Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

I'm at the U.P. Early Childhood Conference this weekend- For those of you looking for my handouts from the "Sense"ational Learning Fun! Here you go! They are also available on the Resources and Handouts Page.  (Please note- depending on your internet and processing speed, it may take some time for the handouts to load. If you see a blank page, I recommend that you click on File and then Download. This will save a copy of the handouts to your computer and you can access them faster from that file and print them if you like!) As always- if you have any further questions or need help with any of the fun things you saw- please do not hesitate to email me , drop me a message on Facebook or give me a call!

Welcome back to the Friday 5!   During each segment of this meme- I intend to share with you 5 posts that I have read over the past week that have me “wired, fired, and freakin’ inspired!” (Thank you Nancy Blackwell for the quote). They may be new or old….  but are posts that I have come across that definitely deserve your attention to hop on over and check out! This week- I'm doing things a little bit different- as I am at the U.P. Early Childhood Conference today and tomorrow. (I scheduled this post last weekend). So... instead of specific posts today- I invite you to check out our keynote speakers' websites! James Coffey (of Blue Vision Music) Lisa Murphy aka "The Ooey Gooey Lady" And here are 3 more links to pages/sites that I have found more recently: On the Fence Kid's Chaos Monarch Meadows Playschool I hope to find more time to read the mountain of posts sitting in my reader. You'll know if I've gotten there ...

 I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring! Today is my final post in this linky series all about some of the arts and crafts we have done for out in our garden! We have a rock garden right off of our front porch. I like to use it as an area to showcase some arts and crafts projects that we have made. Some of the projects are done with the children, and some of them are my own artistic endeavors. Stepping Stones Tutorial We make stepping stones every spring. Rather than using a kit- we make ours out of Portland cement and use some plastic fruit tray containers as molds. Many people have described our location based upon our street name and our stepping stones and colorful tire planters in our rock garden. More Stepping Stones Our rock garden has evolved over time- but has been a great place to collect all of the treasured rocks the children have found on our journeys. ...

(If you are looking for our regular "What Would You Do With It? Wednesday post- we are a little off schedule this month as we have opted to participate in this great planting linky! We'll be back on track the first week of May!) I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring! Yesterday, I shared with you an update on our sprouts this year. Today- I am going to share a round up of our gardening activities that we have posted about over the years.... and tomorrow- I'll share some of our outdoor garden art! Last year was the first time we tried a square foot garden. Our harvest was AMAZING! We are very excited to be gardening this way again this year! How Does Your Garden Grow? Square Foot Garden Update Here you can see how we set up our 4' x 10' square foot gardens: We mixed the dirt for our square foot gardens with some water and our feet! A co...

It is hard to believe that it is really spring around here, with all of the recent snow fall! However, when you live in Upper Michigan- if you are going to have a good harvest- you need to think spring and garden even when the snow keeps falling! I am so excited to be co-hosting  this lovely BLOG HOP with The Usual Mayhem to get me energized and thinking spring!  I was raised on a hobby farm- and my dad taught me that you start your seedlings on St. Urho's Day, unless of course you are Irish- then you start them a day later on St. Patrick's Day.  Our sprouts have been doing exceptionally well- and we have 2 greenhouses up and running with all of the plants! You see- most of the time, when we plant with the children- we end up with A LOT of sprouts. Typically when I would put in 1 or 2 seeds- they often use 5 or 6. Then, when all of the seeds take- voila- massive amount of plants to separate and transplant. I think we have about 70 tomato plants going...

Thanks for joining us on a picture journey-  capturing a few memories from this past week!