Our Lamb, Our Saviour

Today we made a lamb. It is to help remind us of our Savior Christ Jesus. For He was our eternal Lamb sacrificed for our sins. Through Him, a new covenant was born. With this being the month we celebrate Easter, I thought I would have the influence of Jesus to start the month out with. We will be doing activities that involves Easter eggs and bunnies, but there will be a strong influence of the gift given to us by Jesus' sacrifice.

Jesus Our Lamb

What you will need:

1 toilet paper roll
white glue
1 long white pipe cleaner cut in half
lots of cotton balls
white and blue construction paper or foam sheets
Newspaper
Masking Tape

1. Start first with stuffing the toilet paper roll with the newspaper. 
2. Cut two round circles that will fit to either side of the toilet paper roll from the white foam/construction paper.
3. Use the glue to mount the white circles to the toilet paper roll.
4. Next cut an egg shape, slightly larger than the circles, from the white foam.construction paper for the sheep's head.
5. Cut two smaller ovals from the white foam/construction paper for the ears.
6. Cut two small circles from the blue foam/construction paper for the sheep's eyes.
7. Have your child assemble the various shapes for the sheep's head.
8. Glue the head to one end of the toilet paper roll.
9. Use the tape to mount the sheep's legs (pipe cleaners) to the bottom of the toilet paper roll.
10. Have your child generously glue the cotton balls to completely cover the entire roll and rump of the the sheep. 

As you can see from our pictures, our sheep turned out very cute. It took about 15 minutes for us to complete this cutie. Have fun with it. It is OK if the face comes out distorted and if it looks like the lamb received a bad hair cut. My children had fun with this. Cotton balls make a great sensory item too.

Recaps of Our Week

We have been learning about caterpillars and butterflies this week. So most of our crafts have been focused around them.We made a crazy caterpillar by gluing tissue paper on egg holders. The project itself was pretty crazy.

 We also continues our experiments with how celery gets water. The children found it interesting that celery drank water through straws like objects (the vascular tubes). It was cute to hear one say, at snack time one day, how the "straws" were very tasty. The comment made me chuckle.

 Our seeds began growing in strength. We now have one pot with 6 new plants. They are almost 4 inches and ready to be transplanted in the ground soon. They will make beautiful sunflowers.

 This bean sprout turned out to be our biggest and most grown plant to have grown from all our seeds. We had to discontinue this experiment because the seeds that did not grow well began rotting thus infecting the other good growth ones too.

In the coming weeks, we will be doing our pallet gardening. We will have pictures of this for you to see. We are excited to begin it and see the new plant growth that comes from it. I think it will be nice to have green surrounding the deck. 

If you are seeking a daycare with quality care for your child and lots of fun projects and learning, please consider Faith Foundations Family Child Care. 

Up Coming Events

Here are some activities we have coming up...

Pallet Gardening

I am not sure if you have heard about this before, but this is a tidy way to garden. We will be seeking potting or clean fill soil to go inside the pallets soon. This will keep your weeds and seeds neatly placed in a straight line. We will be doing one pallet with just corn. Another will have squash and pumpkin. One will have our peas, beans and strawberries. One will be strictly dedicated to just herbs and I would like another to have a grape bush or two with some leafy greens. All will have a variety of marigolds intertwined. Somewhere in thsi mix I hope to get some pepper and tomato plants. We'll see.

Egg Shell Planting

Before we begin the pallet gardening, we will be doing our egg shell planting. This will have flower seeds and some of vegetable plants we plan on planting. We would like for them get a head start before they go outside.

Butterfly Hatching

We are going to watch a caterpillar go through it's stages. This will be an exciting thing to experience. Nothing like watching one eventually grow into a beautiful butterfly and let it go outside. This, I believe will be a magical moment for our kids. Parents be prepared to experience the fleeting moment of seeing an identical butterfly and having it assumed to be the one we let go.

Insectigations

We will be working on finding, identifying and classifying different garden insects. The older children will be keeping drawing journals to document what they are observing.

FIELD TRIP EVENT:

We are planning a field trip one of the days between April 14th to the 18th to go to the Children's Museum of Richmond. They have a lot of fund activities happening during that week.

FUNDRAISING EVENT:

We are investigating several fund raising ideas to help offset the cost of field trips on the parents. More to come with this.

BOXTOPS:

We do collect these so if you are not contributing these to another function, we would love to take them off your hands.

A Day at Faith Foundations Family Child Care

We painted the celery stock to make roses.

Our experiment to see how plants drink water.

Our celery roses. This was very fun to do with the stock.

We started growing these last week. We are now on day 8 and have 3 sun flowers growing.

We are learning about animals that eat plants. So we read the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar and made one using pom poms, glue dots, google eyes, a clothes pin and a pipe cleaner. 

We have been keeping a drawing journal of these little guys growing. It has been fun to see just how much they grow in such a short time.

Busy Busy Busy

What a busy afternoon with my little bit. We made a crazy caterpillar to remind us about the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then we did a science experiment with celery and food coloring to see how a plant drinks. Then we took the end of the celery and painted it to make roses. Then they wrote (colored) what they observed with the bean seed growth.

Picture soon to come

Recycle Bird Feeder

It is so hard to get into Spring when you still have snow and the temperatures are still VERY cold. But we are trying to get ready nonetheless. In our preparations, we made toilet paper roll bird feeders. This is a fun (sometimes messy) and easy craft to do with your children.

