Great Kid Friendly Projects That Will Melt Moms Heart!

Mother's Day is coming up this Sunday and I hope all of you have tons of great ideas for your kids to do! I was looking through all of the great projects out there and found two projects that are sure to not only be fun with your kids but will melt their Moms heart! Making everyone happy while keeping to an affordable budget is key here. These projects look like so much fun, I can only imagine what it would be like in the classroom surrounded by smiling bubbly faces that all want to make something for their moms.

First project is with mason jars and hand prints. There are SO many projects that involve mason jars because they are affordable and cute! Plus there are so many ways to dress up these mason jars. Yarn, string, or ribbon tied around these jars bring them to life! Especially when flowers are put in them. You could definitely have your kids make fake flowers out of paper which would also spruce them up. Here is a step by step tutorial for beautiful flowers made with tissue paper: http://onelittleproject.com/how-to-make-tissue-paper-flowers/. Also if you like videos, TLC has a great video on this topic: http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/paper-flowers.htm.

Hand Print of Love

Even hand printed canvas bags are such a cute idea that any Mother would adore!

This mason jar has actual planting soil in it! It's definitely symbolic for the growth of life. Here would be a really neat idea to have your kids write a simple message on a piece of paper tied with yarn.

Of course the traditional fingerprint paintings are always kept in Mom's treasure box for years and years and are a great present for her!

Thumbprint of Love

Second project is with clay thumbprints! All you need is some simple materials: Clay, a roller, an oven, and the kids thumbprint! You can make a hole in it and tie it to a piece of yarn, string, or ribbon and make it into a bracelet or necklace. Infarrantly Creative blog has a great article on how to make clay thumbprints.

You can even get colored clay and make these out of hearts!

I want to thank all of the mothers and teachers out there who are helping kids make Mother's feel appreciated everywhere! From all of the dedication to the love and support that Mothers across the globe give everyday is one of the many reasons why they deserve projects that will absolutely warm their heart! I hope all of you have a great Mothers Day!

-T and Honor Roll Childcare Supply

Celebrate The Week Of The Young Child

Celebrating The Week of The Young Child involves more than the title suggests. It's a week of engaging everyone involved in the early stages of a young child's life! It's also a time to appreciate everyone involved in the learning process of the child. Children are the foundation to the next generations. The Week of The Young Child is such an important event and people must take a moment (or a week) to step back and realize what a difference they can make. Everywhere there are aspiring young children with hands and feet that want to play but also with minds that are capable of understanding and learning comprehensive materials at all hours of the day. Teachers and parents play the most vital role in early childhood education. In order to understand how to expand a child's cognitive level you must first understand how to enhance your environment, daycare, or home for the betterment of their early childhood education. Here is a bullet point list from Play and Child Development (J.L. Frost, S.C. Wortham) to ensure you are maximizing your ability to reach everyone's full potential every hour of the day!

- Ensure that toys and materials provided children are open ended and promote problem solving.
-Provide opportunities for children to engage in dramatic play that encourages cooperation and negotiation.
-Make available materials that encourage representation through construction.
-Provide art materials that encourage expression of ideas through art experiences.
-Offer simple games that include rules preschool children can follow.
-Provide learning activities that accentuate the senses and playfulness that can be incorporated into play.
-Engage children in simple games and cognitive activities that can later be played independently.
-Make sure that construction and art materials are available in both the indoor and outdoor play environments.
-Ensure dramatic play materials are available in both the indoor and outdoor play environments.

This list is just the foundational steps to creating an environment that children can learn the most from. Not only is this list important but also the characteristics of the teachers. In an article written by Colker she lists the twelve characteristics of effective early childhood teachers and the one characteristic that stood out was passion. (Colker) Passion and love for children is what motivates The Week of The Young Child event year after year. Anything you post or write or plan for the children will help this event thrive.

Here are some activities that involve all of the bullet points listed that you can do in your daycare or preschool classrooms or in your own home:

-Playing with Blocks of all kinds: http://handsonaswegrow.com/lots-of-blocks-activities/
-Singing songs that teach pronunciation and more: http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/educational_videos/educational_videos_abc_song.html
-Outdoor activities with a parachute: http://nurturestore.co.uk/parachute-games
-Create an indoor tube wall ball drop!

Early childhood education is definitely something to be celebrated and this event the week of the young child is celebrating from April 14-20! This event is through NAEYC organization just simply go to their site to locate resources and find out more information! Happy Week of The Young Child!!

What Is We Day?

We Day is a free event for students to collectively come together and get inspired by a very talented line up from Grammy nominated winners to star athletes to active public educators. Students can join in from all over via the web and they can also review past performances on the We Day website. We Day is happening in the following cities and dates: Seattle on March 27th, Ottawa/Gatineau on April 29th, Atlantic Canada on November 27th, and Minnesota on October 8th. National We Day is being held in Ottawa this year!

