Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

Some of the children have been super excited about decorating for Christmas. I have been hearing all about the time they have been spending with their families, especially about their Christmas trees! Earlier this week, I introduced the children to the idea that they can make their very own Christmas Ornaments -- and that has been the top response I have received from the children when asking them to help plan our day.  The first ornaments we made this year used our special "Christmas Clay Dough" - and are a great keepsake for the parents as the children created Fingerprint Ornaments . Today, our focus switched to working on our fine motor skills while creating for the tree with our spiral beaded ornaments.  We used an assortment of beads (most of them are pony beads and have a larger hole than regular beads) and pipe cleaners/chenille stems. If you are looking to purchase the supplies for this project- you can purchase them through our affiliate links: Amazon.com Widgets I ...

It's Fall here in Michigan, and the pumpkins are ripe!  Fall pumpkins are perfect practice place for pounding. The children have been using hammers and  golf tees to dress up some of our pumpkins. It takes a lot of practice to master pounding.... When we are first learning how to hold the hammer and the tees or nails,  sometimes we use a clothespin to help us hold them in place.  This is helpful when we are still working on our hand-eye coordination  in order to keep our fingers safe. Part of the joy of working with mixed ages is to watch the  young children as they learn from observing the older children.  This little guy picked up very quickly exactly what to do! Although he didn't actually pound any tees in today,  He was very quick to mimic the actions with the toy hammer and tees! Perhaps tomorrow we will add some paint.... Perhaps we will opt to carve the pumpkins...... Perhap...

With our recent February Sprouts, primarily peas and beans,  we decided to fill our sensory table with dried beans this week. We have been scooping. pouring, sorting and measuring beans. Today, we decided to use some of our beans and make medallions. We took some metal lids from our recycling station and a hot glue gun to our bean table and went to work. Some of the children were very careful, placing each dried bean or pea onto their medallion, while others filled their lid with glue and then randomly piled beans on top of it. When they were satisfied with the number and placement of their beans, each child found a pair of safety glasses, a hammer and a nail to pound a hole through the medallion to string with twine. It is amazing how skilled these children have become with tools in such a short period of time! (Now, to figure out where to put a permanent wood working station for them in the house........ ) We ended up with a great set of bean medallions to wear...

This week, we have been trying to add some color to our outdoor winter wonderland. First we spray painted the snow, and then we painted the snow with giant paint brushes . Today, instead of just painting the snow, we are painting with the snow! Everyone who lives in a climate where winter snow is the norm knows that there are all kinds and variations of snow. Some snow is powdery, some is super sticky, etc. The best kind of snow for this project is sticky, wet, snow. I've been itching to try this, and considering that we didn't have "the right kind" of snow and that the temperatures are too cold to hope for sticky snow in the near future, we brought this activity inside! We collected some snow and put it into our sensory table. The indoor heat turned the fluffy powdery snow sticky rather quickly! Then we used our spray bottles filled with colored water (food coloring and water) to paint the snow in the table. I provided the children with the primary colors and ...

We're back in Michigan! I had expected to come home to piles and piles of snow, but warm temperatures and rain has melted some of our snow. Don't get me wrong, there is still a layer of white stuff out there, but not the heaps and mounds that I'm sure we will be seeing in the months to come. I have all of these great outdoor projects and I was eager to get to work... but it appears that they will have to wait for fresh snow! So, today, we opted to use the crusted snow as a canvas! A pile of spray bottles.... a stack of powdered Kool-Aid... excited children...... and.... a layer of crusted snow (the perfect canvas!) We added some color to the yard and enjoyed the "yummy" scents. "This orange smells like orange!" Instant outdoor art! Teacher Tom, those letters keep showing up here too! "X" marks the spot! I wonder what buried treasure lies below? It is a good thing we buy powdered Kool-Aid in bulk, considering we don't actuall...

I'm a big fan of open-ended, child-driven projects. Today, the children decided to use colored paper, scissors, shape punches and glue to make their own creations. We don't have a lot of glue that isn't colored here. When I first opened my daycare (5 years ago this week!) I purchased a large quantity of small glue bottles. I labelled them with various colors and added a little bit of liquid tempera paint to the glue. (I recently learned that you can use the markers that don't work to color glue too!) I'm not a fan of giving children glue in a container and using a qtip or other utensil to use the glue. I like to give them the experience of having to squeeze the glue out of the bottle. It is great for their fine motor skills. We use a lot of glue here. I know that children will need to use glue to stick things together when they get older, and that they will probably hear things like "a little dab will do you!" Later, not here, and not from me. Glue is inex...

Lately, we have been spending some time exploring mud, sand, and rocks. As we continue to learn about geology we decided to take a look at Geysers. First, we looked at some photos from our family vacation to Yellowstone National Park specifically Dane was able to tell the children about visiting Old Faithful. Then we watched the National Park Service's Live Webcam at Old Faithful. Unfortunately, we were not able to catch the Geyser erupting. Instead of waiting we were able to find some great recorded footage online from geology.com . Now, it was time for us to make a geyser for ourselves. (Instructions for this can be found at Steve Spangler Science .) We didn't have the fancy contraption to make loading the mentos easier, so we made a narrow funnel out of a piece of copy paper. Then we punched holes in each side of it and placed a paint brush in the hole to keep the mentos from falling into the diet coke before we were ready. After we gathered our materials and talked about ...