The Learning Tree Daycare and Preschool

New Website Coming Soon!

2011-09-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Learning Tree Daycare and Preschool Blog! We have a great new website currently under construction. Check back within the next week to see it coming together. The website will include our current calendar for Preschool, Admission Information, a Virtual Tour and a Meet the Staff Page. In the meantime if you have questions about the daycare or preschool programs give me a call at 435-592-0742. We've been so busy working on exciting changes lately that we haven't had much time to blog about them. But feel free to look around the blog and our Facebook page to see the great program we have been building on. Thanks for visiting!

Kristy

Africa

2011-06-18T21:18:00.001-07:00

This last week was a BLAST! We visited Africa all week long. Here's some of the fun ideas we came up with:

*We made African Masks and put them up in our very own "Museum Display". They will be coming home with the kids next week!*We sorted pictures of safari animals and played games while learning about all the types of animals that live in Africa. A few of the kids even put together some cute felt finger puppets of animals you would find on safari, like those seen on the here on The Idea Room Blog.

*We made binoculars and safari vests.
*But the HIGHLIGHT of the week was African Dancing! My sister Kember is a phenomenal dancer. So I asked her to come up with something for the kids. She was amazing with them and they got SO into. Everyone from the 18 month old girl to the school age girls AND boys. They used traditional type moves to tell stories about their lives here! If I can figure out what I'm doing I'll try to post a video here or on our Facebook page.

Next week it's on to Australia and Oceania. Wish us luck and safe travels!

Earth Week

2011-06-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

We thought we'd begin our trip around the world....with the whole world! We did Earth Week last week and it was a big success. A few of the activities included:

*Gardening Day - Planting seeds for a pumpkin patch (if we can ever get the dirt in the backyard ready ;)

*A visit from Amelia the puppet who told us all about recycling

*Recycling treasure hunt and field trip to drop everything off at the bins!

*Making paper beads from scraps. Instructions found on this awesome blog!

*Garbage walk - the kids picked up trash on a walk around the neighborhood. We recycled what we could, threw away what we was useless and use the best items for "Garbage Art", which was a huge success :)

It's an igloo, just in case you were wonderin...

Around the World in 80 days!

2011-06-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

Hello world! We have been so busy setting up the daycare in the new house and navigating LOTS of changes that I have completely neglected the blog. Going to try to do better, if we can do so without letting other more important things go ;).

Summer is just about 80 days long. We needed a theme to build our summer camp around and "Around the World in 80 days" seemed like the perfect fit. It has been so fun so far!

Our first week we spent getting to know all the campers and getting our school age kids used to the daily routine. A few things we are doing over the summer:

*Older kids get an hour of reading time every day. Some kids love this more than others, but it's one of the most important things we can do to keep them sharp for school in the fall. Plus it gives them some structured "down time" in the middle of the day, which is important for all kiddos. To help keep them excited about this we are also...

*Taking trips to the library once or twice a week. We usually go on Mondays to check out books to read for the week and have been trying to make it to story time on Thursdays if we have the manpower. We have also signed up the kids for the summer reading program.

*We take field trips to see the PTA movie every week for some of the older kids. It has been a lot of fun and a nice diversion.

*Water days! Enough said ;)

*Lots of outside time: picnics, walks, sidewalk chalk, bubbles...

*Indoor and Outdoor Art projects coordinated with our themes

I am also SO SO happy to announce that due to the generosity of Joey's brother and a little overordering on his part, we now have a few patches of grass in the backyard! Once the sod is established in a week or two we should be able to spend more time out there now much more comfortably. We'll move the picnic tables back there and start using the sand and water table for different sensory activities outside. You can also see that the block wall on the south side of the house is now complete, which gives us much more room to play and explore.

We still have a long ways to go. That will take a lot of time, hard work and money so the progress might be slow. But I think that you would be surprised and how much fun dirt and a big old tree can be. I thought it was so ironic that we finally got a little green back there and all Maren wanted to do was still just play in the dirt!

We've Moved!

