December was filled with fun activities for the Blue Sky Daycare children. We kicked off the month's holiday festivities by learning how to bake pretend Christmas cookies. This was a great way for the children to learn about the cooking process, and since each pretend cookie came with a holiday-themed picture on the "frosting," we were able to name each image and talk about what each image represented. One of the next crafts we completed was a jingle bell necklace. The hol

October started with beautiful, sparking sunny days and cool, crisp weather. This was just the right weather for lots of nature walks, and the children loved searching for colorful leaves as we rambled around the neighborhood and over familiar paths. The red leaves were the most popular, but the children collected a variety to wave around, watch blow in the wind, or to show to parents. Our nature walks include a stretch of flat tarmac, and the children love to run races and

April began with plenty of showers, so hopefully our flowers will be extra beautiful in May. Rainy days can still be fun, though. Some of our rainy days we spent clipping flower pictures from a seed catalog and creating lovely flower collages. This activity provided some opportunities to talk about shapes and colors while honing fine motor skills as the kids cut and glued the images. Another rainy day gave us time to make fingerprint flowers. The children practiced drawing

We had so much fun in February that the month zoomed right by! We finished up a hibernation theme that we had started in January with a fun activity. I cut entrance holes in several large boxes (which were kindly supplied by one of the daycare families). We reviewed some books about hibernating animals, then the children decided which kind of hibernating animal they wanted to be. We had a bears, woodchucks, and chipmunks! The children had a wonderful time picking out their

The children and I are really beginning to notice signs of fall all around us. The bees are slow and less numerous, the brightly colored leaves are beginning to fall, and the calls of migrating geese can be heard throughout the day. Our circle time aims to capture the flavor of the season, so we've included several Halloween-themed fingerplays in the morning mix. One of them is "Ghost of John." Sung in a minor key, it is particularly spooky sounding and goes like this: Hav

What a great day it was to celebrate a birthday! We began our day with calendar, weather, and our sunflower and bubble circle time rhymes, then launched right into making birthday cake/cookie bars. This time we decided that a pumpkin recipe sounded super yummy. After we examined the ingredients, the birthday boy got to add sugar to the flour... ... and stir it well. Next came the baking soda, baking powder, and salt... After that the children added cinnamon, nutmeg, and c

Today seemed to be particularly suited to dress-up, so after we moved our calendar tag to the last day of April and finished our last April circle time fingerplays, we moved right along and suited up! First, the children picked the perfect dress-up outfit. One was a mermaid... ...one was a princess... ...one wore a cape (and did lots of spinning around)... ... and one was a mix of a few dress-up items! The children and I came up with a story sort of like The LIttle Mermaid i

Today was a great day to do our favorite creative activities inside. The grey clouds and misty weather kept us in, but we had fun anyway! We began our day with our usual calendar, weather, and circle time routine, then moved on to some block play. The littles and I worked on making and breaking down block towers while the older children were free to construct whatever they wanted. One child made a restaurant, another made a "sheep's wool and milk machine," and another made

We celebrated Chinese New Year at Blue Sky Daycare today! It was so much fun- the children were engaged all day and came away from the experience with lots to talk about and great enthusiasm. To begin, we watched a reading of a short story about the origins of Chinese New Year (you can view it here) as well as a Lion Dance (which you can see here). A very truncated version of the story behind the Chinese Lunar New Year is this: A terrible dragon named Nian lived in the sea

Today it was all about the birds! This was the very first day we could actually enter the results of our Great Backyard Bird Count online on eBird. If you're interested in seeing our progress and bird counts, here's a link. You can find observations under my name or "BlueSkyDaycareKids." We were so surprised when the normally shy cardinal suddenly popped up to brighten our morning... what a beautiful bird! We were even more surprised when seven more cardinals showed up! I

Today was lots of fun! We started the day on a quieter note playing peek-a-boo with the babies. They absolutely love to use the play silks to pull up over their heads... sometimes they like to pull them off, and sometimes they like to wait until I or one of the other children pulls it off. Either way, the surprise is sweet! The littles have been truly enjoying trying to imitate the bigger children during circle time. They smile with sparkling eyes as they clap along! We h