Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

For those of you who celebrate the holiday, Happy Halloween! We had a great time trick-or-treating and dressing up this year: (Thanks to my sister Amber for some of the photos! We had a great time and came home with a TON of candy!) I hope you all had a safe and Happy Halloween!

Do you use chalk? Do you ever end up with iddy biddy chalk stubs? What do you do with them? I found this great idea from The Chocolate Muffin Tree   and   The Imagination Tree where you can crush them to make paint, but we decided that rather than making paint, we would just SPLAT our stubs all over the wet sidewalk! The technique is quite simple. Wait for the rain to stop OR go out in the rain... Plop a chalk stub down and hit it with a hammer.... and SPLAT! Lovely bursts of color! An opportunity to use real tools. If/when the sidewalk starts to dry up, make sure you have a water bottle available for spraying!  Spraying, pounding, drawing.... great fun with chalk! And, when you get tired of chalk, attempt to recreate the plunger print pumpkin patch.....   that the rain washed away!  Have fun pounding the pavement  sidewalk! (For more photos of our explorations, don't forget to stop by our Facebook page !) This p...

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the corn maze with the Boy Scouts and I picked up a half a dozen ears of Indian Corn. The children had fun investigating the corn in our sensory bin. They spent some time husking it and looking at the various parts under the magnifying glasses.  Then, I set up a station for them to paint and/or print with the corn.  I decided to put a plexi-glass plate right over the sensory bin. ( If you remember the cribs we dismantled, I saved the plexi-glass ends!  The plexi-glass makes a great transparent tabletop... and is a wonderful surface to paint on!) I wanted to make sure that the children had ample choice in paint color, and that it was a self-service station. The squeeze bottles of tempera work great for this, and all of that squeezing is great for their fine motor skill development!  Two children worked at the station at a time. They chose which paints that they wanted to squeeze out onto the surface, and then they st...

I have an amazing, smart, and creative eight-year old. His uniqueness and creativity has me quite busy this week... sewing.... sewing, creating, and sewing.... ( Remember the cowboy alligator last year ?) Thus, the blog has taken a serious back seat as I work to create a sloth bear costume. I started with a pattern- for the jumpsuit, but created and pieced together the rest... and it is still not completely done. I need to finish hand stitching the rest of the front paw claws.... Do you even know what a sloth bear is? In this house hold, they have been the topic of discussion and research for quite some time. Check out this link to google images so that you can see what they look like in real life . Dane did so much research about these bears that he even found out that they have one at the Toledo Zoo, which pretty much determined our route for this past summer's road trip. Yes, we did see a real live sloth bear! Are you celebrating/dressing up for Halloween this year?  What ...

I made a new button for the blog!  Here is the html code if you would like to "grab" it: <div style="text-align: center;"border="0" href="http://www.childcentralstation.com/" target="_blank" img src="http://i1026.photobucket.com/albums/y330/amyahola/ChildCentralStationButton.jpg"

I've been awarded the versatile blogger award from some amazing colleagues over the past couple of weeks! I am honored to have been selected by Leanne A from Kreative Resources AND Ayn over at Little Illuminations ! What a great way to be recognized during a blogging break (which although I'm blogging today, I wouldn't anticipate my "normal" flow of posts yet for another couple of weeks!) For me, the best things about blogging awards is that fellow bloggers often recommend blogs that I've never run across, and it provides a great web of inspiration!  Here are the guidelines for the award: 1. Thank the person who nominated you. 2. Share 7 things about yourself 3. Pass the award on to 10 other bloggers. 4. Contact the other bloggers to let them know they have been nominated. I add my own personal guideline, and that is.... I NEVER award the same blog more than once! That way, I can share the love and link up previous award nominations to give you ood...