2011-01-31T22:35:00.000-08:00

These are the new digs! More pictures to come of the daycare set up. We've been busy busy these last few months and having as much fun as ever! More to come...sometime ;)

Shaving Cream Blocks

2010-08-15T14:14:00.001-07:00

I got this idea from my most recent Child Care Conference I attended here at SUU. Simply put = Shaving Cream + Blocks = HOURS of entertainment! Now, I didn't use my nice unit blocks. These are just some I've had sitting around that are too small to have out on the floor much because they include a lot of small pieces that could be chocking hazards. But the older kids had a great time building with these. The shaving cream makes a really neat kind of glue so they can have a little more freedom in building. They also had fun adding in marbles and other small items. Clean up is a little bit of a pain because you do have to wash/rinse everything off. But it doesn't get everywhere like some other sensory play...it was basically contained to the table. And it kept them busy for literally HOURS several afternoons in a row. You should try it...might like it!

"Picnickin"

2010-06-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

The older girls made a list of all the things they wanted to do this summer. It included a request for Picnics..."Lots!". So I guess this is the first official picnic of the season. Yes it was 90 degrees outside. Yes we had a picnic anyway. It's a great way to get the kiddos to drink their milk! ;)

Summer Pretty much rocks around here :)

2010-06-08T21:43:00.001-07:00

Do I have to really say anything about this picture? It makes me seriously giggly inside :)

Want a quick and EASY activity to entertain the kiddos for an afternoon? Grab a bowl of water and add a few drops of dish soap. I put it on a dish towel just to keep the wetness from going everywhere. Give them a straw...just make sure they know not to drink it! My mom let us do this when I was a kid. I love it now because it's SO easy and clean up is a cinch.

Must be doing something right!

2010-05-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

I have always loved reading and tried to pass that love on. We do story time every day here, at least before quiet time, but often several times in between. Imagine my giddiness when we sent the kids over to pick their book for story time and they sat down together and started reading to each other. It was the cutest thing I've seen in a while. I especially love that this is happening more and more!

Tired Boy!

2010-04-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

You know it's been a fun playful morning when....

Picasso in Training

2010-04-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

Today was SO cool! We pulled out a large heavy sheet of paper and let the kids all paint together. The picture started out completely different than it ended up. Everyone was doing their own thing, but they decided they wanted to COVER the paper with color instead. It was really cool as the picture blended together. I then saw the perfect opportunity to talk about color blending, but they taught me something instead! They told me all about the volcano they made (the purple part) and how it was exploding (red colors) into the ocean below (blue at the bottom of the picture! How cool, creative and expressive they are! I hung this one up for about a month before the tape finally wore out :)

Little Authors

2010-04-25T20:15:00.001-07:00

Miss Carrie brought us books and stickers so we could write our own stories! The kids had a ball with this activity. They "wrote" their own stories using crayons, stickers...whatever. Then they told us the stories and we transcribed the stories into their books. Their favorite part? Reading the stories back to us!

Snowman Building

2010-04-25T19:59:00.001-07:00

OK, so I know it's April and probably not Kosher to post snow pictures, but since it's supposed to snow again this week....what the heck!

The kids LOVE to play in the snow. We try to go out as often as we can. On this day we had the perfect snow for a snowman! It was great fun to jump in there with them and bring Frosty to life in our own backyard!

3D Art

2010-04-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Kids love to do art with just about anything! 3D objects are especially fun. And it's so neat to see what they can come up with. This particular day we did art with contact paper. The kids put whatever they wanted on the sticky side of clear contact paper. We then covered it with another clear piece and voila...they have their own version of a stained glass window! It's so valuable for kids to have the freedom to create art how they want to!

The older girls, ever my creative ones, decided to make bug playgrounds! I would have never thought of something that cool, but the detail was fabulous and they had a grand time putting it together!Cass loves the camera! Whenever I pull it out she's the first in line to give me a grin! Let it shine sweetie!

Fun with Ramps!

2010-04-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Who knew a few pieces of wood and a bunch of ping pong balls could be so much fun! The older girls especially loved setting up the ramps in various configurations all over the living room. This would be a great activity to get the whole family involved in and you could use almost anything lying around the house. There is also a lot of potential for discussions on science here! Plus you have to admit the kids would probably much rather play with "found items" than their toys on any given day....at least that's how it is here! Just beware, you'll be finding balls in the strangest places for weeks!

Twinners!

