Toddle Bot Blog - March update

Well... March started out like any other month in the world of daycare! We were

finishing up I Love To Read Month and getting excited about St Patrick Day! The

Toddle Bots we offered a variety of experiences to gage their interests and set a

focus for the month, we painted using pom poms and also did some color sorting

by sticking pom poms onto colored papers on our window. We did some big

muscle activities like jumping on big sheets of bubble wrap, climbing in and out of

a giant box, and using hammers and golf tees to hold pieces of styrofoam

together. We glued different sized circles together and then folded it in half to

create unique rainbows. We carefully threaded fruit loops onto pipe cleaners to

make bracelets.... But then we ate off all the fruit loops! 'cause we toddlers!!

We glued pots of gold, and made rainbows with clouds at the end. And then....

then the Toddle Bots got to spend time with the other groups in the centre as the

number dropped off quickly and drastically. On March 17th the government

announced that all daycares would close in 3 days and recommended parents not

bring their children in until further notice, for the few Toddles Bots left in the

centre we spent our time climbing snow hills with our older friends, and enjoyed

time on the baby room climber! We baked cookies for snack and got to use the

gym in the school. March ended early, and the Toddle Bots were sent home to be

safe with their families with an exciting game full of activities called Toddle Bot

BINGO! We at JA Cuddy are all hoping for a quick end to this scary time and an

exciting April!

February - Infants Update

We said good-bye to a few children and welcomed twins Halo and Luxor and also Logan! So excited, to have some new faces in our room. 

This month was "I Love to Read Month"!  We did lots of literacy based activities.  Such as felt and magnet stories, bring in our own stories from home to read and share, and we also had a special visitor read to us. One of our parents, Mrs. Thiessen came and shared some of her stories from home with us.  The children love reading so it was a super fun month!

There have been some really cold days when we have had to stay inside.  This has been the perfect opportunity to pull out the water table and splash around all together.  We do love our sled rides and walks when we can get outside and play in the snow! It is finally starting to warm up a little and we are going to have so much fun splashing around in all the water puddles once the snow melts! Prepare to get wet and dirty!!

February - Littles Update

I Love to Read Month is our favorite winter past time.  We got to do a lot more with our favorite stories.  Every Friday the Littles' teachers and Toddle Bot teacher would turn our favorite stories into a play! We watched "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears", " Mortimer", and "Mmm Cookies"!

This month we also did a lot of sensory activities including cooking and tasting to go with the stories.  One of our favorite story was "Green Eggs and Ham".  Most of us did not like the taste of the ham.  The best tasting activity was making doughnuts for " If you give a dog a doughnut ".  The Littles also worked with the Toddle Bots to make stone soup.  Each child brought in a veggie to add to the pot.  We cooked it in a crock pot so we could smell and see it all day.  We got to eat it for our afternoon snack, but everyone preferred to eat the buns instead of the soup!

The teachers have already been planning on how to keep all the fun of reading and cooking going in the future months.  Keep an eye on our Instagram page to see what  we have been up to! 

February - Honey Bees Update

This February has been very busy! We had a fantastic I Love to Read month! We read lots of books every day and every Friday we put on a Robert Munsch play! Shawna was such a great actor the kids had lots of laughs!

 We also had a parent volunteer come read us her favorite stories. Many of the stories that we read went along with fun activities and crafts! This February they have been very interested in sensory activities, role playing and rough and tumble play. We have been exploring their senses by offering water table and different science activities that allows them to play and explore with their hands!

There were lots of walks this month! We explored the town and went to the ‘mountains’ again and again! The slopes were amazing to climb, slide down and hide in! The RM kindly turned part of the ‘mountain’ into slides so we can toboggan down! Thanks to them we can slide super fast and far!

 We are very excited for the next couple months with this new group!

Februrary - School Age Update

This month was a blast in the SA room! Many of the children attended Festival Du Voyageur with their school and were excited to talk about it here, too.  We made some bead work and weaving projects inspired by the traditional art they saw at the festival.  These were fun activities that required concentration, patience, and attention to detail. 

Hockey is extremely popular in the room right now.  The children are keeping active by playing "mini" games whenever they get the chance!

We are looking forward to our first March, of the decade!

* Reminder we will be skating the morning of March 6th for the in-service !*

February - Kinder/Kinderstart Update

February flew by! We read lots of stories for I Love To Read Month and did many activities inspired by the books we chose. 

One of the favorite stories was" Jack and the Beanstalk".  The children wanted to know if beans could really grow up to the sky, so we planted some and measured them as they grew!  They grew quickly, but haven't reached the sky yet! 

We were super excited to have some guest readers, and the younger floor staff performed stories, including "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears" and "Mortimer" and invited us to watch!

