Today’s entry is not so much a post as it is just a way to showcase the latest addition to our outdoor play area… Our new mega sized outdoor chalkboard! It started out when I was cracking my head to think of a project for my sustainability practices assignment. (As some of you know, I am currently back at ‘school’ studying Early Childhood Education as part of my big venture into setting up my family day care ). One of the projects in the assignment was to create an outdoor play space made from recycled materials. Thanks to the labour of love from my dearest hubby… And my ‘expert’ painting skills… We converted an unused wooden door (we happened to have sitting around in our garage gathering dust) into this fantastic new play space in our outdoor area… The children absolutely loved it! They were so excited to see it when they headed outside the first day after it was set up. And I had half the morning ticking away smoothly with all very busy and fully engaged children, drawing...

This past week has been all about snails. The children are always fascinated by the snails in our garden and ask endless questions about them. A couple of weeks back, one of my boys stumbled across a snail crawling along the ground. He excitedly announced his discovery to the rest of the kids. Everyone hurried over and spent ages watching it slowly moving across the ground. Then one of them picked up a small rock and placed it right by the snail. Grace followed suit and picked up another small rock and placed it next to the first rock. “I feed the snail!” she declared proudly. “Hmmm…Snails don’t eat rocks… they eat plants” I gently told the children. “Oh! This one?” said one of the kids, plucking a blade of grass and then attempting to feed it to the poor snail. I decided it was probably a good idea to focus on snails in our next learning plan to set some snaily facts straight with my kiddos. We started off by reading a few books about snails…. Where Do You Live Snail by Petr...

A few nights ago after saying goodnight to the kids and tucking them into bed, I settled in for a solid evening of working on my assignment. It had been a long day and I was feeling kind of moody and headachy. But I knew I had to keep ploughing through my assignments if I was ever going to get through them all in time. After a few minutes of typing, I heard the soft padding of little feet coming up through the hallway. A little face peered through the door and the little person tip toed up to me. “Mummy, just now I was thinking about the monster” “Which monster?” “The one on Winnie the Pooh” “You mean The Backson?” “Yes. That one.” “I thought he was a funny monster. And it was a pretend one, wasn’t it?” “I don’t like it.” “Okay. We won’t watch that Winnie the Pooh show again, then.” “Okay.” (Silent pause) “Mummy?” “Yes?” “Can you come to my room and put the medicine for the monster in my room?” “We did that already, didn’t we? And I think it’s time you went to bed. Mayb...

This is yet another ‘sorry’ post. Sorry for the lack of updates and proper wordy posts sharing the deepest thoughts in my soul. I am literally knee deep in my final batch of assignments to complete my Early Childhood Education studies. It’s been such a marathon year keeping up with all my assessments and projects for this course. These past few of weeks have been pretty intensive. Lots of writing and typing and squeezing of brain juices. By the end of it, I have barely any words or comprehensible thoughts left to spare for anything else. Also, it recently hit me that there are only seven weeks until Christmas. SEVEN WEEKS!!! That’s seven weeks until the end of the year. Seven weeks until everything on my 2015 ‘To Do’ list needs to be checked off. When should I start panicking? There’s the Christmas shopping to do of course. Gifts for my day care kids. My own kids. School teachers. Some close friends and family members.  Various Christmas party Secret Santa gift exchanges. From...