My Daycare Coach

One of our favorite activities here at Silly School is mixing baking soda and vinegar. Here we've used little squeezable containers and filled them with vinegar and a few drops of food coloring. We just scattered some baking soda on a tray and let the children explore.  The children watched in aww as it fizzed. Some of the children tried mixing their colors together. They noticed that the red and yellow made orange. Who says learning can't be fun!

These are the Best writing journals ever! We use them for our 2,3,4,&5 year olds. Basically I've filled report covers with plain white paper and have written in our writing journal for the day. We made a cover page with their name. We have added about 25 pieces of paper in each. We can always add some or take them out as needed.  And if they are at school that day, we write the date and our topic. We do this at nap time and as the children are waking up they find their journal and answer the question we have. This is a teacher directed activity. ( we also have them available throughout the day I case they get in a writing mood) Depending our their skill level, we either dictate their answer completely, have them trace their answer that we wrote in highlighter or we tell them how to spell their answer and have them write it out their self. They then draw a picture of the topic. Some of our topics have been: * My favorite color is... * If I were as big as a dinosaur I would... * ...

This is our Focus board for our Circle time. I had fun picking out some cute decor this summer. This is what's displayed: We have a theme each month that we talk about at circle time, design our dramatic play around, have writing journals based upon, and crafts that are based around too. We have a weekly letter that we talk about at circle and have some activities during the week. We also have our calendar that we keep updated and only talk about it on occasion since our 2 and 3 year old are not much into right now. Our dry erase magnate board is used for writing morning messages, making lists together, practicing our letter writing, and holding up our circle songs. We also have our sign in display( the orange ones). I've bought name plates for each theme each month. We sign in every day and sing about our shirts or ask a question to answer each day. I've laminated our simple circle time rules ( that came from a program called 2nd Step) we go over our rules when we are havi...

I have been receiving lots of flowers lately. Mothers Day, Graduation, and just because my husband is so sweet! I love to put them in vases and show them off, but then what? I end up just throwing them out after they have started to wilt. So sad. I just didn't want to do that anymore,so here's what we did. Plus 4 other Flower activities to support our learning experience.  1- flowers in the sensory tub with some magnifying glasses and scissors.  we cut them with scissors and put them in a basket. 2- changing white flowers different colors.  3- blowing through straws and adding tissue to create blossoms.  4- labeling parts of a flower.  5-Glueing flower petals on cupcake liners is fun too. 

So I've decided to start a blog about what I'm passionate about. This includes: all things daycare! I have owned my in home daycare and preschool since 2002. I have learned a few things and I am continuing to learn even more. I'm going to be talking about things like: *How to run a daycare  *Organizing your daycare and home  *Being professional  *Parent issues *Advertising  *Fun children's activities