Thanksgiving Week Camp Registration Is Open!

I am so excited to announce the launch of a new website to make signing up for camps a breeze!  Check it out by clicking the "Home" button above or heading over to http://www.initiatelearning.net

Thanksgiving break is headed our way and I'm excited to announce 2 new camps and a repeat of a favorite!
Wednesday, November 21, 9am-noon MakerSpace
Wednesday, November 21, 1pm-4pm Robotics EdScratch 1
Friday, November 23, 9am-noon Robotics EdScratch 2

Here are the basics:

MakerSpace: Do you have a builder, crafter, or tinker-er that loves creating things? Imagine the cardboard challenge on hyperdrive and that’s what this three-hour camp is about. Makerspace is the creation of robots, cars, toys, and battery powered awesome. We will learn to connect basic motors to wheels, propellers, and gears onto student’s invented creations (made with recycled materials). We’ll learn about circuits and paper/cardboard crafting. Students will be bringing these inventions home to explore more and show you the amazing things they can immediately apply in their own home tinkering time. Students will need to bring cleaned recycled materials to class, no glass items please.

EdScratch 1 (Robot Programming): Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 1. Whether you’ve programmed before or not, this is a great starting place for students to learn to program robots. We’ll start with some robot basics, including teaching Edison to play soccer and move into introducing the EdScratch programming language. Building your first program in EdScratch is easy! Just drag and drop the blocks you want together. EdScratch is much more complicated than EdBlocks, however, so expect to challenge your brain to make Edison accomplish even more than what was possible in Miss Amanda’s summer camp series. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

EdScratch 2 (Robot Programming): Ready to dive in and really get programming your own robot? Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 2. Using the vertical block-based visual programming language based on Scratch we’ll explore computational thinking, the input-process-output cycle and the parameters of inputs and outputs on Edison, grouping blocks (writing programming for Edison to do two things at once), bugs and debugging syntax and logical errors. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

I can't wait to work with your kiddos!  Only 6 spots per class! Sign Up HERE!

Tot School Halloween 2018

We had so much fun this morning for Halloween!  It was messy and exciting all day long!  We learned the letter C and painted pumpkins!

 We also explored mini pumpkins and gourds in our rice sensory table (how many cups of rice did you vacuum up today?  I think I'm at 9 and counting....). We made footprint ghosts and handprint spiders as well.  We played all sorts of dress ups and listened to some fun Halloween music.  Happy Halloween everyone! 

Thanksgiving Camps

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to announce Thanksgiving week camps!  There will be morning and afternoon camps on Wednesday and a morning camp on Friday.  Details and registration will be released and open on November 1st!

Tot School - Doctors

We had such a blast today talking about Doctors and the letter H.  We had out the baby dolls and 300 bandaids to start.  I love having young kids play with bandaids.  The fine motor skills required to open the package and put the sticky bandaid on something successfully is amazingly difficult.  Plus, they have a ton of fun doing it!

 We had a pretend doctor visit and made charts of how tall everyone is (not exactly accurate, if you're wondering).

 We also added our weight to the doctor chart (also, not accurate, but close). 

 We had our first formal writing activity today as we practiced using pencils to trace the letter H.  We learned the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and had it playing on loop for about an hour for background noise.  It was fun to listen to them sing along from time to time. 

Tot School - Bubbles, Balloons, Blocks!

Usually our Bubbles day is held outside, but with the chilly weather and snow we ended up inside and expanding it to Bubbles, Balloons, and Blocks.  I also put together our October sensory bin of orange colored dry rice, plastic butter knives, Halloween erasers, and pumpkin buckets.

 I had another sensory bin set up in my kitchen.  I ran some hot soapy water and scooped off the top layer of bubbles for the kids to play with in the sensory bin.  It made for a nice scrubbing of the sensory bin - now it can say inside all winter.

We did turn on the bubble machine a few times in the basement.  It was convenient that I planned to shampoo the carpets later this week - the timing is wonderful :).  I don't have any great pictures of the balloons.  We had 50 balloons over by the sofa that were used to kick and catch and throw all around.  I wrote the letter B on them and we sang our song "This is the sound that B can make /b//b//b/, /b//b//b/, This is the sound that B can make in words like Bubble and Balloon" (Mulberry bush tune). 

Tot School - Safety

Wow! We had so much fun this morning in tot school.  We talked all about safety and made some super fun fire trucks out of cardboard boxes and paper plates.  The kids worked really hard on them and were a bit sad to wait for them to dry. 

 We played with playdough and rode bicycles and pushed each other on the swing as well. 

 We learned the letter S - it was so cute having them practice the S sound :). 

Check out that super cute smile!  They loved the fire trucks.

Tot School - Sept 26 - Nursery Rhymes

We talked about nursery rhymes today in tot school.  I would love for the kids to start learning them, so I sing them over and over whenever I can.  Today, one of my kiddos told me, "Miss Amanda, you already sang that one." in a very exasperated voice.  Hahaha!  It was quite funny to me.  We started the day with a little crayon drawing and water color resist painting.  Eeks - which reminds me that their art is still hanging on the fence to dry.  I best scamper back there and gather their books before they get ruined.

 We also played with bubbles and the knock over the cans game from back to school night.  We went inside for a little bit today and mostly played with the musical instruments (as loudly as possible it seemed), Duplos, and wooden Pattern Blocks.  Then we headed back outside to enjoy the sunshine.