2010-01-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

Tyler often doesn't want to get dressed in the mornings, especially when he's wearing his BumbleBee PJs. I love it though when Bronson comes in his Lion shirt, because Tyler's all for being twins with his buddy!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-18T09:51:00.001-08:00

We got a new addition at the daycare...Miss Kristy had her baby and the kids are all so excited about meeting the little one and getting to know her. They all helped paint this super cute sign as a surprise for when we arrived home. The rest of this month will be very slow as most everyone is taking time off for the holidays. I will try to post at least one more before the new year on some of the things we've done in the past few weeks.

So I just read about a fabulous idea we'll be sure to do for next year....Polar Express Day! Can you imagine the fun possibilities??? PJs all day, an adventure to the North Pole...hmmm....

Say Cheese!

2009-12-16T08:28:00.001-08:00

A lot of the time when I take pictures the babies are sleeping...so here's a few cute pics of "Jasy". The kids LOVE this little one, especially her brother who always takes great care of her! :)

November in Review

2009-12-05T15:08:00.000-08:00

November was the perfect month to talk about fall. We learned about how fall is kind of funny. Sometimes it warm, sometimes it's cold. We went on nature walks and looked for signs of fall, gathering leaves for counting and sorting. Did you realize even your preschoolers can start picking up on math concepts if presented correctly? One activity we did included putting small numbers on paper plates (1-5) and letting the kids put the correct number of leaves on the plates. We also talked about Thanksgiving and the things we are grateful for. The apple turkeys were a huge hit. We also made turkeys from handprints and indian headbands while talking about the first Thanksgiving Dinner. We even did our very own "parachute pow-wow" in honor of the first celebration. The kids love moving to different types of music and the indian drum beat was especially fun.

Indian Summer

2009-12-05T14:59:00.001-08:00

Snow one week...70 degree weather the next! November weather was beautiful much of the month and we were able to spend a lot of time out in the backyard and at the school park. Outdoor play is SO valuable for kids and we try to go out at least once a day if possible. Another daycare provider I know says "There isn't inappropriate weather, only inappropriate clothing".

Also providing HOURS of fun this month was "the box". The kids had a great time for weeks in this. A great book, if you can find it, is "Christina Katerina and the Box". The story is so fun for kids, but also teaches a lot of good lessons. It reminds us of the creativity that is possible for each of us. There are also some good examples of how we should and shouldn't treat our friends in the book. It is currently out of print, but you can get it on Amazon.com for a reasonable price through a variety of sellers. This is an especially valuable book I think for the 4 or 5 year old and older set of kids.

Snow Day!

2009-10-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

As anyone here in Cedar knows we got the first snow of the season this week. What a fantastic time for kids! One of the first things they asked to do that day was play out in the snow. So...we did! As you can see they had a great time. The little ones spent most of their time making tracks everywhere they could, playing "king of the hill" and chasing Koko through the snow. Oh and sampling the newly fallen cuisine was also a favorite.

The older kids went out after school and immediately set to stockpiling snowballs and setting up forts for battle. They were out there for over an hour, taking only a short hot chocolate break.

The snow's mostly gone now for this week anyway. But what a fun hint of what is to come!

All about the Weather, October 13 - 29

2009-10-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

As some of you know we had Swine Flu around here this month and so preschool go thrown off track a little! Despite that we did manage to learn a little about weather over the past few weeks. We talked about thunder and lighting, clouds, rain, sunshine, snow (of course!) and wind. Below you can see us making our rain sticks. We also did wind paintings by blows globs of paint across our paper through straws. The cloud matching game taught us that clouds are shaped differently and helped us look for patterns and matches. We made rain on the floor and swayed in the wind like trees. We learned about the different types of clothing we wear in different types of weather and even got a hands on experience with the snow.

The BEST Play Dough recipe EVER...

2009-10-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

So I KNOW what you are thinking...."I HATE play dough!" I've heard it from almost everyone. If you buy it your spending money on something that won't last. If you make it, it stinks and feels weird. Plus it's just a big fat MESS right? Well it is a mess...I'll give you that, but kids LOVE it (see how focused they are above) and it will provide hours of entertainment for them. Plus this recipe is awesome! The texture is really nice and smooth, you can do any color you want and it smells good thanks to a secret ingredient.