What you need:

1 Toilet Paper Roll (cleaned off)

2 Tablespoons of Creamy Peanut Butter

1/2 Cup of Bird Feed

12 Inches of Yarn or String

1) Have your child use a blunt knife to spread the peanut butter on the toilet paper roll.

2) Place the seed on a plate and have the child roll or gently press the seed to the peanut butter covered roll.

3) Thread the string through the tube and knot it tightly at the ends.

That's it. It is fun and simple to do. The kids enjoyed making it and were looking outside to see if any birds found it yet.

Seed Journals

Yesterday we started some bean seeds. We placed a paper towel in a ziploc baggie with 7 seeds and a bit of water. We even dissected a seed to see the different parts. Each day we are observing any changes in the seeds. Today we observed they were getting bigger from what they were yesterday. Some of the black shell part of the seeds were breaking open and you could see the two halves of the seed (we learned it's a dicot). Here's our seeds on days 2.

SPRING, SPRING, SPRING!!!

There's a bit of snow on the ground and to be honest still cold. We didn't even break 40 degrees today. But we have spring on our minds. So given that, we did some neat Spring-minded activities. Each one will have it's own post. We made something for the outdoor creatures and then something to enjoy come warmer weather. So look forward to these next two posts with pictures. In the mean time, please enjoy the pictures of yesterday's activities.

Holy Trinity Shamrock Mobiles

Holy Trinity Shamrock Mobiles

We made these yesterday. It was an interesting endeavor as there seemed to be a lot of prep work involved. It is safe to say, it took the kids all of 5 minutes to decorate their shamrocks and 15 minutes for my to assemble them. I suggest you get older children to help out with this project if you have them on hand (glad I have 2). Oh and you can make this for any occasion, you just have to change up the theme. And this cost me $7 to make 3 of them.

While we made these, I discussed with the children about the Holy Trinity. We also talked about God's promises and how luck is a blessing from God. 

So here's what you will need:

24   3" shamrocks

24   1' pieces of string or yarn

2     1' green pipe cleaners

1     Pair of scissors

1     Single punch hole puncher

8     Small bells

1     Small square foam sheet

Many   Small variously shaped, self-adhesive shamrock stickers

Here what you do:

1. Cut the pipe cleaner in half to make 4 equal parts.

2. Twist the pipe cleaner to make a ring.

3. Line the strings up evenly and tie them to the pipe cleaner ring.

4. Trace a large circle on the square foam and then trace a smaller circle inside the larger circle. Your ring should be at least wide. The larger circle was about 6" in diameter and the inner was about 4.5" in diameter.

5. Punch 8 evenly spaced holes into the foam ring. 

6. String the yarn through the holes. Loop the string around and go through the same hole again.

7. Carefully thread the bells on. I had to use a toothpick to help me thread it through. It was an interesting trick. 

8. Punch a hole in the 3" shamrocks. Let the children decorate them with the shamrock stickers. 

9. Tie the large shamrocks to the strings at different heights. Your project is finished. Now you can hang it up.

Some of the children may be able to help with the other steps. This project turned out to be a whole lot of fun. We talked about what were blessings and it seemed to be a productive activity. We also talked about St. Patrick. You can adapt your own ideas to this. It really is a great opportunity to incorporate Christ and history into this one activity. 

Our Playroom Facelift

So I opened things up a bit. It opens the floor space up a bit. I was able to create more shelf space too. Now everything is neatly organized. I have all our craft items in the closet and all the daycare items in the playroom. I can't wait for the kids to get in there to play. If you are interested in a tour and looking for quality daycare, please consider contacting me at 804-318-1451. You can also email me at bitsyhomeschoolgroup@gmail.com.

Sensory Ideas for at Home

So today, with the help of my daughter and our little bit, we made a few sensory items. Using common, everyday items, we made a few gel packs and a couple of colorful bottles. In celebration of St. Patrick's Day (even though my family personally has no Irish in us), one bottle and one baggie with shamrocks. The others will follow our story line in a few weeks.

The ziploc baggies consist of 1 cup of hair gel and a bit of gel food coloring. I threw in a few foam items and confetti to give the kids something to look at. The bottles are every day bottles with water, glitter and foam pieces in it. I used a glue gun to seal the bottles and packaging tape to seal the baggies. It was a big hit for the littles. I hope you enjoy the ideas. You can get the ziplocs, gel, and the tape from the dollar tree. The glue gun can be purchased at Walmart at an affordable amount. In total the cost to make one sensory item is less than $1.

Snow Day Again!!!

Having a problem finding a place for your school aged child to go while you work? I am able to take up to 3 additional school age children. Our rates are $25/day for school age children who have the days off from school. Meals and activities are included.

Lunch Time is Fun Time

Here at Faith Foundations, we strive to provide a well balanced diet for our children. We strongly believe a balanced diet allows for the proper growth of your child's brain. Eating time, whether it is breakfast, lunch or one of the two snacks we offer, is fun. It is the moment we take to sit down together and talk. We say grace as a group. We interact and engage in conversation. We demonstrate to your child proper table manners. The most important is we take the time to sit and spend with your child. Table time is an important learning time.

If your child has a special dietary restriction or allergy, we are able to accommodate their need within reason. Meals are included in our fees and we will accommodate your child's need as best as possible.

Here it is!!!

This is our new name and logo. I am certain this will evolve to be something bigger and better, but for right now, we like this one.