Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

We are always looking for ways to repurpose, reuse and "upcycle."  After one of our family dinner excursions, I was inspired to make these DIY  Upcycled Translucent Blocks to use on our light table.  Please note that this post contains affiliate links.  When we go out to dinner, my family often entertains each other by building structures with the various things on the table at the restaurant while we wait for our food. We have made some very interesting towers and creations with the coffee creamers and the single serving jam containers. After one of our recent ventures, I was thinking about different things we could use to build at home... and voila..... the inspiration: Empty plastic baby food containers! However, I didn't just want to use them as is. I know they are fun to build with without doing anything with them, but I wanted to add some color and make a nice set for our light table. So, I gathered my supplies. (If you remember we have used the lids from these cont...

This week- we are building with cedar planks! 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 a child playing in a playhouse. 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: (please excuse the quality, I temporarily misplaced my camera and was using my phone to capture the children at play!)  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. T...

I'm super excited to be joining in with bloggers from around the world to bring you one of the 100+ days of simple play co-hosted by Sun Scholars and Life at the Zoo! You can read more about this blog hop and find a link to all of the current posts here, and don't forget to check back as we are only on day 35 today!: Here, at Child Central Station, we have a HUGE selection of blocks for building.  Please do not let lack of variety of blocks deter you from  spending some quality time building with your children.  You don't need all kinds of fancy blocks  to make this activity fun and engaging with your little ones! In fact, some of the best building materials are not necessarily traditional blocks! Toilet paper tubes are great for building with.  This photo features industrial sized ones,  but you could use any size cardboard tubes.  Cups (any size) work great to build with too! So do pieces of...

One of my very favorite songs that we listen to over and over again is sung by Bev Bos, Michael Leeman, and Tom Hunter.   It called Build It Up, and you can find it on the album "We've Been Waiting for You"   "Build it up, and knock it down, and build it up again...."  When our new pet turtle arrived, I needed to rearrange the classroom in order to find a place for our new friend, and rearranging often means that the children have a new found interest in materials simply because they are in a new location. That was definitely the case with our large hollow blocks. They have been building...  and building....  and building.... These large hollow blocks are perfect for the children to play with! I love to watch how creative they are in their structures and the interactions they have while working together to build it up! Sometimes as high as they can..... Sometimes as BIG as they can.... flat on the floor.......

My friend Sue, the Great Start Regional Resource Center, 4c of the UP Community Childcare Specialist for Menominee, Schoolcraft, and Delta Counties gave me a wonderful bag of treasures the other day!  A big bag of wide cardboard tubes! I was going to add them to the tinkering station, but the children had other ideas! (Don't they always?) They thought that they would be perfect in the block area. They had a lot of fun building pyramids, castles with holes/windows, and fences for their critters! I thought for sure that the tubes would turn into tunnels... but not today..... instead, they were: GIANT MUSCLES! NEW EARS! (Fantastic for listening, might I add!) GREAT CUFFS OR BRACELETS! AN ELEPHANT NOSE! Hours and hours of FREE fun! Thanks Sue! Do you have a great idea for re-using, re-purposing, and/or upcycling "trash"? I'd love to have you share it in a guest post!  Starting in September, I will be featuring great "What Would You Do With It?" Wedne...

I usually reserve my Monday posts for Monday Memories, where we take a photo walk down memory lane, but we had way too much fun with our "newsed" blocks today to keep it from you! I've wanted to invest in some large hollow blocks for sometime, but I had a hard time justifying the expense and then to determine where to store them. Fortunately, a friend of mine who also runs a home based childcare was selling hers! So, for a mere $5o we now have a set! So, the blocks are used, but new to us "newsed." The children spent a solid three hours playing with them this morning, and then took them out again this afternoon! First, the children spread the blocks out all around the playroom. The blocks instantly turned into chunks of ice floating in the ocean as they walked from block to block. Our blue carpet provided a great ocean! Then, with a little bit of reorganization, we had a road for walking and driving along. The set of roads was almost instantly turned into a m...