other what is happening when the clouds fill with water and it rains or snows.  It's so nice to observe these conversations and for children to share their knowledge and  "teach" a friend!    

The kinders were very excited about the sidewalk construction that happened in front of the center this month. They spent a lot of time watching and discussing the process and were particularly excited about the cement mixers! They filled a plastic jar with water and corn starch and took turns turning it, to keep the mixture from hardening - just like the cement trucks! They have also taken a lot of initiative helping with daily tasks like watering plants and even brining mail to the post office on our walks.  

One more month of school and then it's summer vacation!  We can't wait to have fun with all of the school agers over summer!!











 

Preschool Older Floor - May blog

It has been a very busy month filled with so many great experiences.
With the Winnipeg Jets making it into the playoffs we all had so much fun with; decorating the room, dressing up and even hosting our own hockey game with creating a small rink in our room, using mini hockey sticks and small nets too, of course. We have created a documentation panel up and it is posted near the office if you would like to take a peak.

At the beginning of May we started our “Fit Kids Healthy Kids” program that comes every Wednesday for 8 weeks in the morning for ½ hour and we truly have loved every minute of it. It has been giving us great outdoor game/activity ideas and many different ways we can incorporate active play into our back yard play space. Some of the great ideas so far have been: warm up games/activities getting our heart rates up, parachute games, using pool noodles and balloons in different balancing ways, and moving our bodies in different and creative ways.

At the beginning of the month we had been struggling with what theme to do for the drama center. Then school age children had built a fire truck out of a giant box, they decided it was too small for them and graciously gave it to us. We took it outside and the children painted it and we brought out the fire fighter prop box. The children spent most of the month engaged in play with it and we have been noticed it starting to fizzle out so we have been doing some observations to what we can change the drama center into next to keep them engaged in pretend play.

The children worked very hard on their canvas paintings for Mother’s Day, we truly hope you all enjoyed them. Our favourite part was asking them what they love most about their Mom’s and listening to their responses.  It was so heart warming. We are excited to be working on our Father’s Day surprises soon.

With the warmer weather increasing we will continue to spend lots of our time outside; we welcome you to bring a water bottle for your child, please take it home at the end of their week to get cleaned and brought back for the next week. J

 

Littles - May blog

This past month we have been busy! We started a new program that is called Fit Kids Healthy Kids. Fit Kids goal is to teach children and their teachers the fundamentals of movement that makes kids confident and competent in sport, recreation, and life. The goal of their program is fit, healthy kids that are active for life. So every Wednesday our new friend Lyra comes to our back yard and plays lots of really fun games with everyone. Some of the children’s favorite games are in the water on the beach where they have to jump in the “water” aka the hula hoop, and then on the “beach” which is out of the hoop. Another one is a game called lost puppy, the children pretend that the colorful bean bags are puppies and they have to run and sort the puppies in to their matching hula hoop or “home”

This month we also worked on a secret project for our moms. The children really seemed to enjoy keeping a special surprise from everyone. We managed to make our own peppermint body scrub and all the children really liked how it felt and smelled on their hands before we bottled it up to give as a present.

At the end of the month we had some really special visitors come. Matty brought his dad in to talk about what he does as a police officer! The children were all really excited to see him and his partner, all dressed up in their uniforms. They let us play with their handcuffs and then showed us all the lights and sirens that are on their police car. Most of the children were quite shy while they were here but after they left and we came inside, they were all playing games about police saving the day and protecting people.

We are looking forward to what June has in store for us and the summer weather!