The kindergartens also practiced reading their library books from school, to their younger friends and did a great job!

Toddlebots - February Update

I love to read!  You love to read!  We all LOVE to read!  The Toddle Bots have always been interested in looking at books and love listening to stories. We often use a story as a transition before lunch and we always have a story to calm their bodies before nap, but with February being Manitoba's I Love To Read Month I decided to challenge myself into incorporating as many books as possible into the program!

I'm happy to say that every activity we did this month had a book as part of it, or as an introduction to it.  Some of the Toddle Bot favorites included "Roaring Rockets" (Tony Mitton) where we used cut up shapes to make our own rocket ships.  "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"( Bill Martin and John Archambault) where we made our own palm tree and added the letters to it. When the tree got heavy and the letters fell, we dusted them off and helped them up again! We made our own "Very Hungry Caterpillar(s)" (Eric Carle).  We mixed paint colors to form new colors just like the chameleon in "A Color of His Own" (Leo Lionni) and we read all about feeling in "I have Feeling" (Jana Novotny Hunter) and played an emoji matching game. 

We teamed up with our friends on the Littles side to make cookies just like the one the mouse eats in "If you give a mouse a cookie" (Laura Numeroff) as well as each child on younger floor brought in a vegetable and together we made "Stone Soup" (William Rubel) for everyone to share at snack!

I worked hard to incorporate literature into our traditional Valentines activities as well; we made stain glass windows in our window after reading "Rain Rain Go Away" (Caroline Jayne Church), we read "Llama Llama I love You" (Anne Dewdney) and made valentines.  We read "I love you forever" (Robert Munsch) and made a special Valentines canvas for our families.

 

Once a week the Toddle Bots were asked to bring in a book from home for show and share.  They did such a great job with this!  They were excited to show their book to all their friends and sat so well while we read each childs' book. This was such a great way to hear new stories. (and for Shawna to get new ideas for our classroom library!)

The staff also took story time to a fun level by acting out stories such as; Goldylocks (Robert Southey), Mortimer (Robert Munsch), and MMM Cookies (Robert Munsch).  I used puppets and magnets to tell stories with my own twist on them like Red Riding Hood, The Three Billy Goats, The Three Little Pigs, Humpty Dumpty and Five Little Monkeys.

At circle I found out that the Toddle Bots LOVED interactive books so we read a lot of them, some of their favorites included "Don't Push The Button" (Bill Cotter), "Mix it up" and "Press Here" (Herve Tullet), "There is a Monster at the End of This Book" (Jon Stone), "Tap the Brightest Star" and "Touch The Magic Tree" (Christie Matheson) and "Construction Site" (Sally Sutton).  The Toddle Bots loved to use their fingers and hands to make things happen in the books, and I loved watching as they would touch a color or button and then look back at their finger when something happened on the next page!  I highly recommend "Don't Push The Button" and "Mix it Up" for all children!

We kept track of books we had read by placing small photos of them on the wall and the Toddle Bots were frequently found looking at the pictures, they knew which books had come from home and who brought them, they also pointed out their favorites from activity, circles, and nap!

By the end of the month we had 85 books on our wall!  What a successful show of literature! 

February was a busy but fun month! 

Can't wait to see what March will bring us!

Caterpillars - February update

February has come and gone! We went on many fun filled adventures!  We went on trips to the "mountains",  the big hills behind the rec center.  We climbed, explored, slid down on toboggans, made forts and used our imagination playing different games!

During our adventures we would pick up the mail, go see the fire trucks, stop and get a treat from the lumber store, grocery store, and explore the town!

It was Valentine's Day this month and we had a fun party playing games, making a special snack and handing out our cards!

February was "I love to read month",  we spent a lot of time reading all the stories of  "Curious George the Monkey".

Now on to March! 

School Age - April update

The warmer weather has made afternoons at the schoolyard lots of fun! This is where school-aged children will be most days between 4pm and 5pm for the remainder of the school year. When we are at the school yard a notice will be posted on the front door of the daycare.

During our annual spring cleaning we found several boxes of Barbie dolls and action figures with all of their accessories in storage, and they have been a hit with the older children! They have dressed them up , acted out movies, and built homes and even towns for them!

We are beginning to make plans for summer in the school age room and look forward to many adventures!

Kinders - April update

Our kindergarten group has taken an interest in dramatic play that centers around a school theme. As they take turns being teachers, students, and principles we get an idea of how they interpret these roles! We provided backpacks, clipboards, and other school supplies to enhance their play.

We have noticed a change in their approach to art activities recently, too. They are choosing materials they are comfortable with (like markers and plain paper) less often, and beginning to ask for new and different materials on a regular bases ( various types of paint, recycled materials, and beads for example). They like to sit together but make independent projects, often each using completely different materials rather than all wanting to make the same “craft”. It has been wonderful to see their unique and creative ideas!

