Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

Life has been busy. It always is this time of year. I celebrated another year of life, spent a weekend with an amazing group of storytellers at Adventures in Storytelling, and now, I'm spending a lot of time getting ready for the UP Early Childhood Conference as late registrations are trickling in...... Tomorrow, I'm off to Grand Rapids for the MiAEYC conference. I will be presenting "Take It Outside! Creating an Outdoor Classroom" on Saturday morning.  We've been soaking up the sun whenever it decides to come out, I love that the "Mud Pie Kitchen" has been uncovered enough to become a mud and snow kitchen. I am however looking forward to the disappearance of the last bits of snow in the yard! I appologize for my absence in advance as I am quite certain that my blogging time will be quite limited this week. If you are missing the extra reading and looking for some other great options, stop on over at Let the Children Play   for a couple ...

I've been thinking a lot about a "permanent" tinkering place to add to our indoor environment. It is difficult to find the balance of space sometimes, as at the end of the day, this is our home. We devote the entire first floor of the house to the childcare, where most people would have a living room, we have a giant classroom! Filled from floor to ceiling with equipment (toys, books, etc... ) for the children.   (This photo was taken awhile back, but it gives you a general idea of the first room you enter in our home daycare) (Looking at these photos reminds me that I really need to take some newer photos of the classroom!) This week, Mr. Allan and I started to install our tinkering station. We decided that it would be best placed in the kitchen near all of the arts and crafts supplies. We started with a peg board and shelf.  Then, I started to stock it with hand tools and moved the shelf of recyclables (the shelf that has the alternating colored baskets in it) over...

This week, we set up our chick-u-bator. The children have been very curious about those eggs sitting there.  "I wonder what is inside those eggs? Could they be alligators? turtles? turkeys? baby birds? chickens?"  After observing and talking about them, Dane and I told the children that we brought the chicken eggs from my parent's farm this past weekend. We keep talking about what Farmer Ricky had to say to teach us how to take care of the eggs. It is very important to keep the eggs warm.  Hens keep them warm by sitting on them. We decided that the eggs would probably crack if we tried to sit on them, so we are using an incubator instead. We need to make sure the eggs stay between 98 and 102 degrees. 100 degrees is the optimum temperature, but Farmer Ricky says that if the eggs are kept a little bit cooler it will take longer for them to hatch. If they are kept a little bit warmer, they will hatch sooner. Farmer Ricky also told us to turn the eggs three times a day....

Welcome to this week's edition of What Would You Do With It? Wednesday. This week we are featuring cylindrical oatmeal containers. Valerie from over at Frugal Family Fun Blog shares another pure genius idea for a great "Cat in the Hat" hat made with an oatmeal canister! Scott over at Brick by Brick shares this fantastic idea for marble painting for two! This simple idea promotes cooperation and it looks like it would be loads of fun! I found this great tutorial for a cradle made from an oatmeal canister for dolls over at Artists Helping Children . I don't have any photos to share, but we have made ours into drums, banks, and we have even set them up to practice our weaving. Last week's challenge was to use CDs/DVDs . I'm still looking for some ideas! If you have one, hop on over and link up! Quirky Momma shared a great building idea using the cases from CDs and DVDs! Look at this great tower: For t he full list of previously posted items a...

We've been busy. I try to share a glimpse of what is going on regularly, but sometimes it seems like there is just so much more to share! Tonight, I'm going to give you a few quick photo updates! We are still going full force with our fort building . The children have been working hard on their indoor forts, but have also begun to work on plans for some outdoor building. The prospect of spring being right around the corner does not look good. We have a five day forecast that includes wintry mixes and chances of snow. We had a lot of fun playing with our food again. We "painted" our waffles with a few drops of food coloring added to water. (Make sure to use new, clean paint brushes.)  Dane had a great time at the pinewood derby. His car "kept coming in fourth" (of four cars in the wolf division.) He was so excited to have a cool car and to receive a participation medal. He still isn't interested in making a car to win, he is much more interested in...

Children are always intrigued by mud, but there is something about "spring" mud that holds their attention for even longer. Maybe it is because it has been hidden for so long underneath the snow, perhaps it is continual trickle of running water from the melting snow..... Maybe it is the cooler temperature or the hard base found just a few inches below where the ground is still frozen. It is hard to say why, but whatever the reason they simply cannot get enough of it! We've been having a GREAT time enjoying the sunshine and the mud this week! We watched in anticipation of our annual "St Patty's Day" storm today. Fortunately, so far, we've only seen rain!  Maybe spring really is on the way!

Welcome to this week's edition of What Would You Do With It? Wednesday. This week we are featuring CDs/DVDs. For awhile it seemed like the number of junk mail CDs was enormous! Do you remember all of the trial software that used to come on CD? We have a stack of old CDs that are just ready and waiting for some creative ideas!   Isn't this Sparkly Kids' Craft from over at 805moms awesome! We have made CD fish before, but for some reason, we have never thought to decorate them with more sparkles!      Stringing them together makes a great Sun catcher/Whirli-gig, from About.com.   I know that the children will love putting a few of these together for our front porch this year. About.com also has a tutorial for these fun glimmering flowers!   I'm always game for fun flower crafts to add to our outdoor rock garden.  For some reason, I am an excellent vegetable gardener, but when it comes to flowers, I have a hard time keeping them alive! Casa Maria ...

I've been doing my best to push spring along. I am so anxious to get back to making the planned changes to our outdoor space!  We have had a couple of dry sunny days, so I decided that we could start working on some of the fence projects! I have envisioned creating mini chalkboards on our fence for quite sometime, but I have been itching to do even more since I found out that you could make your own chalkboard paint! We are creating mini strips of chalkboard all the way along our fence. Some are high, some are low. I hope to gather of make some small step stools and ladders for the children to use the higher ones. I keep shoveling our piles of snow, breaking it up and moving it into the sunnier patches of the yard, trying to expedite the melting process. Another layer of paint on these sections and they will be ready to go! We have a lot planned for the continuation of the transformation of our outdoor classroom. If you need or have some great inspiration, stop on by an...

Signs of spring are all around us. In between all of the mounds of snow we are finding lovely puddles of slush... and more and more mud!  The yard is very wet, and the sun feels fantastic!  We are in the time of year where the weather can change with the drop of a hat! Right now, it is a great reminder of living in the moment and appreciating what we have right here, right now.  With some of the recent posts on pendulum painting ( Teacher Tom , Tinker Lab's Funnel Painting ) , I thought it would be great to try out painting the snow with a pendulum. Rather than trying to rig up a pvc pipe system, we opted to use our play structure and hang our pendulum from where the swings will return when the fall zone is no longer full of ice and snow. The children had a great time adding some more color to our patches of white! We used a mixture of Kool-Aid powder and water to make our "paint."  The rainbow colors and fruity smells were delightful! We...