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What are your favorite literacy activities?
What books are a MUST HAVE For all daycare centres?
Do you have a favorite author?
Where do you get your books for daycare? Do you frequent yard sales, library sales, used book stores, Chapters/Amazon?
Does your centre accept used book donations?
Are you involved with scholastic?
How do you get your kids excited about reading?
I have been running a very successful and full home daycare for 13 years. I have filled our days with plenty of play, reading and activities, inside and outside but would be very interested in knowing what the actual "programming" areas are when an ECE does "programming" for a daycare centre classroom. I'm looking to change things up a bit by offering similar elements that a daycare centre classroom would offer such as circle time and themes.
Earth day Canada is April 22 2009. We want to get a jump start on our Earth day programming. We intent to do an entire week. Lots of outdoor clean up work to get our yard ready for our veggie garden when the weather is right. We really want to get our earth worm composting project started, but that may have to wait until next year. Our centre is already very conscious of recycling and composting. Even with all our diapers we still only have 4 bags of garbage every 2 weeks. If we could compost diapers here, we'd be really happy.
What sort of activities are you planning for Earth Day?
We do a small unit on shadows around groundhog day, but nothing major. I would like to beef it up a little this year. Any new ideas?
Anyone doing any exciting Chinese New Year Programs at their centres next week?
My preschoolers are singing Christmas carols already and asking for Santa's to draw and colour. When do you start your Christmas programming? We generally only do two weeks before the break, however I know we have enough material to make it a much longer theme, if the interest is there. Is Dec 1 too early to start? It would be awful for the theme to wind down before Christmas arrives.
we had planned on winter themes leading up to Christmas, but with no snow, that idea seems kind of silly.
We are loking for school age craft ideas beyond the typical poppy for Remembrance day.
This is an interesting site, but does not seem to cater to non-theme based centres. I just started working at a centre that is Reggio based. This is a challege for me (and why I took the job) for I have spent 13 years doing theme based program and am no longer challenged by it. I enjoy the Reggio but would love more ideas and ways to teach Reggio.
Plus, a pet peeve of mine is child care being called daycare. As one friend says "we take care of children, not days." And I agree!
Any ideas for large group activities for a very busy and and aggressive group of male jk/sk children???
A little late (unless you need something last minute) but good for next year!
Glue Ghosts
http://crafts.kaboose.com/glue-ghosts.html
Paper Bag Pumpkin
http://crafts.kaboose.com/paper-bag-pumpkin.html (I've done this numerous times and have had pre-cut (for younger) or black paper to make their own faces to turn them in jack-o-lanterns.
Spider Bracelet
http://crafts.kaboose.com/creepy-crawly-spider-bracelet.html
Egg Carton Spiders
http://crafts.kaboose.com/egg-carton-spiders.html
School Age:
Paper Skeleton
http://crafts.kaboose.com/paper-skeleton.html
Plastic Spoon Wit