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SPRING 2017
Some Spring lunches....ginger sesame salmon, stir fried veg, brown rice, and crispy baked wonton.
We hatched out 37 pekin ducklings in April! They have gone to live on Auntie Vicki's farm.
September 2016
The fall is almost here again, and so my newsletters are starting for the school year.
August 2016
I would like to introduce our puppy to the world! In March we welcomed a rough collie puppy into our family! Sonny has been a wonderful addition to our crew. He is now 7 months old. He has completely 2 rounds of obedience training, with plans to continue his education so he can be the best dog he can. He is gentle and calm, completely unbefitting a puppy! He has limited and supervised interaction with the daycare children, and is completely restricted from the playroom. He has been a real gift to our family, and we would like to share some pictures. He has his own instagram account @santintotheroughcollie if you would like to see more pictures!
March 2016
March 2 was Dr Seuss' birthday! We celebrated by making Thing 1 and Thing 2 hats, and eating green eggs and ham. Eggs greened with spinach juice, and ham is all naturals.
February 2016
We made groundhog faces! And build bird houses for our feathered friends.
January 2016
December 2015
We did our annual gingerbread house party!
November 2015
On American Thanksgiving we took the opportunity to celebrate again! We roasted a turkey, and made sugar cookies. Here are the 2 year olds watching our cookies bake.
I was lucky enough to host a teacher from the Heart & Stroke Foundation to come renew my CPR and Emergency First Aid on November 22. We had a great group of 10 daycare providers from the area, and enjoyed networking with each other while maintaining such an important certification. As a provider and a parent, I recommend anyone who has children of their own to take this class! Knowing CPR and choking techniques, especially, are so important when we are around children. Being able to act quickly and surely, without having to wait for an ambulance really does save lives.
Autumn 2015
Our last of so many harvests from our very fruitful garden this summer. We pulled 20 pumpkins, a bundle of crookneck squash, heirloom carrots, red and white onions, rosemary, and a pile of sage the size of a toddler. What a great year for gardening this was! We have already made and enjoyed pumpkin muffins and mini pumpkin pies!
Our October themes are Pumpkins, Thanksgiving, and Halloween! We have moved the sensory bin in from it's summer position as a water table, to it's indoor spot filled with halloween items for sorting!
It's so hard to say goodbye to these little people when they move on in new directions in their lives. Thank you for the goodbye flowers, but most of all thank you for the opportunity to care for your sweet girl.
Our September themes were apples, autumn, and back to school.
Spring 2015
In May 2015, Emily completed a course in Child Nutrition from the University of Edinburgh. As always, the food we serve is carefully thought out to be wholesome, and within the values laid out in the Canadian Food Guide.
We hatched a dozen chickens this spring! Also pictured are the Painted Lady butterflies we raised and released as a part of the life cycles unit that we thoroughly enjoy every March and April.
March 2015
March Break coincided with St Patricks Day this year! We enjoyed homemade lamb stew over colcannon (mashed potatos, scallions, and steamed cabbage) as an authentic Irish meal. We made shamrocks by stamping peppers in green paint. That was a huge hit!! Stamp painting is alway a popular activity.
March 2 is Dr Seuss's birthday! We had a magical seussical day! Green eggs and ham for lunch...and a Red Fish Blue Fish craft. And of course, Hop on Pop at story time!
Now that we are settled in to our larger home, I no longer need to nap my daycare children in playpens in my own children's bedrooms. My daycare has it's own bedroom now, set up with permanent cribs and toddler bed. No more temporary sleep situations...a real bed for everyone.
February 2015
Fridays are "Cleaning Fridays" at Emily's house. We all have some water play and get toys cleaned at the same time. I disinfect the rest at naptime so we can start fresh on Mondays. Of course, mouthed toys get set aside to clean daily.
This will be a foodie post....I love to cook! I love to serve wholesome foods, that are homemade and healthy. We eat a variety of foods, as studies show children who are exposed to a wide range of flavours will develop broad palettes. So here are some of the things we have eaten recently... We'll start with today's lunch. Roast turkey breast, homemade stuffing (my nana's recipe!), steamed green beans (frozen, not canned) and hand-mashed potatoes.
Oatmeal Bran muffins for snack.
Homemade mini-quiche!
We eat vegetarian once a week. This week was falafels...served with tzatziki, pitas, cherry tomatos and sliced cucumber. The kids LOVE these meatless meatballs.
Homemade granola bars for snack.
Another vegetarian meal we had recently...steel cut oats with cream, and fruit.
On Hannukah we celebrated secularly with LATKES! Served with apple sauce to dip!
Messy though it is, they always enjoy spaghetti with homemade meatballs.
And of course, what my dishwasher looks like at the end of the day...
December 2014
Here are some activities and crafts we did in December. We made our own hot chocolate mix to take home and share with our families. We made pinecone bird feeders for our outdoor friends who brave the winter. As we all currently celebrate Santa, we made an advent craft to count the days until he came! The kids enjoyed a patterning activity with placecards and figurines.
October 2014
We have settled into our new house! It is so nice to have a mainfloor dedicated daycare space, with no television, and room to grow!
Diapering centre, and sensory table
Our reading corner
August 2014
Remember those adorable yellow chicks we hatched this spring? They are now big white chickens averaging about 6lbs a peice. These Cornish X chickens are fantastic meat birds, and grow so fast into tender, free-range meat for our freezer.
