A Note on Updates

Hello and welcome to anyone who found our blog searching for Fern Friends! Clearly we haven't updated with any news or activities in quite awhile, and we don't really intend to going forward. We're working on getting a website up and running, but in the meantime, we wanted to leave this here as a snapshot of the kinds of things we do in our program.

We have updated our inside space since last time we posted pictures of it, so we wanted to share a couple of current shots, as well as our most recent project--an apple tree! The kids used a board to print paper with a wood grain pattern. Then an adult cut strips out of the wood paper. Kids painted glue onto the strips and helped an adult place them. Then they used half apples from our real tree out back to print apples and apple wedges to print leaves.

Busy, busy, busy

Where in the world did April go?

It was a busy month in the garden. The kids planted lettuces and peas in the raised beds, started planters of herbs along the porch, and helped dig a new little bed for sunflowers. The raised bed is kind of getting taken over by mint right now, but the kids love picking it, so we're leaving it until we need room for tomatoes and squash, which we'll be planting very soon.  The beans I wrote about in the last post sprouted very nicely. We moved them into cups and watched the roots grow for about a week before they got too big, and then we moved them out back where they can climb up the fence.

When we do a big curriculum unit like this, we incorporate it into multiple parts of our day.  Of course, the kids are involved with the gardening process from planting right through to when they get to pick the produce and eat it. They plant, they water, they help weed the beds.  But we also sing songs about plants and gardening, we talk about how plants grow and what they need to do that, we involve the garden in our arts and crafts projects.


You might have seen our sunflower song up on the wall:

(Sung to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot")

I'm a little sunflower
I'm so small
Soil, sun, and water
Make me tall
When I get all grown up
You will see
I'm as big as I can be!


A couple of days ago, we brought in some leaves of different shapes and sizes used them to make prints (and also just as paintbrushes):

That's all for now!  I should have some more pictures of the garden up soon, as well as a post demonstrating the "loose parts" concept I talked in the last post.

Planting time!

Our planting schedule has been a little delayed by the return of chilly weather and the torrential rain--seeds can only take so much before they get washed away! We're not going to let the delay change our plans, though.  Yesterday we planted peas in the raised bed, and last week we started sprouting our beans in plastic bags:

They're just about ready to go in the cups with soil, so we'll be doing that in the next couple of days.

In non-gardening news, Zed and I attended a class a couple of weekends ago based around the concept of "loose parts"--objects that don't have a set use but that can be repurposed in multiple ways with some imagination.  The materials we have out for the kids already include lots of objects like this, but the class was a good refresher, and we came away with some new ideas.

One idea we came away with is putting together a selection of hardware (large nuts and bolts and washers, etc.) that can be used together to build things, sorted out, turned into patterns, dumped into a truck, or whatever else the kids can think of to do with them.  We got a small selection over the weekend to test the idea, and we should have some more soon.  We would also like to build a music wall for the kids to bang around on outdoors, though we need to brainstorm a way to make it portable or cover it so we can have peaceful outdoor time, too.

A fantastic example of a music wall.

That's all for now!
Leslie

Welcoming Spring

Spring is always an exciting time of year for the daycare as we watch everything turning green and make plans for the garden.  We have much more light and warm weather for playing outside than we did a month ago, and everyone has been enjoying that.  Today we pulled the big, round porch table out into the yard and ate lunch in the garden!

The strawberry starts that we planted last week are looking very happy with all the rain we've had, and the kids have been splashing up a rainstorm of their own in the puddles.  We'll be planting snap peas together in our raised bed very soon, and we have plans to sprout some beans in clear cups so we can watch roots growing. Our veggies that like warmer weather will be getting started inside, in the back window where we can see them grow, too.

We're taking things a little slow this week as we welcome our new friends to the daycare, but we're still enjoying our last big project in the quiet room.

That's all for now, but we're blowing the dust off this blog and we'll be keeping it updated much more regularly! 

Some new pictures!

We have some new pictures of the daycare!

A view of the backyard in autumn.

Our building and free play area.

Lots of blocks!

The quiet room.

Play kitchen and sensory table.

Books, books, books!

The sandbox.

We're looking forward to seeing this spring green again.

Fern Friends is Licensed, Hooray!

It's been a hot week at Fern Friends! Watering the plants this week is a much bigger job, and when we get permission to water one thing, it's a lot of fun to water everything. Be expecting more water table and watering can play in the coming week, and check your extra clothes. We did some cooking this week for lunches and snack, and I expect more coming up. The garden play has taken off in a big way, too, as checking the bed for sprouts became a daily activity, and some of our friends got to plant their own garden all by themselves without much in the way of help. If we keep working on it and it grows nice and bushy, we'll have more materials to play with outside. :) Our inside castle boxes were a little drab, so we painted them, and as soon as I figure out how to reach it down, the sheet covering the porch roof will get a kid color touch, too. 

This week has brought some changes, and some difficult surprises. Fern Friends has a license with my name on it now, and once again we find ourselves looking at hiring a new person. Molly will be coming in from 9-2:30 during the next week, and we are scheduling interviews in the evenings again. I have hired Jenn to handle the hiring process this time around (with input) and she will be bringing candidates to the parents to meet and grill soon. The ad we wrote this time seems to have attracted different candidates than the previous one, and she is conducting the preinterviews with her usual efficiency. You can reach her at jennfromfernfriends@gmail.com with any questions about this process. She says she already has several promising applicants! 

