Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

The weather has been absolutely amazing, I dare to say that today has been nothing short of perfect! We spent ALL morning outside, and we are going back out just as soon as we can. Our outdoor classroom has been in need of some touch ups after the winter,  and we are slowly making the necessary changes and repairs as time permits.  I have some great updates for you coming soon! This week, the children have been super active in creating forts and making traps.  The beauty of having so many loose parts and allowing children time to freely explore materials,   is the creativity and imagination that they express.....  I overheard one of the children saying "This is my house, so you can't live in it. But, if you like, you could sleep here tonight."  When the other child insisted on having a house... another pile of loose parts was constructed, and our yard magically transformed into a neighborhood.  Some of the houses even ...

The chicks are growing! In fact they are so big that we now have a "Chick-a-Saurus Rex."  Some of the feathers, especially those around the wings and tail are starting to change.  A couple of them tried to escape today. Mr Allan found them on top of  the brooder box. (We placed a make-shift cover over it to try to stop them from escaping. However, I think the cover actually assisted them in their escape.)  We have decided to keep them until Friday, then they will go back to the farm. Although, I think a few of the "chickens" might stick around! It has been hilarious to watch the children imitate the baby chicks. In the first few days, one of the major observations they made was that the chicks would fall asleep standing up and almost fall over in the process. So, of course, when they pretend to be baby chickens, that is their favorite thing to do! We have also worked in some great music from Mary Jo Huff having to do with chickens- you can get a preview of some o...

This post was shared at: Our friends are starting to get very excited about Halloween! We decided that it was time to start taking down our summer decor, and opted to make a few spooky totem poles to help decorate our rock garden for fall. The original idea for the totem pole came from Family Fun Magazine . You can see our original totem pole in this post. Our spooky totems were a lot of fun to make. Some of our friends opted to paint their coffee cans. (I sprayed them in various "fall"/"halloween" colors as a base to get them ready for decorating). After we finished with the paint, some of our friends added pieces of foam and googly eyes to their creatures. Our cans turned out fantastic! Check out the cool totems we have out front! Here is the one on the right: The one in the middle is pictured at the top of this post. The one on the left has room for 3 more cans, and will be finished tomorrow when some more of our friends have an opportunity to join in the fun...

If you have been following our blog, you know that we are in the middle of our yearly stepping stones project. Each year, each child that is enrolled in our care has the opportunity to create a decorative stepping stone for display in our outdoor rock garden. We have become known for our display and the children look forward to creating their own stepping stone each year. Many people make stepping stones by purchasing kits from craft stores. We have found that option to be okay if you only plan on making a single stone, but if you would like to make more stones, there is a much more economical way to do so! We make our stones with Portland Cement that is mixed with play sand. You can find Portland Cement at nearly all do-it-yourself type stores. This makes very smooth stones. You can use a variety of sand, we always use the sand that has previoiusly been part of our indoor sensory tables. (After we have used the sand indoors we either use it in stones or move it outside. Most of the...

In the front of our house we have a rock garden where we showcase some of our arts and crafts projects. We have been described as "that house on (our street) with the daycare, you know the one with the stepping stones and coffee can totem pole" on numerous occassions. Our rock garden has been a little neglected of late, so at the end of last week and the beginning of this week we decided to work on sprucing it up. We started our stepping stones, and will continue to work on those until all of the children have had an opportunity to made one. We painted a bunch of rocks with bright colors (I forgot to charge the camera and we really didn't get very many photos while we were painting) We spruced up the laundry soap bottle butterflies from last year, adding some new paint and "decorations." We moved one of the plants from the backyard to the front, and added a few of Ms. Amy's metal art projects. Then today..... We added some painted lids...