Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

The weather around here is finally starting to look like spring might be around the corner! Snow is melting!!!!!!! The beautiful part of this time of year is that the ground is still quite frozen, so our yard turns into wonderful spring mud puddles! There is nothing quite like playing in the spring mud! Welcome to the weekly "Just Playing?" Blog Hop hosted here at Child Central Station. If this is your first week joining us- you may wish to learn more by visiting the  "Just Playing?" landing page.  Last week- we looked at some more mud play on the swing! I have updated the post to include additional insights into the learning that took place during the play. You can see the revised post  here. Now on to this week's photos:  We may be "just playing", but.... What are the children doing here? What do you see? What learning is taking place? What skills are being practiced/developed? This post is part of the "Just Playing?" Blog Hop! Thank you f...

  Yep, we're at it again-- another winter, another luge! This winter has been a challenge. It has been long, and super cold! (Even for "Yooper" Standards). In some areas of the world they call this time of year "spring." Around here, well... It is still snowing! (And I'm not pulling an April Fool's!) We do what we can to make the best of it, and Mr. Allan never ceases to amaze us with his backyard luge building skills! (You can read about and see video footage from previous winters here: 2013 , 2012 ).   This year's track has especially high walls- and due to the extreme temperature differences it is also quite fast! The children don't seem to mind the cooler temperatures when they are flying down the hill!   It has been quite a winter! We have paths or a "snow maze" to make getting around a little bit easier.... .....And we have MOUNTAINS of snow piled up in the yard! (If you look closely, you will see the shelving unit from our Mud P...

This week- we are playing in the playhouse! Welcome to the weekly "Just Playing?" Blog Hop hosted here at Child Central Station. If this is your first week joining us- you may wish to learn more by visiting the "Just Playing?" landing page.  Last week- we looked at children playing with a parachute. I have updated the post to include additional insights into the learning that took place during the play. You can see the revised post here. Now on to this week's photos:  We may be "just playing", but.... What are the children doing here? What do you see? What learning is taking place? What skills are being practiced/developed? This post is part of the "Just Playing?" Blog Hop! Thank you for remembering that young children do not "just play." Young children play. They develop through play. They learn through play. They experiment through play. They grow through play. A child's work is play. Play is important! Please take a moment...

As I was going through photos today, I ran across a number of picture sets of things that I had intended to blog about a LONG time ago. When life gets crazy, the blog is typically the first thing to go.  Now that I am reorganizing and rethinking things, I thought I would pull a couple of those "someday" posts together for you. (For those of you who have children in care, you will notice that these photos are almost a year old- but that's okay) Last summer- we had a couple of great days of warm, summer rain. It wasn't raining really hard- gently, just slightly more than a sprinkle... So we decided that we would create some paintings and bring them outside in the rain.  In order to keep the paper from tearing- and for the process to work best, we opted to use pieces of freezer paper to paint on. We also used a combination of tempera and watercolor paints, being water soluble- the rain could have an impact on the painting.  We spent so...

 I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring! Today is my final post in this linky series all about some of the arts and crafts we have done for out in our garden! We have a rock garden right off of our front porch. I like to use it as an area to showcase some arts and crafts projects that we have made. Some of the projects are done with the children, and some of them are my own artistic endeavors. Stepping Stones Tutorial We make stepping stones every spring. Rather than using a kit- we make ours out of Portland cement and use some plastic fruit tray containers as molds. Many people have described our location based upon our street name and our stepping stones and colorful tire planters in our rock garden. More Stepping Stones Our rock garden has evolved over time- but has been a great place to collect all of the treasured rocks the children have found on our journeys. ...

Here is an inside (well mostly outside :). ) Look at some of the memorable moments of the past week: We have really been enjoying the warmer winter weather  and spending more time outside!

Our square foot garden is growing like CRAZY! (One of our sun flowers is somewhere between 9 and 10 feet tall! I think we need a ladder to measure!) The cauliflower is growing.... We have PUMPKINS growing vertically!!!! Fresh broccoli is also on the way! I would have never imagined that crowding things in a square foot garden would be so productive! Look at all of these fresh tomatoes! We've already harvested a couple of cucumbers, summer squash, and beans! YUM! Yeah for summer, and yeah for square foot gardening!