Sprouts and Crayons

Our sprouts are coming up, and everything else is coming out of the woodwork, as well. Ants and spiders and everything else are buzzing around, making digging near the garden a favorite. From nearly the time they get here till they want to go home, our friends have been outside. I'm giving serious thought to having circle time under the shade outside, as our enchanting summery spring is not to be missed. 

Most of my time outside work right now is taken up with getting ready for our licensing appointment on Wednesday, be sure to collect a high-five from me Wednesday afternoon. After some conversations with my licenser, the area may change a little (I may choose to change the available areas back behind the trees, and we'll be washing hands for lunch in the daycare kitchen sink once I put a step up.) We'll be taking down the sheet under the covered roof to paint plants on it this next week, which should be a lot of fun.

We've taken a couple short trips around the block, and on Friday, across Hayes and Garfield to the park in the afternoon. The sensory table will be a water table again, and I'm expecting a plant stained glass to send home (waxed paper) this coming week. 

I'm going back to work now. I'd love to see any of you coming by around lunch this week, it's going to be gorgeous outside! 

If anyone has a set of Stockmar Wachsfarben crayons they'd like to donate to the crayon box, they'd make a great supplement to the ones I'm getting for more coloring and lettering work. I would like to have more work being sent home, since we're going to be doing more table art work for our inside portion in the coming weeks. I plan on spending more time outside after the first hour or two each day, as my curriculum continues to build. Magnifying glasses, more construction work, and a larger area for the kids to interact with plants and dirt in both constructive and exploratory ways are on my agenda.

Highlights From a Very Busy Week

It's been a very busy week, so I'm going to give you the highlights:

• We've transplanted our pansies, they're over by Gerri's porch
• We planted a bed of peas past the fence, and more into the bed where the pansies were. Great helpers this week, breaking up clods, planting, weeding, watering, I'm proud of all of them.
• We made a handprint rainbow to hang on the wall, thanks to our friends and a bunch of paint - that will be staying there a while!
• We made banana bread again this last week. This time, we made it into muffins. 
• I've brought out some nicer shovels for two kids at a time to use in the big dirt pile near the fence.

Coming this next week: 

More planting, watering, digging, going to make a story at circle time together, more cooking projects, and hopefully some sun! 

Thanks for a great week, let's have another one!

Dress-up and Building Castles

This last week was pretty great, both for the kids and for me. Dress-up and building occupied a lot of the mornings this week, with castles and the new box-blocks and some towers and houses. Watching the kids cooperate to build things that were taller than their heads was pretty awesome. It's also interesting to hear negotiation about personal space and language about being careful being mirrored - we're always careful what we model, but it's really gratifying to hear it processing.

It's always the right time to play with words, and this week was a lot of fun with that, with some conversation about the words in the books we knew, some experimentation with sounds and letters, and circle time is a favorite time for playing "guess the word" on big sheets of paper. Brought that back to our hands-on materials with markers and butcher paper, and a pretty watercolor activity Patty set up on Tuesday where we painted the first letter in our names with contact paper - some of our friends got excited and used so much the letters weren't really visible, but I love the familiarization activities, and they love getting to work with paint. Letters and numbers continue to be a big part of our curriculum for the kids, and for those who are a little too young, it's still a great time to be included. Thursday, we made some lovely stained-glass windows you'll see hanging up as you come in on Monday. More projects to come!

Friday, we took a quick trip around the block, collected pine cones, picked dandelions, and visited the Bear. Often, the themes I introduce on a day take second fiddle to the kids' play, and that's fine. So we sang "What Shall We Do With a Pirate Sailor" and they built ships out of blocks. 

Coming soon: building another planting bed, planting peas this week, starting our herb garden, marigolds, and learning to take care of some house plants. 

See you next week!

Another Great Week

This week has been lovely. Barely even needed to water, but that hasn't stopped the kids. There's still been enough time to work with shaving cream on the porch table, which if you haven't tried at home, you absolutely have to. You can write names in it, sound out letters, you name it. I like to make sure every kid gets a chance to talk about what they're doing, it's pretty amazing the things they write. Counting games in the shaving cream are fun, too. I've had a lot of parents ask about kindergarten prep, and I wanted to talk about our continuing exposure to letters, words, and numbers, along with our play and work, and we've continued to take every opportunity to bring letter sounds, crafts, and counting into the environment. Patty brought in a wonderful new song about worms, ladybugs and bees, which the kids would love to share with you if you ask them. Corn starch and water are another fun activity from this week, and another fun one to do at home. Building has been another big deal of the week, with the kids putting together huge tracks on the back porch, and on our really rainy days, building castles inside out of cardboard boxes big enough for the whole crew to share. Finally, winding down the week, we had a quiet Friday with some muffins that the kids had a hand in helping mix.

I think I've heard from all the parents by now about their feelings on photos of the kids' activities on the web page, and I will be compiling them into a list I consult when putting up photos, making sure to respect your boundaries. 

Let's have another great week!