In addition kids can actually learn a lot by playing with it. Playing with Play Dough increases hand strength, motor skills and dexterity. With a little help from mom or dad kids can learn a lot about colors, shapes and smells (with recipes like this one!) Play Dough is a great spring board for all sorts of imaginative play. At the daycare a favorite of the kids is making cooking and muffins, but they can also make their own characters for a show or bug collection. Find objects of various textures and let the kids make impressions in the dough. Play dough is also excellent for letting little ones learn to use scissors

Older kids will love to help you make it. The recipe would be great for the scientific method. Ask the kids questions about what they think will happen as you complete various steps in the dough making process. Make a hypothesis and chart the results. Experiment with adding different scents, colors or textural elements.

Play Dough haters...I would encourage you to give this recipe a try. Yes, it's a mess...but your kids will love it and you might just find it enjoyable as well. Good luck!

I actually got this recipe from my local Child Care Resource and Referral. They are a great resource for me always providing TONS of ideas and support, but they have a lot of resources for parents as well. The Southern Utah office has their site HERE.

Child Care Resource and Referral Favorite Playdough

Mix together the following in a medium sauce pan: 1 C flour, 1/2 C salt and 2 teaspoons cream of tarter. (These pictures show a double recipe...so if you make this version yours will look like half as much!) Add 1 Tablespoon of oil, 1 C water and 1 package of Koolaid.

I like to mix the water and Koolaid together first and then add it. The Koolaid is what gives it your color and your yummy smell. If you want and even stronger scent I would add two packages. Color can be enhanced by more Koolaid, or by adding some food coloring. For this particular batch I didn't have green Koolaid so I used Lemonade and added blue food coloring to make green. (Can you see the potential with kids here...teach them to love science like this when their little and they will excel in it later!)

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. It will look like useless goop for a minute...don't worry! It will thicken up and it doesn't take long.
For this batch I wanted more of a "ghoulish green" (versus the mint green that I had) for Halloween so I adjusted the color as I was cooking it with food coloring.
After a few minutes it will get thicken, harder to stir and start to form a soft dough. Don't let it get too dry, but it should be fairly thick. It might take a few times of making it to get it right.
I then let it cool for a few minutes and knead it out on the counter in a *little* flour to get the consistency and texture just right.

And that's it folks! I'm a big fan of doing colors to go with the season or theme we are talking about. For Halloween we have a pumpkin orange, ghoulish green and wicked witch purple. For an ocean theme you might do a big batch of ocean blue. Christmas could be green and red.

Store it in a plastic baggie in the fridge. I usually keep mine around for a week or so until the kids get bored of it or it gets too dry. Good luck with this and let me know in the comments if you try it and like it!

C is for Cow, D is for Duck, Sept 28 - Oct 9

2009-10-15T15:33:00.001-07:00

These two weeks we spent learning all about the farm and what FUN that was! We learned about what happens on a farm and what the farmers do. We spent lots of time learning about farm animals: cows, horses, chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep. Some of the activities we did these two weeks included:

Painting with Buttermilk and Chalk (dipping the chalk in buttermilk before you color with it makes it stick better to the paper)

Making our own Scarecrow (stuffing newpaper into a "farmer's" clothes)

Acting like animals

Listening to animal sounds and guessing what they were

Making butter (take whipping cream and shake it like crazy until butter forms. It has to be at room temperature to work though!)

Making A Horse of a different color (Pinning clothes pin legs on various colored horse shapes)

Played with different types of feathers

Walked like Chickens and Ducks

Made Patterns out of Animal Tracks

Painted our own farm scene on carboard then built on it with blocks and play animals

Sorted out which animals live on the farm and which don't

Deviled Eggs and Pigs in a Blanket

Drop the Feather Game

The hit of the week however was the SONGS! We learned Old MacDonald had a Farm, B-I-N-G-O and the Farmer in the Dell. The Chicken Dance was also a HUGE hit! Daily requests for singing time almost first thing every morning!

Drop the feather, also provided great opportunity for feeling different TYPES of feathers.

The Chicken Dance

Even the little ones love circle time!

Working on our scarecrow

Painting our farm.