KinderStart/Butterfly group - April update

Two big things happening this month really seemed to capture this groups attention- NHL hockey play-offs and Earth day!

We have used both of these themes as starting points for many activities ranging from process art activities (like rolling marbles through paint to make Earth and designing our own hockey logos on paper pucks with pastels) to dramatic play, to basic math skills (like hockey logo matching games) to literature activities! When we find that the children are excited about something, it gives us opportunities to practice skills and explore concepts in fun new ways!

Infant Room - April Update

What an exciting Month we have had!  The weather has been beautiful and we have played outside lots.  We found all our toys and loose parts after the snow melted!  We've explored outside using our gross motor, fine motor and sensory skills by; picking up leaves, grass, branches, pushed toys around the yard, slid down slides and ran up out little hill.  We made instruments with tubes, tin cans and branches - what beautiful music it made!

Toddlebots - April Update

Well!  We thought that March flew by with all the transitions and new routines, but now April is done too now and I can’t even believe it!  The days seem to go by so fast as we are always so busy on the Toddle Bot side!  Here are a few of the things we did this month!

We started the month off with some cool science and sensory activities; the Toddle Bots woke up from nap to find a poster on the wall with colored paper towel roles glued to it, under each roll was a bowl of the same color filled with pom poms.  The Toddle Bots quickly began dropping the pom poms through the rolls, some would match and sort colors other just like to drop and pick up!  We put shaving cream into a zip lock bag and added a drop of food coloring to it, the bags were taped shut and the Toddle Bots squished and poked the bags to mix the color, did you know a drop of red and a drop of blue will make purple! The Toddle Bots were VERY excited to figure this out!  We explored corn starch magic and loved as the goo dripped through our fingers!  We also drew a picture of a town complete with a house for everyone in it, we drove toy cars all around the town, we were full of laughs and smiles when it “snowed” white paint onto the roads, cars had to drive through the car wash bucket when they got to snowy!

To celebrate spring we did some sponge painting, and we made rainbows, and flowers.  We used food coloring and medicine droppers to decorate coffee filters and turn them into butterflies, and we made a co-operative caterpillar to brighten up our wall.

For Easter we decorated paper eggs using bingo dabbers, this is a great was to practice our color recognition as well as sharing and taking turns as we use one color at a time and then pass it to a friend and receive a new color.  We also used paint with sparkles and texture to make eggs and we glued pom poms onto Easter bunnies.   We decorated real hard boiled eggs using a swirl or shaving cream and food coloring.  The toddle bots enjoyed rolling the eggs through the mixture but by far their favorite part was wearing rubber gloves!

Happy Spring Everyone!  I can’t wait to see what May has in store for us!

Caterpilars and Kinderstart - March Update

Our March was jam-packed and busy!!  We spent so much time outside enjoying the warmer weather.  We went on many walks around town and even made a few stops at the Rec Centre to climb and play games on the ``mountains``.  It won`t be too long before all the snow melts and we will be running in the grass!

During the last week of March, we enjoyed a fun Spring Break.  The boys were so excited to organize a game of ``street hockey``.  They all brought in their sticks from home and took turns playing the different positions!   We walked all the way to Ashland Park on one of the days and although the snow is melting, there was still a lot of snow we had to get trudge through to get to the swings and climbing structure - it was all worth the hard work!!  Another day, we went on a treasure hunt around town and enjoyed looking for a variety of things in nature.  One day, we even got to celebrate everyone`s birthday at once!!  We decorated the room with streamers and a balloons, made and decorated a cake, played birthday games and even had a dance party!

We`re looking forward to April and a beautiful Spring!      

Infants - March Blog

March has come and gone so fast!  It`s hard to believe it is over now.  This month we were able to enjoy lots of time outside in the beautiful spring weather.  The kids loved to go out and splash around in the puddles and there is so much more exploring to do now that all of the snow us melting!

The children are all such little monkeys - they absolutely love to climb on anything and everything!  We recently purchased a little climber and slide and we are so excited for it to arrive so the children can use it!

At the end of March, was Spring Break and it was such a fun week!  On Monday, we had a salon day where all children had their hair done and explored with velcro hair rollers.  We also pretended to paint our nails (using a paint brush and water!)  Tuesday was Doctor day and the children were invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal from home.  We pretended to be Doctors and help out little stuffed animals feel better!  On Wednesday, we had beach and camping day.  We set up a tent in our room and then got our bathing suits on and played in the water table - the children all loved splashing around and getting wet!  On Thursday, we all worked together to bake chocolate chip cookies (Mmmmmmm!!!), for our party on Friday.  During our party on Friday, we all got to try on some fun party hats and blowers.  We out on music and had a blast dancing!!

