Having fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar

One of our favourite stories is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was one of the very first stories I read to my son when he was a baby. What a great springtime theme.

We made our very own caterpillars and butterflies.

I also have the DVD of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other stories that we watched.

After we read the story and watched the show we colored our very own pictures of the story and ate all the fruit from the story which the hungry caterpillar ate through .

To finish off our theme, the kids reenacted the story with these laminated cutout pictures from the story.

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day so we celebrated this day at our daycare today because it’s Friday.

We made all things “green” throughout the week. We colored and glued tissue paper on foam shamrocks, we glued shamrocks, green pasta and tissue on green paper and we did stamp painting with a shamrock cookie cutter and put glitter on the painting while it was still wet.

For our morning snack, the kids enjoyed Lucky Charms cereal with green milk (I added some food coloring). We watched some short St. Patty’s Day videos on my tablet. My favorite was “Five Little Shamrocks”. Then we made our Leprechaun hats.

We played out in the backyard with our Green Sensory Bin.

While I made lunch, the kids watched a Bubble Guppies show about colors (I just love that show and all the songs they sing). For lunch we had rainbow pancakes, bacon and rainbow fruit.

We also read a couple St. Patrick’s Day stories throughout the week.

All the kids looked great all dressed up in green and their St. Patrick’s Day hats and socks thanks to their parents. Each child also brought in a green toy from home to share for the day.

Thank goodness it’s Friday because I’m exhausted!

Homemade Playdough

Making Playdough is a regular activity here at Cutie Pie Daycare. I never buy the stuff in the store because it’s better to have the kids make it. It’s fun for them, they can pick the colours they want and it’s warm to play with.

Homemade Playdough

1 cup of white flour
1/2 cup of table salt
2 tablespoons cream of tartar (find this in a bulk food store)
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Mix all the above ingredients together in a medium pot.

Over medium heat, add one cup of water and stir constantly for about 3 minutes until thick and pliable. Remove from the stove and let it cool for a couple minutes.

Then start kneading the dough for a few minutes. You can add some food colouring if you like. I added green for St. Patrick’s Day coming up in a couple of weeks. I also added some mint extract for a nice smell.

The kids enjoyed cutting, rolling, shaping, smelling, and squishing the warm Playdough.

It lasts a long time in a covered container.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

This week we celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday. I remember reading Green Eggs and Ham and Cat in the Hat books when I was young…and I still have a couple of those books from my childhood.

We have lots of Seuss books to read this week. One of them being an audio book I borrowed from the library.

Throughout the week the kids worked on their very own fish in a fishbowl, just like the one in the Cat in the Hat story. The older ones cut the orange pieces while the younger one glued the pieces on their fish. Then they all sponge painted their fishbowls (looked liked bubbles).

For snack times they counted their goldfish crackers and had Cat in the Hat fruit skewers.

During the week the kids watched Horton Hears a Who and the Original Cat in the Hat movies.

On Friday we celebrated the day with Cat in the Hat cupcakes, we made Cat in the Hat hats and I painted whiskers so they looked like cats. All the kids enjoyed looking at themselves as “The Cat”.

Happy Birthday Cecilia & Jed

This week we celebrated two birthdays here at the daycare.

For their special day, each of them got to decorate their own Birthday Crown to take home and everyone helped to decorate yummy cupcakes. We sang “Happy Birthday”, danced to the party music while playing with lots of balloons.

Each of the birthday kids got to take home some of their special cupcakes.

The “U” in Music is You!

Music plays a big part in our daycare everyday. During our circle time, we sing songs about the calendar, the weather and all types of kiddie songs. We also play music where the kids can dance along and/or play a musical instrument along with the beat. All the kids seem to enjoy this time of their day here and are excited when it’s almost “Circle Time”.

As I have mentioned before, I borrow a lot of our educational materials for our daycare from Affiliated Services for Children and Youth (ASCY). Every 3 weeks when I rotate our materials, I always make sure I have some sort of musical bin for the kids. We have used several instruments over the years such as tambourines, jingle bells, maracas, drums, spoons, cymbals, triangles, rhythm sticks, xylophones, rain sticks, pianos and we have made our own rice shakers.

I just recently attended a workshop presented by ASCY titled “The U in Music is You”. There are 3 sessions scheduled over the next couple of months (Rhythm, Melody & Singing and Dancing and Listening). It was very informative and hands-on. During the workshop we made our own drums that we were able to take back to our daycares to enjoy drumming along with the children. I’m looking forward to the next sessions and learning how I can improve on our music component here.

Here are some key points from the workshop:

All children are born with the potential to be musical; nurturing this natural potential will give them a jump-start in life.

Music and movement affects all areas of learning and development, such as social, emotional, physical, cognitive, language, and fine and gross motor.

No other component of our daycare curriculum, not even reading, impacts the whole child, simultaneously almost all at the same time.

Here are some suggested resource sites from the workshop:

freekidsmusic.com (completely free and totally legal)

www.playbasedlearning.com.au (drumming songs and games)

www.groovekidnation.com

Here’s a picture of the drum I made from this workshop.

Building a snowman

Finally we got some snow to build a snowman this year. It hasn’t even felt like winter here in Canada.

All the kids were excited to get started after we red this story.

Then we got all dressed up and went out into the backyard. I showed the bigger kids how to roll a snowball while the younger ones helped pack the big snowballs with fresh snow.

Then I stacked all three balls and we dressed him.

“Snowman” was definitely the word of the day! And when we went inside, the kids checked on him throughout the day.

All the kids spent a lot of time creating him that it was too bad that the weather was pretty mild the rest of the week and he melted