Other fun things you could do at home to reinforce what we learned at school:

*Have your child dictate a "cow tale" or a "horse tale" to you. Have them tell a story about a cow or a horse and write it on a cow or a horse shape. Verbal and creative thinking skills will be reinforced with this project!
*Sorting seeds: Do you have seeds leftover from the garden or flower beds? Mix them together and let your child sort through them with tweezers. Have them sort them by size, shape, color or type into muffin tins or another divided container. This helps develop great pre-math skills.

*Clop, Clop: Provide different types of blocks and a plank of wood. Let them experiment to find the best "clopping" sound.

*Pig tails: Make piggies tails out of pipe cleaners by shaping around a pencil.

*Paper Plate Pigs: Make pig masks from paper plates, use small paper cups or section of TP tubes for snouts.

*Pretty in Pink: Let the kids mix red and white paint with their fingers to make pink and then paint with it.

September 21st - 25th, The Senses

2009-10-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

C is for Can't seem to stay Caught up! In all seriousness...welcome back! Sorry for the absence. We've been so busy having fun here there's been no time left over for blogging!

This week we spent time learning about our senses. Kristy was on vacation most of this week so Misty spent the week helping us learn all about our hearing, sight and taste. Below you can see us experimenting with glass jars and the different sounds they make when they are filled with different amounts of water.

Mom and Dad: Kids at this age love to show you that they are noticing the world around them and using their quickly developing senses. Do you notice that your kids will hear the dog bark or the train whistle that you have learned to tune out? Encourage your children to listen for and identify different sounds they are interested in. Encourage them to try different types of flavors (sweet, salty, sour). Provide "tactile" objects and materials for them to play with: sand or salt for finger drawing, egg cartons and different type of material for walking on, play dough and finger paint made out of various materials. (I have some great "recipes" I'll try to get posted on here!)

B is for our Bodies, Sept 14 - 18

2009-09-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

This week we learned about our Bodies and some of the senses we have. We learned that we all look different and can change the way we look by dressing differently too! We learned about our sense of touch and experimented with the sensations of ice and cloth and salt drawing. (If you want to do this at home, take table salt, sand or some other type of sensory material and let the kids draw pictures in it with their fingers. You can make this more interesting by adding dry tempura paint powder and calling it bee pollen [yellow], fairy dust, or something else creative).
We also learned about our sense of smell, charting which smells different class members liked.

We used Jello to create "scratch and sniff" pictures. Although the smell didn't last long enough to show our moms and dads...it was sure fun for us! (Moms - try using different objects for paintbrushes. Today we used Q-tips! Talk about easy clean up ;)

A is for Apple, Sept 8 -11

2009-09-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

This week we learned all about the letter A and had our own little "apple fest" to go along with it. We had a great time measuring how many "apples" tall everyone was, charting the results, making apple pigs and doing a variety of apple art projects.

Want to try this cool foil project at home? Take aluminum foil and "paint" it with Elmer's glue and food coloring mixed together to your liking. Let it dry overnight. As it dries it will take on this cool shiny appearance that looks more milky when you first paint it. For this project we cut it into little squares and let the kid glue it onto apple shapes, but there are SO many things you could do with it with a little imagination.

Welcome to School, August 31 - September 4

2009-09-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

What a fun first week! We spent the week getting used to the "circle time" again and our routines.

We learned all about Chester's first day of school in "The Kissing Hand" and made our own to help us remember how much our mommies and daddies love us when we are missing them at school.

We also worked on our ABC song and learned a new way to sing it! Preschool is so much fun!

We give Thanks for a Great Day!

2008-11-25T16:43:00.000-08:00

What a fun day! For "circle time" we built a Mayflower Ship and a teepee.

The kids chose whether to be Pilgrims or Indians and then we acted out the story of the first Thanksgiving. We "Row Row Rowed our Boat" and did an Indian Dance with drums.

We also got to add to the Thankful Tree all the things we are Thankful for.

For lunch we had a full blown feast! Kristy cooked her first ever turkey on her own! It was a little on the crispy side, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

November's Schedule

2008-11-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

This month we have had so much fun talking about the ocean, the beach and many of the ocean animals. We've also been talking about Fall and of course...Thanksgiving! Tomorrow is our big "Feast and Play" day with a great Turkey Meal on the menu and plenty of games for the kids. I'm so excited about this site and hope it will be enjoyable and helpful to you. December's schedule will be coming SOON, along with pictures from our feast day! Thanks for looking!