Though it's only February, we've been lucky to be able to enjoy some milder, more spring-like weather. With that in mind, as well as being over winter myself, I decided to do a quick and messy activity to get the kids excited for spring! Bowtie pasta butterfly paintings. We began by using our hot glue gun skills to carefully glue our bow tie pastas to our paper, then got right into designing and painting our 'spring scene.' Most of the kids painted their butterflies with bright colours accompanied by a classic nature scene - grass, sun shining, flowers or trees. A couple of the kids got really creative though; Isaac used his pasta shells to form a tree as opposed to using them for butterflies which looked super cool! Lucy used her pasta shells as frets of a guitar which I thought was so outside the box - very impressed! 

After all this talk of milder weather, with spring also comes RAIN, lots and lots of rain! Keep in mind that even if it's sprinkling outside, we may still take the kids outside to the playground to run around and let off steam, so make sure your child has appropriate rain gear! Rainboots, raincoat, extra socks (this one is key), even mittens if you so choose.


Sara E

Hi Families,

It was just last weekend where many of us celebrated Valentine's Day and so, many of our kids handed out cards at school and out of school care! At first thought, Valentine's Day seems like a day to celebrate the romantic type of love, but one particular little girl at our program reminded me that it's about all sorts of love. She had noticed that some of the kids' Valentine's mailboxes were emptier than others, so she and Gemma decided that they were going to spend the afternoon trying to make cards for everyone at out of school care to make sure that everyone went home with something.

We also talked about what Valentine's Day meant to a group of kids who I ran an art with last Wednesday. I asked them if they knew what the holiday was for, just expecting my question to be a quick segway into our activity, but they actually spent several minutes talking about it. They were very aware that Valentine's Day is a time to not only write to a crush, but also to show your friends, teachers, parents and siblings how much you appreciate their love, friendship or their "friend love" for one another.

Til next time!

Sara E

Cupcakes Yum!

Bags, bags and more bags

Lily working hard on those cards

For the past couple weeks we’ve introduced yoga as a new activity here at junior osc. We had Stuart run this activity on Friday and with all the kids signing up we had a great turn out for the class. To set the yoga atmosphere we had the lights dimmed and relaxing music playing in the background. Before the kids could enter our room of zen there were two rules they had to abide by:

1) No Shoes
2) No Yelling

Stu gathered everyone in a circle and started with breathing exercises to calm the room, this helped us focus on rule #2. Next, he introduced a handful of moves to the kids. The most common pose’s taught were the airplane, downward dog and the tree stance which was the most popular pose. After showing them our poses and once the kids got comfortable they were free to create their own moves. We had Emily lying on her stomach while grabbing her ankles with her back arched; she called it the bow pose. This became a fun and creative part of our activity as many unique yoga poses began to emerge. After all the fun ended we had many sweaty faces with some still practicing what they had learned. We continue to encourage healthy lifestyles through physical activity and I recommend everyone to give yoga a try.


Namaste,
Corey

Gorgeous darling, work it!

Couldn’t we all use one? Well the kids sure got one this week. Nails and hair gel have always been a favourite with our kids, but we’ve stepped up our salon game! We’ve recently added hair chalk to our list of services, and better yet – it’s free (ha-ha)! All the kids were rocking the best styles this afternoon, with everything from rainbow nails to rainbow hair. Today’s salon brought out a whole bunch of characters from our kids; one decided they were going to have fire hair, another was a mermaid, and a third became a hair and nail model.








Ombré

What really took off this afternoon, and has been in style for a while, was the ombré. Our early techniques involved only three to four colours, as ombré is quite a difficult technique to master, but by the end of the day we had seven coloured rainbows going every which way possible. Please remember to wash out with shampoo and condition before getting into those white bed sheets!

For art last week, I chose to do an activity which was a throwback to my childhood. I wasn't quite sure what the name was so I decided the best name for it would be "picture sketch." The reason I called it this was that all the children started with an image glued onto a large blank sheet of paper and then had to fill in the rest of the paper with their imaginations.




We began the activity by choosing which image we liked best; there was everything from a hamburger to a purse, even half a person! The kids quite enjoyed getting to choose a silly picture, some even chose two. Before we continued I explained to the kids the difference between sketching lightly and drawing long dark lines. We discussed how sketching is not only easier to erase, but it's also easier to draw hard shapes like circles.















After I did my demonstration, the kids were let loose and the pictures that they came up with were simply amazing. We had a winter scene with a gondola, a child telling stories, a person doing a one-handed handstand and even a delicious dinner platter. Check out the artistic works of the junior kids below.