With the cold weather upon us, the juniors have been hard at work learning how to make winter toques for charity. Taught by Katie on Thursday afternoons, the kids have learned how to make hats on circular looms and have been practicing their skills throughout the week with all the leaders.

The kids have become natural loomers and have requested to do it almost every chance they can get. With colourful looms and yarns to choose from, it has been a success with the juniors! They have been practicing their patience, fine motor skills, how to share and even how to teach others during this activity. It has become a beautiful sight to see the juniors helping each other finish the hats and understand why we are donating them to other people.

Some of the kids were so excited to loom today that they wanted to have a discussion about where to get the materials we use for this project. So if any of the juniors ask where to get the looms from, they can be found at Michaels and they come with easy to follow instructions to start making beautiful hats and scarfs for the winter time.

Hi all,

I hope everyone's recovered from this past weekend's Halloween complete sugar OVERLOAD!

The weather definitely seemed to be in our favour Saturday night, it was a perfect evening for trick or treating.

To help celebrate this past week, I did a spider web craft with the kids that also tested their fine motor skills. I pre-punched out holes in the rim of a paper plate and cut a large hole in the centre of the plate. It was the kids' job to string through yarn through the hole punches of the plate to try to emulate a spider's web. After a couple demos for them to see how it was supposed to be done, they had practically no problems. There isn't a web without a spider so we finished off the activity with Pom-Pom spiders.

Check out our finished products below, they're very cool!

Sara

One of my favourite aspects about working at Junior OSC is appreciating how creative the young ones are. Whether this is during an art activity or during free play, the kids amaze me with what they come up with and create. Last Friday, Pearlena lead an art activity where the kids were able to draw whatever they wanted on some ceramic mugs. I saw so many creations ranging from poke-a-dot designs to butterflies. One child even drew “Shopkinz” on her mug (Shopkinz are these cute and small grocery-themed characters). The mugs turned out beautifully and they will be great to use for hot chocolate as the weather gets colder. Later that day, I also saw some children drawing Shopkinz on paper. One child put together a book with the different Shopkinz on each page while another cut the drawings out and put them in a paper envelope. It was great to see the kids take inspiration from these small figurines and then creating their own projects. Overall, it was a great afternoon! :)