Penguin and Pinecone

 One of my new favourite books.
         
Love this friendship book. 
A penguin finds a pinecone and befriends it. 
But the pinecone is always cold and grandpa penguin
explains that pinecone needs to be in the forest, far far away,
if it wants to grow up big and strong. 
So penguin takes it to the forest and sadly says good bye. 

The illustrator used stones and pine needles to make hearts,
                     ~representing love~
              in several places in the book.
        
Since I bought the book so close to Valentines Day it
inspired me to set up a table in the room to build hearts
with natural materials.
   
     I waffled between taping a heart shape on the mats to
         adding heart shaped cookie cutters. 
                 The cutters won.
      
            The cutters didn’t stay long though. 
Instead of building a heart the cookie cutter was filled up. 
   Then when it was removed it was a clump of rocks. 
                           Not a heart.
      
Most times the parents initiated the heart which was wonderful. 
Then they allowed the child to build from their beginnings.
 
Some were able to imagine the heart from the beginning and to create it.
   
       After he finished his heart he left it on the mat.
 
His friend came along and added to it.  We could call it a friendship heart.
           

National Flag Day

     
February 15 was declared National Flag of Canada
in 1996.  It marks the day in 1965 when our red and
white maple leaf flag was first raised over Parliament
Hill in Ottawa.  Red and white were designated as
Canada’s official colours in 1921 by His Majesty King
George V.
   
I created a stencil with a maple leaf in the middle and
we attached it to a bigger piece of paper using paper
clips.
    
Then the children used red bingo dabbers to colour.  
 
Some spent a short time dabbing while others were very meticulous
in their dabbing.
  
By laying the stencil over the paper the children
were free to dab the bingo dabber anywhere they
wanted.
 
We removed the stencil to see the final product.
  
            A flag to hang in the window.

A Glimpse at our Valentines Day

 

                                 Light Table

 
                                 Sensory Bin

 
                               Wet Felting

 
                              Friendship Salad

       
                                 Card Writing

 
                                  Spritz Art

    
                 Hope you had a lovely day.

When Play Dough Goes Wrong

    
  Valentines and chocolate, for me, go hand in hand. 
     
I don’t often make chocolate play dough but I love
the response from the children and the grown ups
when I do.
       
The chocolate play dough draws a lot of people to that
play area.  You can’t see it in the above picture but the
grown ups are sitting in the back ground inhaling the aroma
(wishing that it was real chocolate, I think).
   
But what do you do when the play dough turns sticky? 
This isn’t my usual recipe and unfortunately I didn’t read
through the recipe before making it. 
    
So to fix the sticky problem I could have thrown it out but
instead I put a bowl of flour on the table for the children to
knead into the dough. 

Wow, it so added to their play experience.  They were baking
and sharing stories about making Valentine cookies at home.
A very positive solution to a sticky situation.

Memories from Fairy Lane

                             
I've been wondering "sometime in the future will the children
remember Fairy Lane".  "Will something make them recall the feelings
they felt when they were walking through the woods?"

In the four months that Fairy Land has existed I have reflected on why my own
feelings are so strong.  Little pieces of memories have come back to me.
Such as when I was little my family would watch the Irish Rovers tv comedy
show and the 3 little leprechauns that would appear in the pop up book.
Or that I enjoyed playing with any doll that would fit into the palm of my hand.
Or wander the fields and woods that made up our farm. As well as creating
dolls from the silk and husks off fresh cobs of corn.

Also after having my own family, we ventured here to the island and walked
through Cathedral Grove, for the first time, with it’s magnificent trees and
enjoying stories of trolls. 
     
My hopes when Fairy Lane was created was for families to explore the woods and
feel the magic of nature.  And wonder, could creatures (fairies, elves, trolls, pixies)
live here other then the ones we see and know, deer, birds, cougars, rabbits?
                  
I wondered “how can we explore nature and leave a message that we appreciate
it?”  Families are doing that.
I hear accounts from people who have discovered Fairy Lane and the reaction
from the children.  One little girl that lives close to the Lane visits quite often
with her brother, mom and dad.
During the Christmas holidays when family was visiting from out of town that
is what she wanted to share.  So off she went sharing with her parents,
grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins the joy and excitement she feels when
she visits our little doors.
                
I see, when I walk through Fairy Lane, evidence through the treasures they leave
behind showing pleasure from children and maybe grown ups too.

I receive emails from families of how they have connected what they see at
Fairy Lane to what is happening in their day to day life.
      

“So we went to fairy lane today, A's first time actually 

and we were talking about the treasures you found at the 

doors M said the fairys collect them as we were talking 

we decided it must be tooth fairys snatching shiny things 

that catch their eyes while they are collecting their teeth. 

Well.. The door with the big clothesline has a barrette 

and A was screaming it was her barrette she was certain 

and she just lost a tooth last week so it only makes sense.. 

My girls were beside themselves it was one of my favorite 

parent moments :) So thank you 

for bringing a little magic in we are so grateful!”

I’ve been told about Family Day Care providers taking 

their children through the woods and leaving presents 

behind.  Today I saw that someone has created their 

own Fairy house and left it for all to enjoy.

I met a mom, who’s child attends my StrongStart with 

his nanny, for the first time and she told me how she 

discovered Fairy Lane while running with her dog.

There are many more stories I could share but 

yes I do believe that wonderful memories 

are being created through something as simple as 

putting pieces of wood in the forest. 

And by something as strong as our 

imaginations.

Gung Hay Fat Choy to the Fairies

          
We have been reading books about Chinese New Year
this past week and one of my favourites is
“This Next New Year”.
   
The story is from the perspective of the little boy and
what he and his family do to prepare for the New Year.

Here are a couple of my favourite pages in the book.

They clean their house to sweep out the old so there is room
for the good luck to come in. 
     
The last page “I have so many dreams,” connected me
back to our fairy lane.  That was a dream that has come true.

Many people have been visiting Fairy Lane in the last little while,
all leaving them gifts.  So much so that some of the fairy doors
were getting cluttered.
 
To make the connection stronger for the children between what we
learned at school and what we can do in real life,  we decided to
visit Fairy Lane and sweep out the old.
 
Nicole, an ECE practicum student, and I made little brooms from
doweling and dried corn husks.
    
We prepared the I Spy nature bags and were ready to go.
 
As we walked through the woods some of the doors we could spot
quite easily because of the brightly coloured treasures that were
piled at their doors.
 
Each child picked a door and decided what to collect in to their bags.
They had to decide what would stay behind too because we didn’t
want to remove all the treasures, just to tidy.
   
    They used their brooms to make one last sweep then
 
                  left the brooms for the fairies.
 
                          Before and after.

After all the cleaning we had one more activity to do.
 
Emptying out the bags and sorting what we had collected.
 
As the children sorted in different ways the grown ups helped them
label and record how they sorted.
 

I collected all of our work and took it back to the school to share.

 
The fairies are now ready for a new year and may good luck come their way.