• Our afternoon snacks are made from scratch each day by 2 staff members. This way, we enjoy heartier, healthier, tastier snacks!
• We make our own bread for breakfast. That's why the slices don't look perfectly uniform!
• We keep a stash of emergency supplies to last our program up to 72 hours in the event of a disaster.
• Many of our staff also work in West Richmond's Preschool programs! Dustin, Emmett and Hillwood work in the Four Hour Class and Karen runs a Time for Twos class.
• We've gone digital to save paper! Our monthly calendar of snacks and activities can be found here!

Cheers,
Dustin

With all the leaves changing colour so beautifully, I was inspired to do an extra colourful art project last week. The children were asked to draw bright and vibrant pictures using pastels. The surprise afterwards was the fact that each of them would paint over their creation with a light coat of watercolour paint. The paint helps blend and accent the colours, and really makes the picture jump off the page. I was impressed with the creations. Art auction anyone?

Malia drawing a barn on a hill.

All the children hard at work.

Cara's house.

Athena's house.

Grace C's flowers and birds.

Jeremy lives on a yellow submarine.

Two Thursdays ago, the baking gang got together for our activity. This time, we made chocolate cupcakes. Just mention the word "chocolate" and the children can’t wait to help. The boys in the group were so eager to help that they offered to count out our cupcake wrappers and put them into the trays while the girls got started on the dry ingredients.


The most sought-after job is ALWAYS cracking the eggs. We have lots of excellent egg crackers, by the way. We even have children who will show and help others who don’t yet have the skills to crack eggs.

In the final steps, we combined the wet and dry ingredients for our chocolate batter. After the batter was in the trays, I slipped some chocolate chips into the cupcakes for our little bakers to enjoy a nice surprise.


With nice gooey chocolate in the fresh cupcakes, we had enough for each child to take home two - one for them and one for someone special!

Hopefully, they shared…
Kat

Last Friday, in celebration of Halloween, we hosted a small zombie party. We had a face painting booth and "converted" the little ones into baby zombies. We also baked witches' fingers and toes, intestines, and other creations for our mini zombies to munch on and enjoy. This project was aimed at challenging the children's creativity as well as their socialisation and fine motor skills.


"Blood" (otherwise known as red fruit punch) was also served, much to the children's delight. We also played zombie games, such as Night of the Undead, which helped foster social skills and encouraged teamwork and cooperation.


All in all, we had a dandy gathering. Happy Halloween!

Cheers!
The Kennelee Club (Gemma & Monica)

Last Tuesday, with the weather cooperating, we were able to take children from the Junior and Senior Programs to The Village Garden Pumpkin Patch. We wanted to take the children to a real farm, where they could experience first-hand where the pumpkins come from. The children from Junior OSC were very excited, especially after finding out that they were going with the Senior OSC children.

We were all geared up in our boots and jackets, and holding our bags (for our pumpkins), waiting for the OSC bus to arrive. When the bus arrived, we loaded up the bus and off we went. The leaders thought it would be fun if we paired the older children and the younger children in a buddy-system.

At the pumpkin patch, Farmer Rick talked to the children about how pumpkins grow, from seeds to blossoms, and finally to the harvest of the pumpkins. He showed us photographs of the pumpkins growing at different times. After the talk, we were able to explore the pumpkin patch. Due to perfect timing, we were able to have the patch almost to ourselves.

It was a fun and wonderful experience for the children in both programs.