What is We Day? We Day is an annual concert held for the young to get pumped up for getting involved in their community and making a difference world wide. It was first held in Toronto, Canada in 2007 with more than 15,000 attendees. We Day is the product of a charity called Free The Children. The crazy part about this movement is that it was co-founded by a 12 year old! Craig Kielburger had a dream to reach millions of people in need to supply them with clean water, health care, sanitation and sustainability. Kielburger has vastly succeeded in reaching millions of people with the message to be excited about getting involved. Free the Children has helped over 650 schools globally with the ability to be clean and free. In 2007 to 2009 students raised over $5 million to charities and donated over 150,000 volunteer hours. Check out this previous news page which goes into more detail about Toronto's 2009 We Day. Since then Free the Children has raised over $2 million just from liking their Facebook page (1 like= 1 dollar). Go to their Facebook page to contribute one dollar by liking Free the Children.

What is the We Act commitment? The We Act commitment is a dedication to complete one local action in your community and one global action. These two actions combined can impact the world. It takes you on a one year journey that helps you implement these ideas into your lessons for your daycare centers, preschools, elementary schools, and even junior high schools. We Act provides you with the necessary requirements and resources once you sign up. If you are interested on more information and signing up click this link. Although signing up for the We Act for your school is currently closed they do have a wait list available. It's only free to attend the event if you sign up for the We Act commitment! There are lots of resources and options available to follow up with the We Act commitment on the We Day Website.

(What a great event to be apart of! I highly recommend watching this live!)

The earliest We Day event is happening in Seattle on March 27th, 2013 at The Key Arena! Check out the line up here. Other line up's for future events will be announced on their website.

Check out the video below to learn more about We Day! Be prepared to get chills!

Have a wonderful day!

-T and Honor Roll Childcare Supply

Chalk It Up In Your Daycare!

Chalkboard paint is a great way for you to save some money WHILE giving your kids their favorite afternoon activity! Chalkboard paint can be made by you or by purchasing it a local crafts store. Martha Stewart has a great recipe for mixing chalkboard paint and inspirational ideas on where to put your chalkboard wall. There are a lot of crafty ideas for you to do when your kids are busy coloring the walls by using the chalkboard paint to interior design your own walls. (Just make sure the chalkboard is far away from the kids or they will cover it with their own designs :) .) Here's a great site to see some artistic chalkboard ideas at Scraphacker.

I love this photo from Scraphacker! Very creative and artsy!

Spruce up your own daycare with chalkboard paint by using these great photos for inspiration! If your looking for some daycare supplies for chalk to get started, click here! I hope you all enjoy these awesome photos of how to use chalkboard paint not only for your kiddies  but also for you!

Have fun and good luck!
-T  Honor Roll Childcare Supply

Back to School

When I was young I remember my first day in Kindergarten and I was so nervous. The cafe lines were long and the milk was not quite cold. I would run to class everyday and eventually fell down and bruised my knee because I believed somebody had "pushed me". But I'm pretty sure I just fell down because I was running too fast. I have many elementary memories that come flooding back to me but the most prominent memories are my teachers. I remember each and everyone of their names, what they looked like, and even what they wore. It's amazing to think back on who guided you through life by teaching you the basics of education.

One of my most prominent memories was when I was in 1st grade and was in the middle of a spelling test. I was so nervous in taking my test that I was trying to sneak a peak at the answers. I knew I was going to get some of them right but I wanted it to be 100% correct. Eventually my eye caught the teachers eye and I was publicly announced in front of the class that I was looking at my cheat sheet. Throughout the years I've been in school I've thought about that one moment of humiliation and directed myself to finish the test without cheating. It also had to do with studying more and of course maturing, but there's always that one memory that brings you back to the beginning of it all.

My favorite parts of elementary other than recess was literature. In 3rd grade I had to complete a short story in the form of a book and draw illustrations for it. We could choose whatever we wanted to write about, either fiction or non fiction. I chose to write about me going to my grandma's house to make food for Christmas. I never let anyone throw it away because I thought it would someday guide me with inspiration to write my first novel. I also remember my teacher commenting on how well I had created it. Just the other day I was cleaning out my garage and happen to come across it. When I look at it now I think it was much shorter than I had realized. When your a kid everything is ten times larger. It's interesting to see the differences of measurement when you were little compared to 15 years later.

Those are just some key highlights I wanted to share about my childhood and going back to school. Lastly, I just want to thank all of my teachers for being there for me throughout the years and teaching me every step of the way. They have had such an influence on me and I am so grateful to have received the education I did. I hope that every teacher has a positive influence on everyone as well. Have fun and good luck back to school!

