Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

If you are looking for What Would You Do With It? Wednesday. I made a mistake, I typed it up last week and scheduled it to post for the wrong day. Wednesday has come and gone, so I am going to post it on Saturday instead. I double checked the date and it is ready to post early Saturday morning... So, you still have a few days to gather your ideas with toilet paper/paper towel tubes until then! We recently received this wonderful package in the mail from Scott over at Brick by Brick ! Scott blogs about his adventures with children in Nashville, Tennessee.  When he posted an option to win a package from him to pay it forward, how could I resist?  The children LOVE the guitar fly swatter, they had the same thought I did... WOW, I bet that will make cool prints! We have added it to our collection for fly swatter painting! As much as I wanted to whip out the paint, I also wanted to give the children time to use it to make beautiful music! ( Check the Facebook page soon for n...

We live in a really cool place! I have really enjoyed participating in the post card exchanges hosted by Teach Preschool this past year. It has really given us an opportunity to learn and celebrate the things that are wonderful about our community in addition to learn about and hear from other children all around the world! (I will have a new post coming sometime soon as we have been receiving another pile of great cards!)   In a couple of weeks we are going to participate in a really cool postcard exchange with other daycares, preschools, and homeschools from around the world. (We registered to participate through Teach Preschool on Facebook.) We need to send about 6 postcards a week to the other participating schools/daycares/homes where we can tell them a little bit about our state and our community. I know that I would be more than capable of completing the postcards, but what good would that be? This project is an opportunity for us to learn about other places in the worl...

So, I started this project when I was an exchange student in 1995. One of my exchange student friends was kind enough to share the pattern with me. The stitching kept me busy while I sat through some classes where I had absolutely no idea what was going on because of the language and knowledge barriers. The pattern calls for a square to be stitched for each of the fifty states, and when I found it in my cross stitch box, I had only completed it through Illinois with a start on both Indiana and Iowa. Somewhere along the line, my pattern disappeared, and although I attempted to find a copy a few times throughout the years, I was unsuccessful. Then, shortly before our Christmas vacation, I hopped on the internet to try just one more time to try to track it down! And TA DA! I found it! It apparently was given away for free from Jean Farrish Heart and Home! Unfortunately, the website is no longer in existence. But thanks to the web archiving sites, I was able to retrieve the information...

This fall, we have been participating in a post card exchange that was organized by Teach Preschool on Facebook . In order to participate, we needed to send postcards about our hometown/state to a number of other preschools/daycares/homeschools around the country and in some cases around the world. We spent some time learning about where we live, and now we are having a great time learning about all of the places where our new postcard friends live. We opted not to post a map and mark it on the wall, as this is an ongoing project that will last at least 6 weeks. Instead, we are using our large U.S.A. Map floor puzzle when we read our postcards. This way, the children have the opportunity to start learning the shapes of the states and where they belong. This puzzle has been a favorite for quite some time and our older 3s and 4s have no trouble getting started with it. They can even recognize places they are familiar with. I love to sit and watch as the younger children's learni...

We are participating in two postcard exchanges this fall..... One of them is an international exchange, and we are participating as a representative from Danmark. (Allan is from there, I was an exchange student there, and we have a number of great photos from our visits there.) I'm pretty geeked about how well my postcard creations turned out! The second exchange is about where we live: Marquette, Michigan. The children helped to brainstorm ideas for this postcard: ( You can see the post where we talked about What is Cool About Where We Live Here.) I'll be dropping most of these cards in the mail tomorrow! I can't wait to start receiving cards from all over the world and helping the children to map out and learn about all of the wonderful places the cards come from!

In a couple of weeks we are going to participate in a really cool postcard exchange with other daycares, preschools, and homeschools from around the world. (We registered to participate through Teach Preschool on Facebook.) We need to send about 6 postcards a week to the other participating schools/daycares/homes where we can tell them a little bit about our state and our community. I know that I would be more than capable of completing the postcards, but what good would that be? This project is an opportunity for us to learn about other places in the world, but it is also about taking the time and an opportunity to learn more about where we live. During our snack today, I explained to the children exactly what was going to happen. (That we are going to be sending postcards, and that other children would be sending postcards to us.) Then, I asked them, "What is cool about where we live, our town, our community, our state, and our daycare?" This is the list we came up with ...