#homedaycare

Melanie Patric

Mar 17, 2015
2 min

Our St. Patrick's Day Celebration...

We had a wonderful time celebrating St. Patrick's Day here at Blue Sky Daycare! We began our day with our calendar and weather routine. It was so exciting to see the "Today" tag on our calendar resting on top of the St. Patrick's Day marker! Yay! We enjoyed our normal March circle time, noted that everyone was wearing green of one sort of another, and sang our "March Wind" song, and then our read St. Patrick's Day celebration began! We started by observing the ingredients

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Melanie Patric

Mar 12, 2015
2 min

Rainbows, Rainbows Everywhere...

What a perfect day it was to talk about rainbows! The children enjoyed some last moments with the rainbow of flowers we created on Tuesday and gave them away to their parents. It was neat to see the colored edges on each flower and for the children to understand that it's because the flower "drinks." After discussing the results of our flower activity, we moved on to our regular morning routine, then we sang our own version of Laurie Berkner's Boots! song. It went like th

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Melanie Patric

Mar 11, 2015
3 min

Doll Play and a Visit to the Park...

We had a wonderful time taking care of dolls this morning after calendar and weather. We dressed the baby doll and the "big girl" doll in a few different outfits and named each item of clothes as we put them on. When we were done, the big kids decided they wanted to prepare a picnic for the dolls and the pretend puppies, so we used lots of kitchen equipment and blankets to prepare a space. The littles moved the picnic items around a lot, but we worked together to make the pic

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Fine Motor Skills, A Rainbow of Flowers, and the Wet, Wet Outdoors...

Melanie Patric

Mar 10, 2015
2 min

Fine Motor Skills, A Rainbow of Flowers, and the Wet, Wet Outdoors...

This morning was perfect for practicing our fine motor skills. After our morning routine, we practiced putting toothpicks into the tiny holes in the top of a parmesan cheese shaker. The littles adored doing this, and it was a wonderful opportunity for them to practice taking turns as well. After our toothpick activity, we had about 15 minutes of free play, then we read the story That's What Leprechauns Do and we talked about the words "mischief" and "duties." In the story,

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Music, Planting Seeds, and the Great (Melting) Outdoors...

Melanie Patric

Mar 9, 2015
3 min

Music, Planting Seeds, and the Great (Melting) Outdoors...

Spring is so close we can feel it in the air! We had a bit of a sleepy morning because of changing the clocks this past Saturday, so we kept things simple and did our regular calendar, weather, and circle time routines, then following up with some music to help us get more energized. We enjoyed singing along and dancing to several of our favorites including our March Wind song, the A-B-C's, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Skip to My Lou, and Yankee Doo

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Trains, Seed Planting, and Block Play...

Melanie Patric

Mar 6, 2015
3 min

Trains, Seed Planting, and Block Play...

Trains turned out to be the toy of choice this morning after our morning routine. We practiced our manners while trains chugged along the tracks. We used phrases like"excuse me, please" or "could I please come through" when another train was in our way. The littles worked on using the magnets to attach one train car to another. We also practiced our "chugga chugga" and "toot toot!" noises, which brought lots of smiles. After our snack time, we did our second gardening ac

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Wind Rhymes, Color Matching, and Self Feeding...

Melanie Patric

Mar 5, 2015
3 min

Wind Rhymes, Color Matching, and Self Feeding...

Another chilly day kept us inside, but we had so much fun it didn't matter one bit. We had a wonderful time working on our circle time activities which have two themes for March- wind and classic movement games. We started by adding movements to the classic poem Who Has Seen The Wind by Christina Rosetti, did two more wind-themed movement rhymes, and then played several rounds of "Ring Around the Rosy." We have learned two versions and here they are: Version 1 Ring around t

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Outdoor Adventure Day, Color Matching, and Music...

Melanie Patric

Mar 4, 2015
2 min

Outdoor Adventure Day, Color Matching, and Music...

What a wonderful day to be outside! Since the sun was shining down so cheerfully and our energy levels were high, we went on an outdoor adventure first thing after breakfast. We walked up and down the sidewalks with big snowbanks on either side of us. It was a great time to practice walking together as a group since the snowbanks contained the children who were inclined to wander. We encountered some slippery ice and I showed the littles how to shuffle along so they wouldn

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Forcing Bulbs, Playing Ball, and Grocery Store...

Melanie Patric

Mar 3, 2015
2 min

Forcing Bulbs, Playing Ball, and Grocery Store...

Today was an inside day due to the crazy weather- icy sleet pelted everything for the better part of four hours! We took advantage of the day by talking about the weather during our calendar routine. We don't get sleet all that often, so it was worth talking about how it was different from snow. We noticed that the birds we usually see outside were probably snuggled up somewhere else and we wondered where they hide when the weather is bad. After our morning routine, we work

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Melanie Patric

Mar 2, 2015
2 min

Lots of Outdoor Play...

