Fall leaves.

Fall is such a beautiful time of year and fallen leaves provide so many fun activities for the children in your day home.

It's a great time of year to get outside for a fall walk, collect leaves along the way, make leaf piles to jump into and return to your day home with a number of leves to use for some in expensive crafts.

The photos below show some quick and easy ideas to use as a follow up activity once you've had your outdoor fun!

How about using the leaves for a fun sticking activity?

For younger children draw a tree trunk for them to glue the leaves on to, older children may be able to draw the tree trunk themselves.

Provide the children with a variety of leaves to use, some will use all the same, others may be more creative.

Or how about making an attractive wreath for your home or front door?

Simply cut out a circle of cardboard (empty cereal boxes make a great source of cardboard) and get the children to glue the leaves all around the circle. Encourage them to overlap so none of the cardboard is showing.

If you have some spare ribbon in a fall colour this can be taped to the back to hang the wreath or a piece of string or yarn would suffice.

Or maybe try this fun craft!

Simply glue a leaf to a popsicle stick and add googly eyes for a simple leaf puppet!

The children could then tell the story of their walk, or a story of a leaf or use them to act out a poem or a fall song!

And finally, everyone's favourite fall craft, leaf printing!

Supply the children with some leaves and paint and paper.

Encourage the children to paint the rough side of the leaf (the side with all the veins) and then lay the leaf onto the paper and press down to print.

Fall colours always look great but why not experiment with non fall colours and let the children be creative!

Check out this blog!

A blog that has been tried and tested by another day home provider is always a sure sign that it is a good one!

The following blog was recommended as an excellent resource for pre school crafts. It has great photos of the crafts, easy explanations and lots and lots of ideas to keep you going all year long.

Just follow this link;

www.easypreschoolcraft.blogspot.ca

Need planning ideas?

Why not invest in this book?

A day home provider has recommend this book, available for $33 at Scholars Choice, as a great investment for ideas for activity planning.

It is simple and easy to use and would make a great reference when you just cannot think of anymore ideas to keep all your little ones busy!



Science fun in your day home.

Kids love fun science experiments and they are such a great way to encourage them to talk about what they see happening and to start to explain why!

Even young kids can make a simple prediction about what they think may happen and then just watch the look on their faces when something does!

As the weather begins to turn, a day home provider begins to think more about indoor activities and some fun science is just the answer!

www.sciencebob.com has lots of simple experiments that can be done with things in your home! Maybe a great way of keeping your non nappers quiet while the younger ones sleep!

This one is our particular favourite:

Blobs in a bottle.

You will need:

• A clean 1 litre clear pop bottle
• 3/4 cup of water
• Vegetable oil
• Food colouring
• Fizzing tablets (such as Alka Seltzer)

What to do:

• Pour water into the bottle
• Slowly pour vegetable oil into the bottle, using a funnel or a measuring cup, until bottle is almost full. You may have to wait a short while until water and oil separate.
• Add 10 drops of food coloring to the bottle (we like red, but any color will look great.) The drops will pass through the oil and then mix with the water below.

• Break a seltzer tablet in half and drop the half tablet into the bottle. Watch it sink to the bottom and let the blobby greatness begin!
• To keep the effect going, just add another tablet piece. For a true lava lamp effect, shine a flashlight through the bottom of the bottle.
  
  An alternate experiment involves adding water and oil to a small pop or juice bottle along with food colouring and glitter. Screw the lid back on and watch the kids have fun shaking the bottle and watching the glitter!

Art gallery.

Running out of space on your closet door to display day home art work? Well why not use this simple idea seen in one of our day homes to create a beautiful art gallery!

Simply hang a length of string on a wall in your play room or play area and attached the art work with clothes pins!

Very simple and very effective! I'm sure the kids will love 'pegging out' their art work!



Back to school craft!

With three weeks to go before school resumes I know many of us are still trying to complete our to do list of activities that ten weeks ago seemed possible! However, the return to school is looming and for many of us our thoughts turn to how we can help prepare our children for the school year ahead.

If you have children starting pre school or kindergarten or even grade one you may like to start the children on this ongoing project.

An ABC book created by the child themself would be something they would treasure and would enjoy practising their ABC knowledge from. Creating it themselves also gives them ownership over the book by aloowing them to decided what pictures go in it! It will be a great reflection of their interests at the time also.

To create the book you will need 26 pieces of cardboard cut into rectangles or squares plus a front cover, yarn or string to join it together, pictures and decorations, glue, scissors and a pencil.

Use one piece of card for each letter. (You may wish to pre prepare these with a letter stcker or by writing the letter on, show the capital and lower case version of each letter also ie Ee)

Encourage the children to draw pictures or find pictures to cut out and glue on for that letter and decorate the card. You may wish to label each picture as well.

I would suggest creating the books over a number of days to avoid the children becoming bored, it could be a special project at quiet time for those who do not nap!

Once completed , create a fromt cover (My ABC's plus the child's name work well) and join together.

This idea could also be adapted to make a colour book, numbers 1 - 10, my book of animals, vehicles etc.

For more craft ideas check out www.ohmycrafts.blogspot.ca where this craft idea came from.

                                

Water fun in the sun.

There are so many free or cheap activities that can keep children occupied in the summer and here is a great one to do on a sunny day.

Provide the children with buckets of water and various painting tools and then let your driveway or a patio be their canvas.

The kids will have great fun painting their pictures, being creative and developing their fine motor skills and, best of all, the sun will dry them up and they can start again!
A great idea would be to photograph their works of art.

An alternate activity would be to get the children to 'paint' the fence, if you have wooden fencing around your back yard.

Loads of sunny, water fun and no mess to clear up afterwards!