July 2014
This fall we move into our larger home, just a few blocks from where we are currently. The two mainfloor windows you see pictured will be our bright, new daycare space! We are very excited to have more room, and to continue having a mainfloor dedicated daycare space to enjoy.
We visit the Bowmanville Zoo on a weekly basis. This week we all got to pet Frieda, the new baby lion! What a treat!
My youngest son with his pet duck, Joey. Joey is very young and hatched from our incubator in June. Joey is a Rouen duck and will look like a large mallard. Joey 'imprinted' on Simon, and believes that he is her mother. Joey follows Simon around the yard and we all get a good laugh!
May 2014
May 22 -- We are hatching more ducks for Auntie Vicki's farm! These are Rouen and Muscovy breeds. They will hatch mid-June.
May 20 -- We are excited to have ducklings for the week before they go to Auntie Vicki's farm. I think they are so cute! So do the kids!
Our Red Star chicks are growing fast! Three weeks old and they have most of their feathers now. My youngest son likes to climb into the coop with them.
Our Painted Lady caterpillars are here! We have 47 of them this year...should make for a very eventful release once they go through their change. Painted Lady's are native to our area so we are able to release them right in the back yard.
We planted these marigolds from seeds, and lovingly watered them to grow up for Mother's Day presents for our favourite moms!
Our chicks hatched May 1! We had 26 little sweeties hatch in our incubator. We kept them for a few days, and then they went to live on Auntie Vicki's farm.
Of course this meant we had to do a chick craft. As shown by my youngest son.
April 2014
Today, for Earth Day, we reused our broken crayons by peeling them, breaking them, and melting them into new crayons. Shade: Mother Earth.
March 2014
Our resident kitty likes to join us for Circle Time.
Here is EMILY with one of our new chicks! In a few short months they will be laying us organic eggs to eat with our lunches.
The kids all love looking at the sweet chickies. They are Red Star breed chickens...known for their large, brown eggs.
Halloween 2013: Dressed the quint stroller like a school bus!
May 2013
Our caterpillers have each turned into a chrysalis!
MAY 2013
Here are the tadpoles we acquired over the weekend! Looking forward to seeing them grow into froglets before we release them back into the bog.
May 2013
Here is my youngest son with the tiny baby caterpillers we have acquired. They are Painted Lady caterpillers and will turn into butterflies in about 2 weeks. They are native to our area so we will release them into the yard when they change.
April 2013
We hatched out four chicks! 12 of our eggs were infertile and did not develop due to no fault of our own. The four fertile eggs did develop and hatch into these cuties!! Two black and two yellow.
MARCH 2013
Here is one of my sweet daycare boys with the chicken eggs we are hatching! They are due to hatch on March 20. They are Ameracauna chickens...they lay green, blue, and pink eggs.
You can follow the blog for the chicks and the webcam I will run for the hatch here: http://emilys2011hatch.weebly.com/
FEBRUARY 2013
Here is our new 'Reading Nook". A few display shelves, a seating area, and our favourite books. The kids love the coziness and are putting it to such good use that I'm so glad we put it in!
October 2012
Fun Fall Activities! Sorting lentils and beans. And a few fall crafts.
June 2012
We raised Painted Lady butterflies this spring! They are about 10 days as caterpillars and then they turn into a chrysalis. After another 10-12 days the butterfly emerges! They are native to our area and we enjoyed freeing them into the open air!
Here is a photo of my own soon-to-be kindergartner holding one of the butterflies! Got to love preschooler's and their free thinking, as demonstrated by his wearing of a bicycle helmet while not riding a bike.
March 2012
We are hatching chicks again this spring! We have 3 dozen eggs incubating right now and are set to hatch on Easter Weekend. We are very excited!!
We are enjoying a variety of activities this fall! Here are two pictures from recently. First, a picture of me with our group heading to the Early Years Centre. Second, our circle time...even the 12 month olds love to participate! Third picture is my son and his friend, one of my daycare boys, drawing jack-o-lanterns with dry erase markers on reusable pumpkins.
June 2011: The Garden is Producing!
The kids are loving the garden this year! We are growing tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, peas, potatoes, green beans, kale, lettuce, spinach, turnip, beets, carrots, swiss chard, dill, mint, lavender, sage, oregano, chives and sunflowers. We are currently harvesting peas, kale, lettuce, spinach beets and turnip. The tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini and green beans are flowering like crazy so hopefully we'll be seeing those soon too! Here are a couple of before/after pictures.
May 2011: Round 2 Chicks and Round 1 Caterpillars
Here are the babies growing on my kitchen table! In the incubator are 12 more chicken eggs that are due on June 4/5. In the egg carton are 4 small containers each with 2 Painted lady caterpillars in each. They take about 23 days to turn into butterflies! They are native to our area so we can let them go in our backyard!
UPDATE: Those 12 chicken eggs hatched into 12 healthy chicks! Our first every 100% hatch! Our painted lady butterflies also turned into a chrysalis and then emerged as butterflies! We released them in our backyard.
April 2011: We hatched out 11 chicks for my Aunt, who keeps chickens! They are living in her barn now but had a lot of fun here with us! We had many visitors over to share in this joy with us. Here are a few more pictures of the fluff ball chicks!
The Bowmanville Zoo is 1/4 mile away so visiting is a must!
We also enjoy our fully fence backyard, working in our garden, and visiting the local park.