Hi! My name is Colleen Giesbrecht, I live on the westside of Lethbridge with my husband Nic and 3 children; Blake (dec 2007), Kayla (dec 2009) and Alice (June 2013).

I started my day home in October 2008, and have been through an accredited agency since opening. I obtained my diploma in Early childhood education through the Lethbridge college.  Through my schooling I completed practicums in an Elementary school, preschool, day home, and several day care centers, through these experiences I have decided day homing is the best option for me!

I offer childcare for preschool and kindergarten children.  Preference goes to children enrolled in Little Lambs Preschool and Probe Elementary school, though may consider a child in St. Pat's or Nicholas Sheran.  I prefer to limit the amount of schools I offer transportation to, this helps minimize how long the children are in the vehicle and gives us the opportunity to walk to school several times a week when the weather is nice.

During day home I plan many different themed activities for the children. I try to select themes based on the children's current interests and plan activities in a range of different developmental areas.  I take the children on field trips; Coulee Centre, Henderson park, Nicholas Sheran park, family center, library and more.  During the school year we stay at the school playground a couple times a week, this gives the children an opportunity to see school friends, connect with their community and of course burn off lots of energy!

*All children shown on my blog are my own children, sometimes you may see hands or legs or day home children but i do not post identifiable images of day home children on my blog!*

family photos by Jackie Ho, at life unscripted in Calgary, Ab.

day home- Robert Munsch part 2!

I seem to be a month or so behind on blogging, lets see if I can catch up!

Last week we explored Robert Munsch books again! the children LOVE his books and there are soo many of them!!

First we read Angela's Airplane, and made an airplane to play in!  I thought the children could paint and decorate it, but they just wanted to play!

We also read more pies, then baked strawberry apple pie!  The children cut up all the fruit, arranged it in the (shh...don't tell anyone it was store bought) pie crust and sprinkled the sugar and spice in.

 Im not really sure if any of the fruit Kayla cut up actually made it in the pie, she was taste testing ALOT!

 p is for pie!

I had one mother's day project planned, but the children remembered baking cake a year or 2 ago so we also baked lemon cake for our moms! the older children grated the lemons,

 all the children measured the ingredients, (I used a recipe from Nigella Lawson's cookbook, which is by weight, which was something fun and different for the children). 

 Kayla always wants her picture taken!

 The children squeeze the lemons, we used the left over juice to make lemonade at snack time.

 blake squeezing away in his muscle shirt.

 Blake wanted to make hearts on the cake, so after we poured on the lemon icing, we sprinkled icing sugar on top over a cut out heart. made for a very sweet cake!

 here is the one we sent home with the day home family, and how I tied this into Robert Munsch! We read I love you forever, and then over the hand prints is the verse from the book.

We also read the playhouse but the children were not interested in making the play people I had planned, too nice outside for crafts that day!
We read the sandcastle contest, and built sandcastles in the backyard sand box,
and we read swamp water and had an outside picnic snack to go with that one!

Superheroes! Dayhome!

In the day home the children are VERY interested in Ninja turtles and other sorts of Superheroes.  So, I thought they would love 2 weeks planned on superhero activities.  Sadly, they very quickly lost interest.....but here is what we did anyway!

I sewed masks, and wrist bands but forgot to take a photo of the wrist bands,

 then we decorated them with foam shapes

 this is our superhero lair! with spy equipment, costumes, masks, and computers! the younger ones were thrilled, the older ones were a little disappointed the computers did not turn on.

 this really had little to do with superheroes, just a way to get the crazies out when its too cold to stay long outside! balloon basket balls

 

 some superhero puzzles, matching cards

 pattern pages,

 we decorated shields

 and he is spiderman's web! the children had to catch stuff in

 creating superheroes, capes and masks, and corks and thread spools
 I made a large poster of pete the cat, which was a HUGE hit, the children added to it all week, our super hero poster was a bust! maybe its was how funny looking my superhero is.....

some other activities we did, was shield alphabet matching, decorating super hero logos, making a paper super hero, an obstacle course

Cat the pete Day home

we ended up having a shorter week then I thought so didn't quite get to all our pete the cat activities, but here is what we did do!


'my buttons, my buttons, my 4 groovy buttons!'
My kids LOVE that Pete the Cat song! So of course we read Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy buttons.

then we had a button sorting activity.

My daughter and day home child are often working on pictures together, they will get a piece of paper and together cover every inch of the paper with colors and stickers and glitter glue. So I thought a week long picture we all worked on would be lots of fun!  So I draw up a pete the cat in poster paper and let the children at it! The idea was that every time we read a new story they could add something to the poster, Blake is drawing Pete's buttons on below.

 Pete the Cat, I love my white shoes.

