The Little's - January Update

Happy New Year!  We started off our year with a spirit week and the children had all kinds of fun.  Some of our favorite parts of the week were playing lots of new sports in the gym.  We also had the chance to play driving games and race our older floor friends  when we were learning and exploring with transportation.

Closer to the end of the month we had our public health nurse, Heidi come in visit us and she taught us all about germs on our hands.  She had a special bear that we played with and passed around, and afterwards looked at our hands under a black light to see all the germs.  After we washed our hands with lots of soap and went back to check that all the germs were gone.  Heidi also left us with a game to play that had us discussing what foods are good for our teeth and body.  We also talked about how we use the tooth brush to get rid of the "sugar bugs" and keep our teeth strong.  We will continue to talk about keep our bodies healthy and taking care of ourselves and others so we can all the happy and healthy!
  

Older Floor - January Update

We are officially done the first month of 2018. It has definitely been an eventful month. 

Heather headed back to Red River for another term of the Early Childhood Education program and she brings back so many exciting changes and enhancements to our room. She has worked extremely hard in bringing an astronomy theme to our science area. As the children lost interest she brought in lights to spark up more interest and it did. The children really have been enjoying shining their lights through coloured wands as well as onto a piece of shiny cardstock. “Look at my blinking stars” another child was heard saying.

During transportation week the children used a big cardboard box, with Heather’s help, to create an airplane. They coloured it and used their imaginations to “go” anywhere they set their minds to.
We have been enjoying two weeks about self-care and well-being. 
 
We had Heidi (the public health nurse) come in and do a presentation on germs.  She read a story about the importance of washing our hands and then passed around a small teddy bear (with a special powder that acted as the “germs” on it). After everyone touched the teddy bear, we were able to look at our hands under a black light and were able to see all the “germs”.  We then washed our hands and came back to the black light to see if they washed away all the "germs".  We also talked about the importance of brushing our teeth and how items with lots of sugar can cause cavities in our teeth. Heidi brought along a display board that had different food items (Always foods vs. Sometime foods) that the children had a discussion about each item and sorted them in groups with a happy tooth or with a sad tooth.
 
We start our skating program with all groups (caterpillars & butterflies) and the really enjoyed the first session!

We are looking forward to February as it is “I Love to Read month” and we have LOTS of exciting things planned. Be sure to have a look around the room as we will be posting some documentation panels along with photos.

Diana, Haley, Heather & Kerri

Toddle Bots - January Update

This month was a busy one! We started off the year by enjoying all of the new toys that we got for Christmas. The children seem to enjoy them and we are so thankful for all of the gifts that we got!

 

The children have been interested in dramatic play lately, especially the kitchen and baby center. We made baby doll diapers and wipes for them to practice changing their baby’s. Next, we’re hoping to vamp up our drama centre further by adding a homemade washing machine so they can wash their clothes.

We introduced yoga to not only the Toddle Bots but the Littles as well. It surprisingly went pretty well and we would like to experiment and make yoga a weekly part of our program. Each child got their own mat and we all did some simple moves and enjoyed the dark calming music.

Heidi Watermulder came to talk to the children about how to stay healthy. They seemed to enjoy the visit and ever since, we have been trying to use her method of singing our ABC’s to scrub our hands to rather than rinsing them off with water right away.

We’ve continued to work with the Toddle Bots on their self-help skills. Getting ski pants on can be a struggle and as of right now, we do not have a “trick” for it like we do for putting on our jackets. We are encouraging each child to put on their own ski pants and I have seen some of them improving! We would greatly appreciate it if you could do the same at home so we can be consistent.

What you can expect to see on Younger Floor is, more documentation panels so you can see what we’re up to during the week. They will most likely be in page protector sheets hanging on the wall either on the Toddle Bot side or on the Littles side, depending on if it’s a whole room activity or just a group activity.

Upcoming plans:

We would like to have our own little water table.

*If anyone is willing to help us by donation or by helping us build our water table, we would greatly appreciate it! We have the plans made already. Items that we would need to be donated would be:

- Lumber – (1) 2”x6”x8’ board and (1) 2”x4”x8’ board
- 20-30 Screws
Tools that may be needed: Mitre Saw or Circular Saw, Tape Measure, Drill or Hammer, square

If anyone is wanting to help us out, please contact Sheena, Jana or Brittany to acquire the plans.

Thank you very much!

 

 

Infant Update - January

We started the new year saying good-bye to Ben as he moved up to the Toddle Bots group.  We will miss his bear hugs, daily!  We are excited to welcome Owen into our Infant Program.  We know he will love all his new friends.

January was quite cold and we had a lot of indoor days.  We kept the children busy with many activities such as; climbing on the mats, playing at the water table doing water activities, arts and crafts, playdoh and several different painting activities such as, ice painting, finger painting and marshmallow painting.  Any chance we could get the kids outside on a nice day, we did and they loved it!

Rustic Sign Class

Join us at the Rec Centre on February 23rd for a Rustic Sign Class! Doors open at 7:15, class starts at 8:00 pm. There will be raffle prizes, cash bar, and lots of laughs. Seating is limited so RSVP as soon as you can! Tickets are $55.00 and all proceeds go towards programming at J.A. Cuddy Child Care Centre Inc.

RSVP to boardjac@gmail.com and select your design.

Can't wait to see you there! Prize details will be available closer to the date!

 

 

School Age Room - December Update

We had a fun month of building with Uberstix, creating a variety of winter crafts and going outside!  Over the winter break, we had different theme days everyday and the children enjoyed them all.  Some of the favorites were;
- Spa Day where they made flip flops and painted their nails,
- PJ Day where they made pillows and wore their pj's,
- Winter Olympics Day where they got to hold a real Olympic torch and challenge themselves to a variety of obstacle courses and,
- Roll it, Move it and Shake it Day where we played a variety of new and old board games.

We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays as much as we did!

Infant Room - December Update

We have had a great December!  The beginning of December was nice and warm and we built an igloo to crawl in and out of.  It was interesting to look up and see the snow over top of us!  When the sun came out it melted so our next project is to build a quinzee.  We will pile up the snow and pat it down into a big pile and tehn dig it out so we can play in it - be sure to watch for it in our yard as we begin this!

We did lots of Christmas activities over the past month.  We made decorations using our fine motor skills to glue, paint, color and to place stickers.  They were beautifully displayed in our room!