Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

We have been busy with all kinds of collaborative efforts lately, You can still hop on over to PreKandK Sharing to link up your favorite painting activities/recipes,  and the Heart Project Fundraiser for the American Heart Association  is still going on for the entire month of February! Today, we are participating in the Paper Bag Challenge hosted by Tinkerlab . (If you remember, we've done this before with magazines and cardboard boxes .) Keeping with our child-centered philosophy, I plopped a giant pile of paper bags down in the middle of the floor and asked the children if they wanted to create and if so, what other materials did they need. None of the three children who worked on this project opted to create together or make the same thing :). YEAH for creativity and giving the children an opportunity to venture off on their own, to enjoy the process and control their own products!  (By the way, there has been an interesting series of posts o...

Mary Jo Huff was one of the keynote speakers at the UPECC this past weekend in Escanaba.  If you are ever looking for a high-energy, inspiring, storytelling trainer to see..... Look for Mary Jo!   In due time, I will continue to add tidbits to this blog from some of the great conferences and trainings I have been attending. This short video clip above is from the Family Night Mary Jo offered at our conference. The clip below is from one of the workshop sessions. Mary Jo gave us a lot of great ideas for storytelling and using props that folks are going back and putting to use immediately! I know that we have been playing with some peepers that we purchased from Mary Jo at the conference.  The children are having a great time creating stories and acting them out with their new "peeper" friends! It sounds like we will be spending some time making accessories and developing our plays! Stay tuned!

Today, we decided to build with our PVC Pipe building set yet again. This time, we opted to build a puppet theater. After a few tweaks, and trial runs, this is what we ended up with: Each of the children had an opportunity to choose from our wide array of puppets and take turns making puppet shows. One of the first things most children do when they have an opportunity to create a puppet show is to have their puppets fight. Although we do not ban those types of shows, we try to encourage children to create and tell stories with some more substance. I often ask the children to choose their favorite one or two puppets and to sit with them for awhile. We practice making observations about the puppets and asking/answering questions: "Oh, that one looks really fuzzy, I bet she is cuddly." or "Wow, that one has sharp teeth.... " etc. "Do you think that is a boy or a girl? I wonder what his/her name is?" "What do you think he/she does all day?" "I...

Yesterday, I hope I convinced you not to throw away your markers that "don't work." Today, I will share with you a few ideas for what to do with all of the caps. The possibilities are nearly endless, but here are a few of our recent creations: 1) A Leprechaun/Fairy Ladder/Rope Ladder: 2) #1 if not permanently secured can also double as a rope bridge: 3) #1/#2 can also be made into a train track for your homemade trains :). (No photo available) 4) You can use them as beads for a necklace: 5) You could make them into a wind chime. (No photo available). 6. You can use them as small manipulatives to count, sort, and make patterns with. (No photo available). 7) You could use them as playing pieces in your own homemade board game. (No photo available). 8) You could put them on a wire and glue them in place to make a twirling whirly-gig. 9) You could top them with a lid from a milk jug to make tiny tables or toadstools. 10) You could make them...

I'm not quite sure where I saw the idea for a butterfly finger puppet similar to these puppets, (If it was you, let me know and I'll give you the credit!) but we made both caterpillars and butterflies today. In preparation, I cut the fingers off a couple of sets of new plastic gloves used for cleaning. The children were given a wide array of materials to use, and the majority of them chose to make the butterflies out of craft foam, and the caterpillars out of crazy colored pom-poms. Decorations varied from stickers, craft foam, glitter glue, googly eyes, and sequins. Some of the puppets were sporting one "huge" eye, and were dubbed as "Alien Caterpillars" and "Alien Butterflies." After the creation of the aliens, some of the children began to "grow" more alien eyes too!