Santa Claus visited Creative minds

A knock at the door and guess who it was? Santa Claus entered the room and all the children surrounded him with wonderful stories. One of the things that they told Santa was that they decorated the daycare :)  Santa sat down on the cozy red chair and told us that there are three things that we really need - LOVE - HAPPINESS and GOOD HEALTH.

Healso told us 3 magic stories:

1. Story of the magic watch - How can Santa deliver presents all over the world? Easy... he puts magic snow from the North Pole on his magic watch and it freezes up and time stops. 

2. How does Santa get into homes?  He’s got a magic key that opens all the locks all around the world.

3.How does he know who’s good? Santa's helpers give Santa a list with children that are good, caring and listeners.

After 3 wonderful stories, Santa stood up and said good-bye. Before he left he told us some magic words - "you must believe in order to receive"

Merry Christmas 

Not a box...

From the story “Not a box” by Antoinette Portis and “The Birthday Box” by Leslie Patricelli, the children came up with different ideas on what they can use a box for and make it “not a box”.

Some of there ideas were:  car, house, bedroom, bed, etc. They all decorated their boxes by using paint, sparkles, ribbons and other art materials. 

The children decided to make a house or a bedroom for their pets made out of clay. The children were risk-takers when they explored modeling with clay and thinkers when they decided how they will decorate their houses.  

3D Art

What does 3 D art mean?
3 dimensional art is something like a sculpture, clay art, metal works, pottery, beading or really anything that can be handled, touched or perceived to be 3 dimensional.”It is something that sticks out and can be seen from different sides (perspectives)”.

In connection to our decoration unit, the children decorated some 3 D Christmas trees and snowmen. They had a large variety of materials to choose from.

Emilie's table decoration

Emilie, her mother and her grandmother decorated one of the lunch tables. The children's observation about the decoration was: "I think Emilie likes purple, because the decorations are all purple" "It is very simple" " I love the marbles" 

Emilie and other children got a chance to sit at the table during lunch time. 

Thank you Emilie, for decorating the lunch table. It was lovely.

A decoration can tell us a story about a person. It can describe what that person feels or likes. 

Art - Contour line

On one of our art days, the children traced their bodies. They worked in partners and took turns tracing the contour of their bodies. The children were very careful to follow their outlines accurately. 

Afterwards, the children came up with ideas to decorate their own body shape. They used crayons, markers, paper and glitter. 

Art activity with Christy:

The children went to the forest to collect some leaves. They observed the lines (veins) of a leaf and followed the contour with their finger. Christy talked to them about the shape of their leaves and gave them 3 different choices. The children were able to paint the leaf and imprint it onto their pieces of paper, trace the contour of their leaf or to look at the leaf and try to draw its shape. Christy encouraged the children and opened conversation about their art – the children observed the lines(veins) that a leaf had, and talked about the  different shapes: heart, oval, round.