At last! The freezing winter weather is beginning to make way for the warm breezes of spring, so we spent as much time outside on this lovely day as we could. We changed over our calendar from February to March, counting the days as we took them out and put them back in. We talked a little about St. Patrick's Day and some of the activities we'll be working on through the month. March is the month where gardeners young and old feel that there is hope and gardens must be sta

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Outside at Last, Shopping for Meals and Dress-Up...

Melanie Patric

Feb 26, 2015
2 min

Outside at Last, Shopping for Meals and Dress-Up...

The long stretch of days spent indoors finally came to an end, and we were very, very happy about it! We headed outdoors right after calendar and weather and took a sled trip around the neighborhood. We greeted a few of the residents who were outside shoveleing snow, and everyone agreed it was a lovely, sunshiny day to be out and about. Once we completed our rounds in the neighborhood, we played for a bit in the back yard. It was nice to have a fluffy new layer of snow to

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On the Farm, Pasta Play, and Squirrel-ers...

Melanie Patric

Feb 25, 2015
2 min

On the Farm, Pasta Play, and Squirrel-ers...

It was a great day right from the start! Everyone seemed to be in a sprightly mood; perhaps the lengthening of days and the sunshine had something to do with it. We started with our morning routines and then settled down for some pretend play. We made mountains, a pond, and a farm and played out a scenario about a bull who was bragging about how strong he was... until he needed help from his other pals. After that, we enjoyed some sensory play with cooked pasta noodles. Th

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Melanie Patric

Feb 24, 2015
2 min

Tunnels, Tubes, and Houses, Oh My!

We had tons of fun during our morning routine today. We sang and clapped to the ABC's, practiced our counting, and did our love-themed fingerplays. Soon after we finished with our fingerplays, we moved on to using our senses to explore ice. We've done similar activities before, but feeling cool, slippery ice is always a fun way to reach the children on several levels. The littles had a fun sensory experience as the cold ice melted in their hands and became slippery while th

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Goin' to the Grocery Store, Coloring, and Music...

Melanie Patric

Feb 23, 2015
2 min

Goin' to the Grocery Store, Coloring, and Music...

Today was a fun day filled with pretend play. We began as usual with our calendar, weather, and circle time routines, then we decided we wanted to play at grocery store. I've saved up even more empty food containers for the children, so we had lots for them to select from the shelves, bring to the counter, and ring up. We worked lots of early math fun into the equation by counting our currency (high fives) and practicing counting by 1's, 5's and 10's. Skip counting is a lit

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Melanie Patric

Feb 21, 2015
2 min

Chinese New Year Celebration!

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

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Melanie Patric

Feb 18, 2015
1 min

A Perfect Day for Sensory Painting...

This morning we enjoyed a really fun pretend session. We set up the farm animals with a big fence made of unit blocks. We played out a scene where a bull kept losing his temper and the other animals helped him figure out how to use his words to tell the other animals when he was getting mad instead of stomping and crying. Role playing can be a very fun way and non-threatening way to work through some common social-emotional challenges toddlers encounter. Even the littles a

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Celebrating President's Day With Facts, Math, and Science!

Melanie Patric

Feb 17, 2015
3 min

Celebrating President's Day With Facts, Math, and Science!

Today we celebrated President's Day with some fun stories during our circle time. We looked at pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and discussed what we thought was interesting about them. We noted that Washington had white hair, a pigtail with a ribbon in it, and that he looked like he was wearing "a tuxedo." We noticed that Abraham Lincoln had a beard and a tall hat and that he looked "serious." We talked about how both of them had been president of the Unit

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Melanie Patric

Feb 16, 2015
2 min

A Quiet Day to Work on Valentines...

Today turned out to be the perfect day to catch up one of the children who had missed out on our Valentine's Day festivities. We started with our usual calendar, weather, and circle time routines. We knew we'd have plenty of time work on the art projects we had planned, so we took some time to engage in some pretend play and make our own grocery store. We've been saving up empty containers as we create them, so the children had lots of real food containers to pick from. We t

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GBBC Begins in Earnest, Guess Who, and Lots of Movement!

Melanie Patric

Feb 13, 2015
2 min

GBBC Begins in Earnest, Guess Who, and Lots of Movement!

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

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Melanie Patric

Feb 12, 2015
1 min

Valentine's Day Fun!

What a fun way to start our day- we breakfasted on heart-shaped pink pancakes and heart-shaped red strawberries. Yum! We worked on the very last of our Valentine's Day surprises- warm fuzzies in sizes and numbers representative of our familes. We finished up one last page in our Valentine's Heart Book by using celery to stamp rose shapes on the page. These kids are great at stamping, and stamping is good for refining gross motor skills. After our art projects were finished,

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