Hoppy Easter! 🐰

These past two weeks we have been busy welcoming Spring and celebrating Easter. With the excitement surrounding the holiday we have spent a lot of our time reading Easter stories, singing Easter songs, and making bunny, egg and chick crafts. Our friends had a lot of fun with all the different Easter crafts and activities, a few of the which are pictured below.

 

To welcome spring we did an experiment where we dyed white carnations the colours of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet). This was done by putting 10-15 drops of food colouring into small jars of water, and then placing a white carnation into each jar. We also experimented with the extra flowers and split the stems of some carnations so that they went into two different colours. We also left some stems short and some long to see the difference in colours. The above photos show what the flowers looked like after being left overnight.

Above is an Easter Bunny puppet craft that was done where our friends assembled their own bunny with different colours for the ears, face and body! They loved this craft and spent the morning hopping around with their finger puppets.

Above is a marbled bunny and egg paint craft that we did. This was done by cutting out bunnies and eggs from card stock paper, and then putting them into a container with some paint and marbles that our friends moved back and forth to make the beautiful creations above.

Above are some of the salt dough Easter egg ornaments that our friends made! We made out own salt dough by mixing together salt, flour, and water and then everyone took turns cutting out the eggs. A hole was then made in the top of each one with a straw, and then the eggs baked in the oven at 200° for a few hours. After they were dry and cooled our friends then decorated them with paint and glitter!

We also did a craft paper roll bunny! These adorable little bunnies were made with coloured craft roll, cut out paper ears and face, pipe cleaner whiskers, and a pom-pom tail in the back.

We also made bunny backs– this was done by gluing ears, feet and a cotton tail onto a paper plate, a very simple craft with adorable results!

We also painted our own Easter eggs, some were painted in a design, others were painted in a solid colour– each one turned out great!

Another craft we did was a hatching bunny craft! These again had unique and different results, depending on how the child independently glued their craft together.

Above is our craft wall downstairs that is proudly displaying all of our little friends creations that they completed over the past couple weeks.

 

 

 

Luck of the Irish ☘

These past few weeks we have been celebrating all things Irish and green. With our new friend Silly McWily the Leprechaun stopping in to play tricks on us our friends have been very excited about the upcoming holiday. To celebrate we have been doing different St. Patrick’s themed crafts and activities throughout the past two weeks and then had a celebration this past Friday the 16th. Below are some of the crafts and activities we did with our friends here at The Toad.

Above is our March Welcome board, beautifully decorated in green and gold.

Above is one of the activities that was done with our 2’s and 3’s where they were asked what they would do if they caught Silly McWilly and found his pot of gold. We also talked about Ireland and how Silly McWilly lives there.

Above is one of the crafts that was done where they glued gold coins and shamrocks to their pot of gold, and then attached rainbow streamers to the top of their pot.

We also made lucky four leaf clovers with our hand prints, there were lots of giggles as some of our friends realized that painting their hands was quite ticklish!

Above is another craft that was done with our 2’s and 3’s where they glued pieces of tissue paper to make a rainbow leading to their pot of gold. They were then asked why they though they were lucky, and their answers were written on a shamrock and glued to their pot.

We also had some science experiments to celebrate St. Patrick’s day. Above is the beginning of our walking water rainbow experiment we did. This is done by placing six cups of the same size close together in a circle. Then fill up three cups 3/4 of the way with water and put red food coloring in one, blue food coloring in the second and yellow food coloring in the third, with an empty cup in-between each (like the picture above). Then paper towel strips were folded and cut to hang into one cup with water and one that was left empty (making sure the paper towel touched the bottom of each cup). They were then left to do their “magic”.

The above photos were taken an hour and a half after we started the experiment. As you can see the water had already started “walking” through the paper towel and dripping into the empty cups to make the secondary colors (green, orange, and violet).

This is the final experiment after it was left overnight. As can be seen in the above picture the water mixed perfectly to make our secondary colors and each cup ended up having about the same amount of water in each.

It also wouldn’t be a St. Patricks Day celebration if we never tried to catch a Leprechaun! We have been planning out different traps for a couple weeks with our friends to try and catch Silly McWilly, the Leprechaun who’s been visiting The Spotted Toad to play tricks. Above was the trap that our preschool group made the day before St. Patrick’s Day to try and catch Silly McWilly!

This is the Leprechaun trap that our after school group made upstairs to try and catch Silly McWilly… they even had a trail of glitter going all the way downstairs!

 

Friends at The Toad ♡

This past week we have been talking about friendship and what makes a good friend with our 2’s and 3’s . Below are some of the crafts and activities that were done.

Above is our friendship chain craft, here two paper people were cut out holding hands and then our friends coloured and decorated them.

We also made “friendship cookies”! These were done by first discussing qualities of a good friend (i.e., being kind, helping, and sharing), and then using these to make our “recipe” together. They then glued rainbow chips onto their cookie, and a teacher wrote what goes into a friendship cookie on the chips.

Another craft we did was a friendship quilt, this was done by having each child (and teacher) decorate a “quilt patch” with their hand prints, stickers, colours and cut out hearts. It was very fun to do, and their results were all unique and beautiful!

We also made play dough together and some of our friends recreated friendship people (as can be seen above) with their dough! This is always a great sensory activity that lets their imaginations take over.

Day of Love ♡

For Valentine’s Day this year we had a busy fun filled day with loads of sweets, treats, and of course lots of valentines. We started off our day with some heart shaped apple slices and heart shaped wraps with jam and cream cheese. After snack we made some “love bug headbands” (pictured below), and then had a dance party while we wore them.

