Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

"Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver We spent Thanksgiving Day at home and had our big family dinner this weekend at my parent's house. My dad is notorious for smiley faces. Here is a giant one he put out in the field. We don't have enough snow at home for sledding yet, so Dane and his cousins had a lot of fun sledding for the first time this season. Scooby was really enjoying the snow too! Winter has arrived. Now, the question is, do we put up a Christmas Tree this year??? (We leave for Denmark in 18 days.... )

The Great Start Regional Resource Center, 4C of the U.P. asked for our help in making ornaments to decorate a tree at the Peter White Public Library. So, we have been crafting.... We covered some styrofoam balls with scraps of tissue paper. I found this idea here. (The camera battery needs to be recharged and I didn't get a photo of the completed project yet!) We also beaded some icicles. My little friends love to work with beads. I have found that using pipe cleaners rather than string really helps them to be more successful with smaller beads. I've also been crafting myself! I finally reclaimed my sewing machine for a couple of hours! I'm making these gingerbread people ornaments to sell for Dane's cub scout troop. Our goal is to raise enough money to send all of the boys to camp this summer. I haven't sold my crafts in years... Any suggestions on what to charge for these little guys?? They are about 6" tall almost 4" wide. They are a combination of...

I found a great idea for a "turkey " apple tart/pie snack online here . We adapted the idea slightly to make them a little bit smaller and made them with a whole wheat pastry crust. The children helped by rolling out the crust, grinding the cinnamon and putting them together. Oh, we didn't use the apple jelly in our either. We opted to use a small scoop of our homemade applesauce instead. Craisins made great eyes and a little dusting of cinnamon and sugar topped them off. Baked in the oven (This one stayed in just a little bit too long), and gobbled right up! Happy Turkey Day!

I've been using Tumblr to help me keep track of some of the great ideas I find online. You can check out my Tumblr page here: http://childcentralstation.tumblr.com/ I have one more big project to finish for my class, otherwise life is starting to slow down enough to blog again :). Here are a few photos of some of our recent art/craft endeavors..... Dane is super excited about being in the Wolf Pack for Cub Scouts. We decided to make a wolf t-shirt. I found a wolf pattern on one of the boy scout sites, enlarged it and made a plastic stencil. After I used silver paint with the stencil, Dane colored it in with fabric markers. Then we Tie Dyed the shirt with all kinds of great colors.... I finished it off with a second coat of sliver paint and Dane added another coat of fabric marker. We also put his name on the back: Wintery weather has started to arrive, and I needed to whip up a couple of new pairs of mittens! Dane's new coat is orange, gray, and black.... I've been itchin...

It is that CRAZY time of year around here. I know I have posted that I have been busy, and I don't anticipate life to be slowing down much over the next week or so.... With Dane having just turned 8, the end of the semester creeping up on us, and the toy sales kicking into full swing my time for blogging has been a bit limited. Not to mention all of the other "daily" pieces of my life. In all of this craziness, I did happen to check my email and comments to find that Abbie over at Greening Sam and Avery awarded me with a BLOG AWARD!!! Abbie is a great mom who is doing her part to environmentally educate her very young children (infant and toddler EARLY environmental education as she puts it). She has a fabulous blog with TONS of resources. Take a few minutes and pop on over there, it will be well worth your time! I don't quite know what to say, other than thank you! I still feel like I"m pretty new to the blogging world, and am quite honored to have been ch...

As you know, I have been quite busy of late. Too busy to blog most of the time. Tonight, I am giving you a small piece of what I have been working on. For my Learning Technologies course, I needed to produce a video. This short video was created using Audacity to record music and audio. I also used Windows Movie Maker to edit and compile the components. I hope you enjoy it!

Too busy to type much, but I thought I would share a few photos of our backyard discovery this morning... The milkweed seeds are blowing!! I wonder where our butterfly friends are now???? Perhaps some of our postcard exchange friends are enjoying them in the southern states as they migrate. We'll keep an eye on the milkweed patch, hoping for another great crop of monarchs this spring!

Dane turns 8 this week..... between his friend party and family party... the daycare, my coursework..... scouts, fundraiser deliveries, committee meetings and such.... I don't anticipate that I will be here to update very often over the next couple of weeks. Know, that I will be back and posting when I have an opportunity to do so! I will be bookmarking ideas and online primarily while working on my coursework - you can check out my bookmarks on Delicious or Tumblr. I'm currently using both (probably going to switch to just Tumblr after this semester though..... ) http://www.delicious.com/AmyAatCCS http://childcentralstation.tumblr.com/

Many of you know that I am in the process of obtaining my Master's Degree in Psychology: Training, Development, and Performance Improvement. I graduated last May with 2 graduate certificates but I need to finish one more course in order to complete my degree. The course I needed was not offered this semester, but a new elective course in learning technologies was. Needless to say, the course description was intriguing, and I opted to take the course "for fun." At this point, I am very happy that I did! I've been learning about all kinds of different technologies and free applications. If there were only four times as many hours in a day!!! I have however been able to start incorporating some of the new technology I have found into our every day activities. Today, for example, I plugged the microphone into the computer and let the children have a go with using Audacity. (A free program to record and edit audio.) I don't have any photos of the children singing,...

We painted with Kool-aid! Instead of adding it to other paint like I saw on some other blogs, we opted to use it more like a liquid watercolor by adding a small amount of water to each colored powder. Unfortunately, my camera was MIA during our wonderful sensory painting experience so I only have photos of the finished product: Another wonderful thing you can do with Kool-Aid is to color and scent your homemade play dough. Here is our favorite dough recipe: 1 c. flour 1/2 c. salt 1 c. water 1 Tbsp cooking oil 2 tsp cream of tartar 1-2 pkg Kool-Aid Mix all ingredients in a microwave save cooking dish. Cook on high in microwave for 3 minutes Remove from microwave, stir well. Cook for one minute, stir, repeat until the dough is no longer sticky. Remove from the dish- knead and remove any lumps. This dough can also be cooked on the stove-top. We prefer to make it in the microwave as it is much more difficult to burn and the children are more active participants in the process. This post...

Welcome to this week's edition of What Would You Do With It? Wednesday! This week's item is..... CORKS! We haven't done a whole lot with corks... other than painting with them. So, I am looking for some great new ideas and inspiration! (We have a HUGE box full of corks from when my husband was a bartender.) Here are a couple of photos of a sweatshirt Dane and I made for our friend CA. We used corks to paint part of it: Now it's your turn!!! What Would You Do With Them? Powered by Linky Tools Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list...

In Michigan, and many other states across the United States, today is election day. Some of our little friends will have the opportunity to visit a real polling station this afternoon when Ms. Amy goes to vote. All of our friends have been working hard, campaigning for their own wishes here. We have two proposals on the ballot this November. The first has to do with a nice big plastic swimming pool we recently acquired. We have already determined to use it as a large sensory table/bin inside, but the question remains, what could we fill it with first? Today, the voters will decide what the pool will hold. The five choices in this election are: Ball Pit Balls, Deer Corn, Rainbow Rice, Sand, or Stuffed Animals. The second proposal has to do with our outdoor play area. We have a large wish list of new things to put in the yard, and during this election, we will determine which of the ideas we have are most important. (I anticipate that at some point we will be able to complete the full...