Time for Giving

There are many ways of letting children experience giving and doing for others at this time of year.  Our centre will be participating in several over the next month.

The first fundraiser is for an organization that supports families with sick children who need to go to the main land for medical care called "You Are Not Alone".
                    
Our local mall organizes a tree decorating fundraiser for Y.A.N.A.  For those that participate they buy one of the trees and completely decorate it.  Then it is sold in a silent auction with all proceeds going to YANA.

      We started a couple of weeks ago making ornaments.
        
               We painted silver balls with glitter glue.


               We painted pinecones.

     
 
     Mackenzie, my ECE student made salt dough to make
                     shaped ornaments.

And lastly we made crystal ornaments that I called Sparks.


They were very easy to make.  Shape pipe cleaners and then soak in a mixture of 3 tablespoons of Borax and one cup hot water overnight.

 
                    Friday we decorated.
   The children did an enthusiastic job hanging the ornaments
                       and candy canes.
     
One last addition to our tree was to add books and stuffed animals.
Children went through their toys and donated them.

       
        
We spent a little time admiring the other trees that were decorated.  All the trees will be sold through a silent auction.

Ready Set Learn

Ready Set Learn is an initiative by the Ministry of Education to support children’s early learning and to help families make connections with the school system and local community agencies.  In our district the StrongStart Facilitators help plan and implement Ready Set Learn events in all the elementary schools.  I participated in three this week.  Here is a glimpse of what was planned.

The activities were planned around the book “What a Treasure!”            

After reading the story to the group the families rotated through several centres. 
         
One centre was to retell the story using pictures on a magnetic board.

At each centre a tip sheet was provided for parents to take home.  These were copied from a parent’s handbook that the ministry use to provide.

Numbers
 

         
This activity encouraged recognition of the numerals as well as counting.

Books
  
Various books about treasure were available to enjoy.

Play
 
               
An opportunity for the parents to observe how their children interacted with the props provided.

Getting Along with Others
 
     
The children and parents took turns playing a matching game.

Talking and Singing
 
          
We were listening to the songs that I recorded into qr codes.

Healthy Snacks
 
      
Snack time incorporated literacy and numeracy skills by recognizing the shapes of the ABC pretzels, by sorting the fish crackers by colour and counting the raisins and orange sections.  Another focus was on independence by encouraging the children to try to peel the orange themselves.

At the end the children could pick a book to take home but first they crawled through a tunnel like the mole in the book.
  

The pictures for retelling the story and for the matching game were found here.

Man in the Moon Snack

We have been singing an old Scottish folk song called Aiken Drum.
So this week we used moon biscuits to make our own Aiken Drum
                           to eat.
  
The moon biscuits are cheese scones.  I found the recipe at bbc Good Food.

        
Food choices for the facial features were raisins, cheerios and mixed
vegetable (peas, corn, carrots and green beans).  The vegetables were
not the top choice to add to their man in the moon though.

We sang the song as the children built their Aiken Drum.
“There was a man that lived in the moon, in the moon, in the moon.
There was a man that lived in the moon and his name was Aiken Drum."
      
"His eyes were made of cheerios, cheerios, cheerios.  His eyes were
made of cheerios and his name was Aiken Drum."

"There was a man that lived in the moon and his name was Aiken Drum."

Scan the qr code to hear me singing the song.  If you don't have a smart phone or ipad you can copy this address and paste it into the search window at the top of your screen.
http://www.recordmp3.org/gmAs9.mp3