We are looking forward to April and all of the warm weather that will keep us outside exploring!  We will continue to work together to provide the children with fun learning opportunities, based on their interests.

Toddlebots - March Update

Well March has come and gone and it was a huge month for the Toddle Bots.

I joined the Toddle Bot group on March 4^th and shadowed Brittany for a week learning the routines and getting to know your children.  After the fastest week in history we said a sad good bye to Brittany and the month went on.

The Toddle Bots are so welcoming and we have quickly fallen into a routine mostly familiar to them.

The weather has warmed up significantly allowing us to spend lots of time out in the yard; I really enjoy being outdoors and have seen firsthand the benefits that large blocks of outdoor play can have on young children.  It allows them time to get deep into dramatic and physical play as well as absorbing vitamin D and access to fresh air.  My hope is to incorporate a lot of outdoor time as the weather warms up and we welcome summer.

We have added an informal circle time (children are free to come and go) to the Toddle Bot group, I realized early this month that the Toddle Bots LOVE to sing!! They also love to learn and practice actions to songs they know and are curious and excited to learn new songs!  At circle time I have introduced some props to help choose song both new and familiar to the Toddle Bots these include:

-A song box, where each Toddler can reach in and choose a song card, as we sing their song they get to put it back into the box.

-A song wheel where children can take turn spinning the arrow around to a song of their choice.

-A dice of pictures of familiar songs that can be shaken and rolled to choose a song.

-I have also been using finger puppets to tell stories and sing songs.

The Toddle Bots have been very open and receptive to Circle Time and often are all willing to clean up and come running when I begin singing our circle time gathering song.

We have spent time painting, gluing, and coloring this month so I can get use to each child’s abilities and begin planning activities to meet their needs.

We ended the month with a few spirit weeks and enjoyed dressing up and being silly.

I am really excited to be a part of the Toddle Bot group and can’t wait to see what next month has in store for us!

Happy Spring!

-Shawna

School-Age - February Update

The school age group has continued to prove to us just how resourceful and creative they are! We have seen them build and create amazing things with any materials we provide, from specialized art pencils to scraps of cardboard and fabric!

One thing we have observed this month is that a lot of the children are making things (pictures, cards, etc.) for others. Especially older children making things for their younger peers, which has helped build a sense of community throughout the program!

Kinders - February Update

Our kinders have been focusing a lot on kindness this month. We have read books about empathy and caring, talked about patience with younger children, and practiced pro-social skills like helping, listening, and taking turns through a variety of play experiences.

We have been doing lots of movement activities, freeze dance being the favorite! We have also done yoga and  dancing with scarves and ribbons! Any time they hear music, this group starts moving!

We look forward to visiting the forest throughout march and exploring the opportunities and new experiences that go with it! What and exciting time to be a Kinder!

Butterflies - February Update

February was a busy and exciting month for this group! They worked so hard at their weekly skating practices with Reba and Meagan and gained confidence each week. This really complimented their ongoing interest in hockey, too! Hockey has made it’s way into various types of play, from arena building to designing team logos and getting into character as their favorite players! We have used this interest to promote literacy skills by practicing writing names (and numbers) for their jerseys, and filling out “registration forms” to play.

Valentine’s Day was another highlight this month and the children were so excited to make cards with stamps and play with glittery valentine slime! We also read a few special Valentine’s books featuring Franklin, Dora, and other loveable cartoon characters!

Now that we are FINALLY coming out of the deep freeze, we have been enjoying more outdoor play again and the children have really been into using tools (plastic snow saws, snow molds, shovels) to work with the snow. Sometimes they work side by side just cutting or shaping the snow, and sometimes they work together to build walls and forts!

We have also tried doing yoga in the snow! Balancing was hard, but the children had so much fun trying and had big smiles the whole time!

Infant Room - Febraury Update

First of all, I would like to mention that we said goodbye to our little friend Nolan as he turned 2 and moved up to the Toddlebot Program - we will miss you Nolan!  And , we welcomed Brantley to the Infant Room and look forward to getting to know him and his family! 

February has been an extremely cold month and we have had very little time to play outside so we have kept busy with many different activities indoors.  One day we brought snow in and filled our water table, then gave the children construction vehicles and spoons and they had so much fun!  Another day we did an activity finding letters in Oatmeal, which was a great way to promote 'I Love to Read' month.  We also enjoyed reading stories, doing felt stories, and having puppets read our stories to us! 

Valentines day we had a little party and gave our friends their cards!  We made crafts for our wall! 

We are hoping March will bring us more outside time!