Snow Day

Nothing beats that first snowy day of the year: the crunch of snow underneath your boots, the taste of snowflakes. Did you know that a snowy day is just about perfect for your children to enjoy time in their outdoor classroom? Nancy Fusco Castaldo, author of The Little Hands Nature Book, has some fantastic suggestions for winter fun. For example, take your kids outside to your outdoor classroom. As you begin walking, ask them to look around the path. What is different in the winter than in summer? How do the seasons change where you live? Then, have a winter scavenger hunt: “Look for things such as a bush with red berries, a pinecone, a bird, an icicle, a fir tree, animal tracks, and a squirrel. Look for something beautiful” (p.136).

Another fun game is called “snowflake snooping.” All you need for this game is a dark piece of fabric or paper (allow it to chill outside for a few minutes) and a hand lens (or, just borrow a magnifier from your nature center). First, collect falling snow on the fabric or paper. Then examine the snowflakes with your hand lens. Are they all the same? Look at all the different shapes. How many sides does each snowflake have? Watch the snowflakes melt. How do their shapes change?

Finally, you could also mix some water and food coloring, pour it into a spray bottle, and encourage the children to “color” the snow! Not only is this fun, but you could also share a conversation with the children about mixing colors and creating new hues.

Have fun, and enjoying kicking up some snow! I think I’m going to build a snowman now….

Happy New Year!

Can you believe that it is already 2011? Time sure does fly by. I hope you had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve celebration. Between singing “Auld Lang Syne” and toasting with my family to 2011, I started thinking about my New Year resolutions. When I got back to work this week, I asked my pals at The Adventurous Child what our collective resolutions ought to be. Here is what we came up with:

10. Learn more about child development
9. Interview a local professor about early childhood education
8. Research how basic elements such as sand can be educational
7. Be prepared with a list of fun winter activities for the next snowy day
6. Come up with a list of springtime activities
5. Make a compost pile
4. Learn how to go “green” in our outdoor classroom
3. Read one book every month for “fun” in our literacy gazebo
2. Learn about “whole language”
1. Have fun!!!

As I continue to write these entries, hopefully you will see some of my resolutions come to life in the blog. If not… well, please remind me!

What are your resolutions for 2011? This could be a great conversation to share with your children!

Happy Holidays!

December is the month for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza. As we spend time with our nearest and dearest, we hope that you have a wonderful holiday season full of friends, family, and good cheer. Thank you so much for allowing The Adventurous Child and The Outdoor Preschool to be a part of your lives this year. We look forward to seeing you in 2011!

Experiences & Development

Relationships are important. Whether they are between friends, co-workers, or children and their care providers, you must nurture those relationships for them to grow.

Of course, there are also figurative relationships, such as the one between experiences and development:

The adults in a child’s life play a critical role in determining what types of experiences are made available to the child and, consequently, in determining the course of development. (Children and Families, Fall 2009, p. 34)

That means you! You have the awesome opportunity of deciding what your children get to play with, learn, and observe every day.

At The Adventurous Child, we want to help you provide fun and educational experiences for your children that will assist them in meeting and surpassing developmental milestones. Whether you want them to learn how to recognize different sounds, develop an appreciation for reading, or improve their balance and coordination, we are devoted to working with you to meet those needs.

What kind of experiences are you making available to your children? Whatever they may be, I hope that reading our blog will give you a better idea of some of your options. Thanks for stopping by – we look forward to hearing from you!

Hiking

Early November is a great time to take your children for a hike. Whether you actually take them into the woods or around your playground, they will enjoy being outdoors during the seasonal transition. Now is the time to kick up some leaves and talk about the cooler temperatures. Ask them how the air feels on their skin, what colors they see, and what season follows autumn.

Some of the fun things you can do with children outdoors right now include*:
· Engaging them in discussions about animals and plants that are going through autumnal changes
· Ask them whether the lighting is different (this works especially well if you take them outside at the same time every day)
· Bring a notebook to use as a nature journal for written descriptions or pictures
· Bring a recorder to capture the sounds of the day
· Bring several baggies and a black permanent marker to give your children practice with sorting. Collect seeds, nuts, pinecones, rocks, and leaves and place them in the labeled bags.


At the end of your hike, whether it lasts 15 minutes or an hour, you can sit down at your literacy gazebo and write and draw about your experiences. Children will be excited to talk about everything they saw, smelled, felt, and heard… while tasting some nice apple cider (our favorite autumn treat).

* (Thanks to Renee Carver for these fantastic tips!)

Who is TAC?

Recently it occurred to us that as much as you know about The Adventurous Child’s products and equipment, you may not know a whole lot about us. We’d like to spend today sharing a little bit about ourselves and our company.


Our focus is to provide outdoor playground equipment that meet each state’s Early Learning Standards and to provide children with fun environments that feature environmentally-friendly recycled plastic. Our passion is to help create outdoor classrooms that are learning places, just like the indoors—full of fun, free play and the ability to meet the state’s current Early Learning Standards.

As an outdoor classroom and outdoor play equipment company, our number one core value is to make people happy — our customers, our staff and anyone with whom we come in contact. Secondly, everyone at The Adventurous Child is part of the same team — since 1986 we have been working together to support each other so we can effectively support our customers. Thirdly, we strive for continuous improvement, both of ourselves and our children's outdoor playground equipment designs, products, service and customer relationships.

We are proud and excited to be celebrating our 24th anniversary this year. The customer thank you notes, testimonials and referrals for the last 24 years tell me that our customers are grateful for our values. We hope you enjoy stopping by my blog and by Steph’s blog. Feel free to shoot us a message! We really appreciate receiving feedback, and we’d love to answer any of your questions.

ASSESSMENT IS… INTEGRATIVE (Part 2 of 2)

Until approximately age 6, children are concrete learners rather than abstract learners. Engaging them in their senses – hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching – is the most effective way for them to learn. Young children require tangible methods for really learning phenomena.

For example, weather is a great topic to teach young children. But why not teach it to them outside? By only discussing the phenomena of weather indoors, children are being denied opportunities to truly experience nature’s mercurial ways. Reading a book or watching a movie clip is incomparable to taking them outside during a light rain shower, when they can see the clear drops, feel their wetness, taste the water, smell them, and hear their pitter-patter against the ground.

A multidisciplinary approach to learning is imperative for expanding children’s learning. Why not integrate learning, discovery, delight, and determination with the Weather Station Learning Center?

With the Weather Station Learning Center in your outdoor classroom, kids will:

· Measure water collected in the rain gauge
· Observe the weather vane to note the wind’s direction
· Using the barometer and temperature gauges, discern variation (whether they are reading the numbers or simply observing the change)
· Become capable of documenting weather at the weather weekly panel