So we set up a shoe store, I made this little fort out of pvc pipe and and denim.  There is a little door and window and it has been used for many stores and shops and other such things in the day home. 

This activity also went with the shoes book, I found it on pinterest but the lady who posted it didn't actually say what she did with it!  So, I spent way to long cutting and glue gunning these foot prints on a table cloth.  (could not find the packing tape that would have made this easier!) So anyway, the children made different games of only stepping on a certain color, or touching all 4 colors or just dancing on the foot prints.  It wasn't as much of a hit as I'd hoped for but they still enjoyed it.

 our shoe store was turned into a drive in, here's my 3 little cooks!

 our Pete the Cat poster at the end of the week, there was a surf board added for the Pete at the beach book, and pete's brother riding a wave on the side.

 we had a couple Pete the Cat print outs, and some foot prints to decorate.

 Kayla dancing!

I am a huge fan of Pete the Cat books! I enjoyed reading them to the children this week!

Next week, Super Heroes!

st patricks day-DAYHOME

I decided to just do one day of St. Patrick's day fun this year instead of a whole week, so here is what we did!

I put the usual green stuff in the water table, shamrocks, gold coins, and so on... and the children decided they were going to use the stuff to trap a leprechaun. They were very VERY busy collecting stuff, laying it out, so far no leprechauns have been trapped.

 for some rainbow fun I had beading with colored pipe cleaners and elastic string.

 a leprechaun snuck in while we were picking up children at school and left behind a rainbow of smarties and chocolate gold coins! he left a little trail out the back door.

a

 happy St. Patricks Day from Alice! Just had to show off my sweet baby girl.

e

 our snack! Jell-O courtesy of our day home friends! for a really special treat green kool-aid! and kiwi, green apples, green pears and green muffins! the muffins are orange flavoured so they did not green super well....but still tasty!

g

 

day home DINOSAURS!

We spent the last 2 weeks exploring dinosaurs in the day home!
Here is what we did!

 

our home made dino dig.  Which was a total fail.  So Blake got a dino dig from Christmas, he loved it! kept him busy for so long, he was so interested in digging out the dinosaurs.  So I thought, I could make one! googled it...got some plaster of paris, sand from the sand box.....water.....I made cement! I cant remember which dinosaurs I put in there, but I REALLY hope they were not favorites, because I'm pretty sure they are never coming out! The children tried, I tried, it did keep us all occupied for a long LONG time. and surprisingly they were not mad or frustrated that we couldn't even chip off the tiniest little bits of the cement. oh well, wont be trying that one again!

 the books!

 I had to point out this book. I found it at the library, and for some reason was just not at all interested but I wanted at least 3 dinosaur books for every dinosaur day so I picked it out anyway, was not at all looking forward to reading it....this is a GREAT book!! There are dinosaurs hidden all through the book, the children loved searching for them! they were so interested in the book!

just a little something for the children to add to throughout the week

This was a clearance toy from toys y us, just weird sandy play dough with dino figures. the volcanos could launch playdough balls, then there was 2 dinosaurs. Basically you make a city out of the building molds and the the dinosaurs destroy it. I can not believe how long they played with this!!

 Dinosaur scones for snack!

 Dinosaurs frozen in water balloons.  I wasn't really too sure how this would go over, but the children were thrilled! We rubbed some salt on them to test out melting techniques, then poured hot water over.

 Then to keep interest going I add yellow color in the bottom and blue in the top, the children then made green water!

 look how pretty this looks! Moon sand with flour, olive oil (yes! you don't need to have baby oil on hand for moon sand!) then for something different I added some oatmeal. 

 beans...

 and this is what it looked like when they were done playing....

 dino print painting!

 making cookies, instead of rolling out dough and having the children cut the cookies, I give them each a chunk of dough to make their own cookies, they can roll it or shape it, this is so much easier for me, and lasts so much longer for them! They spend so much time shaping their own cookies!

 here are some of the children's creations..

 here are the dino print cookies I made!

 

 volcano splatter painting!  I can never seem to get the right consistency for blow/splatter painting. and I think this an activity that would be much better in the summer outside!

 we made a paper mache volcano! I taped a small round bowl over an icecream pail to get the shape. kayla helped me make the volcano, the other children  watched and commented on how gross the paper mache looked! when it was dry the children painted it.

 Then we made a dinosaur world! 

dinosaur shape collage

 the childrens art

 this project started out as making dinosaur feet out of Kleenex boxes,

 and ended like this..... I don't normally post pictures of day home children, but I think this picture should be ok! :)

 Blake is a robot

 kayla added a carrot nose to her hat.

And nic came home to see a line of cereal bags downstairs...I didn't have empty cereal boxes so...

oh and most importantly we danced to walk the dinosaur (the song from ice age) so SOO many times!