Frugal Art Ideas For Kids!

I can count a myriad of ways in which you can use canvas and make cheap and fun art projects for the little ones! Many of you probably know the melted crayons on the canvas or dripping paint to make an aesthetic look, but there is much more to do on a canvas than that. You can trace their hands, trace their silhouette, paint a picture, or even have them make their own word and glue wood right on the canvas! I will take you step by step through two art projects found online and how cheap they really are!

1. Trace of Hands

What you'll need:

• 2 canvas 12 x 12  ($6.56 x 2 = 13.12)  
• Watercolor paint or Watercolor crayons ($12.81)
• Brushes ($4.99)  
• Acrylic gloss (This product is optional but you can find it at any art store)

This whole project comes out to be $30.92 without tax. Also it is just suggested that you go to this site, but there are plenty of other places to get all of these products. Before painting remember to use some newspapers or even an old sheet to protect any surfaces from getting paint on them!

First off just have your kids trace their hands boldly onto the canvas, then have them use a different color to paint on the inside.

Second and lastly, paint over the finished art with an acrylic glaze to seal the paint onto the canvas. After that you have just completed an art project in less than 30 minutes!



2. Paint Pictures on a Canvas

What you'll need:

• Tissue Paper  ($3.89) 

Or

• Circled Tissue Paper ($5.99)
• Canvas ($7.97)
• Mod Podge (Any art store; $3.87))
• Acrylic Paint (Set of 6 for $4.43)
• Foam Brush (Any art store; $2.11)

This project came out to be a total of $22.27 with the regular tissue paper or with circled tissue paper= $24.37.

First have your kids cut out anything they would like out of the tissue paper, or you can just buy the already cut circles. Then have them paint whatever color your kids would like onto the canvas. It can be blue, pink, or white! Then let the paint dry on the canvas (about 30 minutes) and paint the mod podge with the foam brush lightly onto the canvas. Stick your tissue paper onto the canvas and then gently paint over the tissue paper with the mod podge again. Here are some examples and inspiration of what you can do with your art!

Hopefully this gives you some excitement to start a new project in your home or even the classroom!

Top Three Reasons Why You Need To Replace Your Baby Crib

What is so important about replacing your crib? Why does everyone always say you need to renew it? What are the CPSC, ASTM, JPMA certificates anyways? What will the law do if you don't? Many of you have probably asked these same questions yourself. I will explain in three reasons why this is so important to your baby, daycare, and for the law.

First off the importance of replacing your crib is for the absolute safety of your child or someone else's child. Since 2000 there has been over 32 cases of infant deaths due to "drop side cribs". Every daycare and user of these certain crib designs have until December 2012 to remove them with safer and tested ones (WishTv8). Also, CPSC’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System conducted a case study through 2000 to 2004 where they found "27 cases of infant death involving bumper pads or similarly padded bassinets" (Thatch). Either your crib or your mattress, the main concern here is to show everyone that crib related injuries and deaths do occur.

Secondly, all of these certifications are put in place in order to guarantee the product is completely flawless. CPSC stands for Consumer Product Safety Commission, ASTM stands for American Standard Test Method, and JPMA stands for Juvenile Products Manufacturing Association. If you're not a daycare owner or a childcare supply store then you might not even know what the break down and definitions of these certifications really mean. CPSC tests "crib slats [which] must be able to handle a lot of stress on them, the mattress support panel must stay in place, and parts must not come apart during stress testing" (La Baby). ASTM tests for "corner post vertical extensions, dynamic impact testing for crib structural integrity, crib interior dimensions and component spacing, and impact testing of crib side rails" (ASTM). JPMA certificaton is the seal shown on all of their approved merchandise while ASTM does the initial testing, JPMA continually follows up with retailer and randomly tests retailers and products on a yearly basis (JPMA).

Third, its the law. Under the Consumer Product Safety Act there are numerous penalties against your facility and your own liability that will throw you under the bus if you don't change out your cribs by December 28, 2012. You might think you can get away with it but risking a civil lawsuit, personal liability, and $100,000 per crib which is not certified in your facility after the date is just far too huge of a risk to take (Wiki).

Our manufacturer, La Baby, believes every baby is a star which also means they guarantee safety in any of their cribs. Here is a list of cribs that we think are the very best and would love for you to take a look at!




Lastly here is a product recall finder from Baby Center: PRODUCT RECALL FINDER. If you have any cribs or designs on this list I highly recommend you switch them out today or December will creep up on you!

Look for other great daycare cribs at Honor Roll Childcare Supply!