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

August and September were filled with fun and interesting activities for the Blue Sky Daycare children!

June is a great month to get out and enjoy the beautiful sunny days, and we did so as often and as long as possible. The children enjoyed many outdoor activities, and their favorite was playing in the water. Whether the children were running under the sprinkler, splashing at the water table, or filling and pouring water from pails and watering cans, it was all wonderful for the children's gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and social skills. It's also a great opportunit

The Blue Sky Daycare children had a wonderful time learning about flowers through a variety of activities, celebrating Cinco de Mayo and Mot

After the winter months have passed us by, the warmer temperatures and the warmth of the sun are most welcome! The children and I had a wonderful time this month exploring the changes that begin to appear around us as winter's snows are melted away by spring's bright sunshine. Since the snow melted, the children had a great time playing outside. Rain gear helped us all keep dry as we looked for the first green leaves. Our first discovery were the shoots of the hardy chive

The children and I kicked off December with a daily "Random Act of Kindness." For the fifteen days before our holiday break, the children and I committed to doing something kind for a range of unsuspecting people and animals. I decided on these specific actions with the developmental range of the children in mind in hopes that the children would be able to see a direct correlation between their kind actions and the effect they had on others. We began the month by simply gi

Our 6th annual tie-dye day was a great success although we had to postpone it until the first days of August to ensure that all the children could participate. The children did a fantastic job creating their tie-dyed masterpieces and helped with nearly all the steps involved. They picked out their favorite design, helped moisten the shirts with a spray bottle, named and selected the colors they wanted to use, and carefully squirted the dye onto their shirts. The end products

This month, the children and I focused on the delights of spring, specifically on the life cycle of plants and rainy weather. We engaged in projects that reflected the changes we were seeing outside. The green flush of new grass and leaves and the emergence of lovely spring flowers were the subjects of our artwork, and we played matching and sequencing games that used flowers and plants to teach colors and the plant life cycle. Our April circle time revolved around the chang

March arrived in grand style with lovely warm breezes and a promise of spring. We made it outside as much as possible, especially celebrating the opening of the sandbox and mud kitchen. All the children learned about using the sand respectfully so everyone has a good time, and before long, the children were making cupcakes, pies, soup, and all sorts of other goodies in the kitchen and making mountains, ditches, hills, and roads in the sandbox. Outdoor time also focused on pl

February may be a short month, but it does not lack for holidays, and we celebrated! Groundhog Day: We started our day reviewing what we learned about hibernating animals in January. We came to realize that groundhogs hibernate, too, and if they come out early, it's likely that the cause is warmer weather (among other factors), and warmer weather means an early spring. The next thing we did was make a graphic organizer to show how many of us thought that the famous groundhog

January's focus was on all things chilly-snow, ice, icicles, snowflakes, and more. The children and I had lots of fun learning about winter weather, states of matter, and how to dress properly for cold weather. We learned a little about how some animals handle the cold weather by hibernating or migrating, and we made a wonderful bear cave to practice hibernating in ourselves! With the winter weather keeping us indoors so much, we stayed active through a variety of games. O

With December came the snow, and we had lots of fun playing in it We made snowmen, complete with pumpkin "crowns..." and snow horses fit for several riders! Like little elves, when we weren't playing outside, holiday crafts kept everyone busy. The children created a variety of ornaments to bring home and share with their families. Each activity honed fine motor skills. The crafts included skills like winding yarn around a form (it's tricky to put the right amount of tension

The waning light of November brought the children and I to a more introspective place, and through the month we worked on cultivating the little "lights" inside our heart as we practiced good manners, kind words, and gentle hands. We started our month with some fine motor skill activities, most notably playing with Tinkertoys. The children created their own structures with the sticks, wheels, tubes, and a variety of parts, then we worked together to make cars and a variety o

This past week has been lots of fun! We've continued to work on our circle time fingerplays and the children are nearing mastery on their favorites. The children have also enjoyed creating some very simple games as their imaginations grow. The games range from pretending they are puppies to pretending a friend has fallen or is stuck in the mud. The pictures below show the children using teamwork to help a friend up from the "mud." I introduced the children to a story calle

The children and I had the chance to get in a spooky mood and use our senses to explore some creepy bugs, some real and some pretend. First, the children got to handle a range of rubbery, stretchy, sticky pretend worms, some big black pretend spiders, and some wiggly pretend centipedes. The worms were definitely the most interesting to the children. We talked about how the worms felt in our hands and practiced using the words "squishy," "stretchy," and "wiggly" to describe t

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

The children and I have been waiting for weeks to harvest the seeds from the giant sunflowers that we grew, and today was the day! The seed heads have been drying, and it was relatively easy for the children to pluck the seeds from the petal-like structures that surrounded them. It was work that took diligence and and lots of fine motor skill, but after about a half an hour, the children were rewarded with a big bowl full of seeds. We'll keep some of the seeds to plant next

September is well underway, and we are focusing on apples right now. We have a lovely variety of circle time movement rhymes and fingerplays that have to do with apples and apple trees. Here is the one that we begin with: Way up high in the apple tree Two little apples smiled at me. I shook that tree as hard as I could, Down fell the apples. Mmmm- they were good! After our morning routine the children and I talked about how tall apple trees were and named all the colors of

The children and I have been having so much fun with our sunflower theme so far! We love the beautiful coffee filter sunflowers hanging high in the window, we love our circle time fingerplays about sunflowers, and most of all, we love the story I've been telling about why sunflowers hang their heads. I adapted the story from Madge A Bingham's Overheard in Fairyland. You can find her telling here. The big kids and I have enjoyed working on our counting through one of our fi