Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

I've been having a fantastic time meeting early childhood educators and professionals all over the U.P. of Michigan! One of my most popular training sessions this summer has been "It's Not Rocket Science, but Sometimes It Feels Like It!" We have been working to break down the fear barrier that is sometimes associated with science, and to build confidence in scientific exploration.  One of the great things about this training is that participants walk away with this great kit from Learning Resources: (courtesy of the Great Start Regional Child Care Resource Center) As much as I am loving presenting, sometimes I think that some of the children enrolled in my care could do just as good, if not a better job in teaching this topic!  They have mastered the science kit, and have been having a great time exploring extension activities. We LOVE to play with vinegar and baking soda! One of the fun extension activities with the science kit is to blow the cork off of ...

We have a rather large sandbox in our backyard. When it was first built, it took a HUGE dump truck to deliver 19 tons of sand to fill it. (I'm quite certain that we no longer have 19 tons in the sand box, because I have to have vacuumed at least one ton of it up as it has migrated inside ;0.) It is very tricky to build a sandbox on a hill. Our entire play yard is on a slope, and is at quite a steep angle in some areas. When we get a lot of rain (or melting snow) it causes our sand to pile up at the back edge of the sandbox. We could of course let it build up there and it will slowly slide through the cracks in our fence and end up in the parking lot below. I'm not so certain that the store located there would appreciate it all that much though. So, our mission over the past couple of days has been to remove all of the play equipment (slides and climbers) and to move the sand to even out our sandbox again. The shovels weren't really cutting it, so we decided to see how well...