Wednesday, January 21, 2015

It’s about Stones and Outdoors

Our local StrongStart centres are attempting to take our families outside more.  We have decided to close our centres one day a month and hold our programs outside.  Today was the day.
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I decided that my centre would go to the beach.  There isn’t much at the beach, this time of year, except stones so I planned around them.
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The first activity was to build a rock tower.  How many rocks are in your tower?
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            Finding the right rocks and balancing them took a lot of effort. 
               Our towers weren’t too high but we made a lot of attempts.

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A second activity was to create a picture using stones, driftwood, seaweed
                                             and sand.
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      A couple of families worked a long time with their pieces of art.
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Making their own frame with stones then standing the driftwood upright
                          with decorations hanging off.

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                 A third activity was a stone scavenger hunt. 
The idea is to search the beach for rocks that are similar to the pictures.
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This was a great activity searching and finding unique rocks.  The children love collecting rocks and it helped them look a little closer.  I wish I would have
                       brought some magnifying glasses.
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They found stones to match all of the pictures except a stone shaped like
                                    a letter of the alphabet.

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       Another activity, a favourite and easy to set up, was painting stones.

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Using paint chip cards to find stones that are the same colour was our
                              final stone-focused activity.

A few non-stone activities.
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Using tools from the classroom, kitchen and homemade we experimented
                        to see what marks they would create.
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The cookie cutters worked really well.  I’ll have to remember to bring
                        more for our next visit to the beach.

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              Painting on logs with water was another favourite.
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Also going to get more water and taking some time to explore was just as
                                            much fun.

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I brought a tent to play in as well as a spot to warm up if the wind picked up. 
                 It turned out to be a spot to listen to stories.
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         And of course we had snack with hot chocolate and apple cider.
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One comment I heard several parents say was that they don’t usually think about coming to the beach in the winter time.  Today’s outing may change their minds.