Older Floor - August Update

Well August has come to an end. School is starting, we’ve said “see you soon” to our friends moving up to kindergarten and “welcome” to our new friends joining Older Floor.  We have had such a fun filled month in August.  We hope your children have enjoyed all our activities as much as we have. 

The first week in August we did a pay it forward community challenge.  We brainstormed with the kids on what we should do for our community.  They came up with so many amazing ideas, from baking cookies for the fire hall, to leaving notes/pictures at people’s homes, to what we finally settled on which was painting rocks and hiding them around town.  It was so much fun to see what the children created.  Once our rocks dried we went on a walk around town and each child hid their rock in a different area of town.  If you’re ever out for a walk around Sanford see if you can find out beautiful rocks! 

Our next week was a short one but full of fun! We had pyjama day, thank you so much for all who participated!  The Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre came to visit. Simone talked to us all about different types of animals found in the prairies and she also brought two owls for us to see.  One owl was born in captivity so they wouldn’t be able to release him into the wild and the other seriously injured her wing and wouldn’t be able to be returned to the wild.  The kids were so excited! They had so many great questions, when Simone said the Burrowing Owl was going extinct, one of the kiddos asked her “what is making them go extinct?”  Simone explained that it was very hard for the Burrowing Owl to find old animal burrows in the ground.  Simone explained owls don’t really chew their food they just swallow it.  To which one of the children asked “if they don’t chew their food what happens to the food.”  Simone explained that owls have two stomachs, and the food parts go into one stomach and the not food parts (bones and fur) go into the other stomach and come out as pellets.  It was so cool when Simone showed us some of the pellets they had bones and one was even big enough we could see a mouse skull.  This week we also learnt about different careers, we went around the circle and asked each child what their parents do for work.  It was fun to hear what the kids said their parents do, our kids parents jobs range from, “farmers, to insurance people, to carpet or car sellers and personal trainers”.  They were all so knowledgeable on their parent’s jobs.   

Wow, only half way through the month! This week was about outdoor safety.  We talked about all the different signs we see outside and what they mean and how they help keep us safe.  One of our friends said “stop signs tell us to stop, so we don’t get hurt.”  We even talked about signs that something isn’t safe without having a sign telling us it’s not safe.  One student said “if a tree has no leaves in the summer it probably isn’t safe to climb, because it might be rotten and break.”  Prairie exotic came to visit, that was so cool! We got to see frogs, snakes, turtles, fat tailed lizards, bearded dragons, and more!  We have talked in the past about dragons in stories or the one on Paw Patrol, but those are just pretend. Our friends thought it was so cool to see a real life dragon, because “they aren’t as big as I thought they’d be or as scary.”  We went for a walk to the Rec Centre, on the way we did silly follow the leader walking we took turns hopping, skipping, model walking and creating our own silly walks.  Car Town came for a visit, we learnt about road safety and we all got our licenses!  We planned on staying out all day on Thursday and Friday this week, but it was too smoky on Thursday so we came in half way through the day and on Friday instead of having our outdoor challenge we had our in the gym challenge.  We  set up quiet areas in the gym, art areas, large motor areas, block areas and doll house area.  We played games, like parachute and races.  What a fun day, but sadly we said good bye to teacher Andrea this week.  We will miss her, but will see her again.

Welcome back Amy, we missed you so much!  On Thursday we went to Boonstra Farms.  That was so much fun!  We split up into two groups, group A started at the play structure, petting zoo and train. While group b went on a tractor ride, milked a cow and fed some horses and a donkey.  It was really great to see the older kids in group a helping the kids from younger floor with field trip rules.  Plus great to see how well our friends in group B fit in with the school agers they were going to be joining soon.  We switched awhile later; Group B went to the petting zoo, play structure and train.  While group A took a tractor ride to the barn to milk the cow and feed the horses and donkey.  The kids thought the goats in the petting zoo were so funny! They were head butting each other and jumping high onto things.  Some of us were scared by a charging goose.  After that we went to the tent and had hot dogs, chips, juice boxes, apple sauce pouches and carrots for lunch.  Yummy!  It was so hot this day we had the choice of going through the corn maze but were worried it would be too hot for our youngest friends, so we re-sunscreened and then played on the play structure or went back into the petting zoo area.  We checked out their zero gravity room.  It was SO NEAT! It was a completely dark room, with black lights and something that spins around us while we walked straight through.  It felt like we were floating.  After we all had a turn there it was time to load the bus.  It was a nice cool bus ride back with all the windows open.  Lots of our friends fell asleep. 

In the last week we were transitioning children to new programs.  We had some of our older floor friends move over to the school age room and some of our younger floor friends move our older floor.  Wow, so much fun!  On Friday our teachers made a fun water day.  We had an obstacle course, fly swatter painting and water table fun.  The kids were timed and would switch areas when the timer was up. 

We hope you’ve heard many wonderful stories about all the fun stuff we do here every day!  We have so much fun planning theses activities for your children.  Thank you to all the parents who volunteered for the field trips over the summer and have donated craft supplies or books.  We appreciate it all so much!  Happy September!