We also did a hunt for hearts hidden around The Spotted Toad and our littles found every single heart that was hiding! Then for lunch we had heart shaped pancakes and fruit to continue celebrating the day of love.

In the afternoon our littles had fun decorating their own cupcakes with icing and sprinkles! After we had a “fizzy heart” science experiment where baking soda and water paste was frozen (with some added glitter) in heart shapes. Then each child had a heart with their own bottle of vinegar (“magic potion”) to squirt on it to make the magic fizzing action begin. They loved this activity and kept asking for more until all our hearts were gone!

In the afternoon with our after school group we had a scavenger hunt with clues that lead to a special prize at the end! We also decorated our own cupcakes, played a blindfolded heart drawing game, and had lots of other valentine crafts and activities! It was a busy, but very fun day for everyone!

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Week of Love ♡

We have had a fun filled couple of weeks leading up to Valentines Day full of crafts and activities. Below is a photo of our welcome board the was up in the porch for the month of February.

The following are photos of some of our friends making “Heart People” on a snow day. This was done by cutting out hearts, crinkling strips of paper for the arms and legs, and gluing them all together to make a heart person, then everyone drew a funny face to make their heart person complete!

Below are the finished heart people that our friends made, it was a great craft with cute and funny results!!

Below is another valentine craft that was done with our 2’s and 3’s where they traced their hand, and then decorated their “love trees” with stickers and colors!

We also had loads of fun playing in our Valentine’s Sensory Bin! This was filled with dyed pasta and rice, pom-poms, feathers, foam hearts, and curly pipe cleaners. This was played in throughout the week and was a great sensory activity for our littles.

 

Hello Mr. Groundhog!

Friday, February 2nd we celebrated Groundhog Day here at The Spotted Toad! We had groundhog trial mix for snack, sang a groundhog song during circle time, learned some new groundhog facts and then made predictions on whether our groundhog “Shubenacadie Sam” will see his shadow.

Below are some groundhog day colouring pages our friends coloured.

We also made our own groundhogs and burrows for them to pop in and out of! These turned out great and were made by printing off groundhogs for our friends to colour, then they glued them on a popsicle stick, and poked it through the bottom of a Styrofoam cup and then glued fringed “grass” to the top of the cup for their burrow.

We also made a fact sheet about the groundhogs we made, including then name of the groundhog, how long they are, how much they weigh, what they are good at, what they do not like doing and what their favourite food is.

After our groundhog day crafts and our predictions were made we also watched a video of Shubenacadie Sam coming out of his burrow on ground hog day. He did not see his shadow, so according to Shubenacadie Sam we will have an early spring.

Snowy Animals (continued)

This past week to finish off our snowy animal adventures we made some penguin and seal crafts (pictures below). We also learned all about penguins and seals during circle time with our preschool friends. We walked, talked and danced like polar animals and had a fun filled week.

 

Below are our adorable seal puppets! These were made on popsicle sticks so that our little friends could carry them around and play with them.

 

Snowy Animals

This past week we have been talking about snow animals from the Arctic and Antarctic regions with our friends here at The Spotted Toad. Below are some of the crafts and activities we have been doing.

Above is our adorable walrus craft that was done with our 2’s and 3’s.

Above is our fluffy polar bear craft that was done with our 2’s and 3’s. We also spent the morning pretending we were polar bears living in a bear cave! Our preschoolers had a blast stomping around and talking like polar bears!

We also spent a day talking about animal tracks and the different shapes they make in the snow and dirt. Below are some pictures of our friends making their own animal tracks in some play dough.

Our school age friends also spent some time researching different Arctic and Antarctic animals and drawing pictures of them. We then did a show-and-tell where each one brought in something about their animal and then shared with the class some facts about them. It was a fun activity and they worked very hard learning all about them. We also did a game of “Polar animal charades”, this was an active way to have some fun on an indoor snowy day.

Snow Much Fun!

This past week we have been talking about snow with our preschool group, and all the fun things we can make with it. Below are some pictures our preschoolers created with puffy “snow” paint. This paint is made by mixing equal parts of white glue with shaving cream, and then adding some sparkles to make it shine! The results, as can be seen below, dry into beautiful puffy artwork- perfect for snow paintings.

We also made snowmen faces with our preschool group, where we cut out carrot noses, coal eyes and a pebble mouth and then glued them on paper plates to make our snowmen.

For part of our snow week we also made our own “snow” that we can play with inside and won’t melt! This snow was made with baking soda and hair conditioner- resulting in fake snow that was soft, stuck together well and was even cold to the touch. It was a lot of fun to play with and our friends made lots of different snow creations.

To end our snow week we made some snow paint to colour the real snow in our back yard with! This snow paint was simply made by adding food colouring to spray bottles of water. They had so much fun with this activity, and created a beautiful colourful yard together!

Good Bye December, Hello January!

With the Holiday season behind us we are now finally getting back into our normal routine here at The Spotted Toad. These past few days our weather has been more mild and we have been able to spend lots of time outside playing. Today with the sun shining  we even went for a long walk to the swan pond and around town.

This past week we have had lots of fun activities and crafts with our friends here. Below are some photos of a “snow” bin we made inside! This activity was done on a day that it was too cold to go outside and play in the real snow, so with some granulated sugar and some icing sugar mixed together we made a fun “snow” filled sensory bin. We also added some white beans for snowballs, and some cookie cutters to make shapes and snow angels with.

We also built a blanket fort in our play room for our friends to play in. They had lots of picnics inside and even had a castle building contest! It was lots of fun on a cold day!