Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

So, life has been a little crazy. I have not been very diligent with my blog postings, but know that I'm still here. I've been on the road with training sessions, I've been doing a complete overhaul of our learning space. (Cleaning, reorganizing, etc...), and We went camping!  Here are a few pics to enjoy: Remember the great vertical gear board we saw in Cleveland? Well, here is our version I made last week! I keep forgetting to unpack the camera from my training materials, so I don't have as many photos as normal. I will however have a tutorial post coming for you very soon! The children LOVE this board. The gears are fun, but using it as a HUGE vertical geo-board has been their favorite thing to do so far. We have been spending a lot of time out in the summer sun, and finding great places for shade too! There is nothing like a swing on your belly, everyone needs to be a flying super hero once and awhile! Dane is gearing up for Boy Scout Camp. We went camping as a...

When the weather is hot and humid, nothing cools you down like some nice cold mud! The real stuff, made with real dark soil, not the kind made with sand that dries up in a jiffy... but nice ooey, gooey, sticky, wet, sloppy, mud! You know what I'm talking about.... the cold oozing kind that squishes between your toes! The kind of mud you just can't wait to tell your friends about.... so that they can come and join in on the fun! When the patch is just right, you sink a little as you play....  Standing in the muddy mess is fun, but you know that you just can't resist jumping! Because jumping and splashing in the puddles is just way too much fun! Especially when the mud splatters EVERYWHERE! Have you been playing in the mud lately?

I'm going to be making some major webpage and blog changes in the next few weeks. I'm trying to get things a little more organized and update my online presence with more information about my training sessions and newly created web store! I will still continue to blog about our activities with the childcare, BUT I am going to change the What Would You Do With It? Wednesday posts. My thought at this point is to use it as a platform to feature other great blogs and ideas from other folks that use readily available "trash."  Do you create things out of "trash" or recyclables? upcycling/recycling??? Would you like to be a featured guest poster?  If so, please follow this link to fill out a form and I'll get back to you with more details!

The heat and humidity around here has been a little much for some of our little friends. We've been "melting" in the heat. So, I thought it would be a good time to try some fun melting art! We started with some sandpaper and our crayons. Drawing on sandpaper provides a fun tactile experience for the children. We took the process a step further, by melting our drawings in the microwave. We only put the drawings in the microwave for about 45 seconds at at time. It was long enough to melt some of the crayon. We did this intermittently throughout the process so that the children could add more crayon to the sandpaper while the paper was still warm. If you opt to try this one, note that the more crayon you use, the more visible the melting will be. Large blocks of crayons (chunk crayons) would work really well! We tried to cover the whole piece of sandpaper with color!

I'm off to Bessemer for another training tonight "Take It Outside! Creating an Outdoor Classroom." We have been having a lot of fun and working to combat the heat around here. I hope to get caught up with our activities and photos soon. For now, a quick photo of our Butterfly Lunch: Hot Ham and Cheese Roll-Ups, Nectarines, and Baby Carrots! YUM!

It is Strawberry Season! We are very fortunate to have a family connection to the Crane Berry Farm in Chassell. The children love to help us with the berries. They help to wash them and to cut them for freezing or baking. One of my little friends just can't get enough when it comes to cutting berries. She has been cutting, and cutting, and cutting. This is real work for little hands. Armed with a cutting board and a butter knife she has been cutting off the "green parts" from the "red parts" or the stem from the berries. Today, we took the activity a bit further and made up a batch of strawberry freezer jam. We added 1 1/2 cups of sugar and one package of pectin. It is important to mix the sugar and the pectin well before adding the berries. In a separate bowl, we mashed our berries with a meat tenderizer. We like our jam to have big chunks of berries, so we only mashed them up a little bit. Then we added 6 heaping cups of berries to our pectin...

I am always running across great ideas and things that I'd love to make or have for our childcare. My list of outdoor classroom ideas is far too long to share with you in a blog post, but I thought I would share a few things that I saw at the Great Lakes Science Center and Museum of Natural History in Cleveland, Ohio when I was there at the end of last month. First, I love this idea of a vertical gear board. We have a horizontal one, but I love the possibilities that come with a vertical one! Can you imagine, not just the gear work, but the HUGE vertical geoboard possibilities with this one? I don't know if we will make one this big, but we will definitely be getting one of these in the near future! Look at this great fabric frame! It was in the polymer playhouse. Shiny, knit stretchy material to push your face and hands into.... watch it stretch and take the form of the object you push up against it! Again, so simple, and SO much fun! You all know that I am wild about bub...

I've been "on the road" training a bit again this week.  On Monday night I presented on Life Science and Life Cycles here in Marquettte. Wednesday, I presented a variety of simple science experiences in Menominee. One of the many things we ran out of time before we were able to finish was testing for acids and bases with a red cabbage indicator.  So, yesterday, I whipped up a batch of indicator paper with some of the cabbage. You will need to cut up some red cabbage (purple in color), and place it in some hot water. I prefer to boil the cabbage for a few minutes as this expedites the process. I know that you can allow the cabbage to sit in water, to get the same result; but that takes longer! Then, strain your cabbage so that you are only left with the colored water. It will be a deep blue/purple color. This cabbage water serves as an indicator for investigating acids and bases. You can just use the liquid, but I wanted to create some indicator strips for dipp...

Monarch caterpillars have only one source of food – milkweed. If you learn how to identify milkweed, you will have no problem finding and raising your own Monarch butterflies.  The milkweed plant is shown in the photo on the left.  Around here, you might start to see some eggs and larva in June, but you will see an increase in eggs after the plant blossoms. The blossoms on the milkweed in our area are a pinkish-purple color.(Of course when this all happens depends on our weather). When Monarchs lay their eggs, they do it on the underside of the leaves of the milkweed plant. You will only ever find one or two per leaf.  The eggs are very small, approximately 1 mm in diameter. The photo on the right shows a child pointing to a small egg on the milkweed leaf.  There are other things that could be on the leaf that are not eggs, including small bugs.  Here is a close up of the egg with a microscope to give you a better idea of the ...