Graham Cracker Houses!

Hey OSC community,

With Christmas right around the corner, what's a better excuse to be able to make sugary treats to send the kids home with to get into the spirit? Haha, sorry parents. I decided to scale down the classic gingerbread house and make graham cracker houses so that the kids could personalize it their own way. We used Froot Loops, sour keys, and a simple icing sugar-and-water 'glue'. I didn't think I was that old until the kids started asking me why I was calling the 'coloured cheerios' Froot Loops... 

I started wondering where the origin of the gingerbread house came from. Good thing Google is so readily at our fingertips! The origin of gingerbread is traced back to as far as the 10th century from an Armenian Monk and so European monasteries were known to have been the first places to sell gingerbread. Although it wasn't adapted to its iconic shape and decorated with candy until it made it's way to Britain. Even then, decorating gingerbread houses as a seasonal household activity didn't become popular until The Grimm Brothers famous tale Hansel and Gretel.

I hope everyone has had and will have a great holiday!

Sara E.

Seasons Greetings!

Hi Folks!

It's December again which means that the holidays are just around the corner. The kids and I decided to get a head start on our holiday preparations. We made holiday greeting cards. Some kids got quite creative with their cards; there was even a 3D pop out card! I made a couple simple ones myself, just a few ideas for those of you that like Do-It-Yourself crafts and cards.

Happy Holiday preparations everyone!

-Katrina

KIDS KORNER

Ever wonder what kids think about REAL issues?

This week in KIDS KORNER:  "What is Hanukkah?"

Here are some of the wise responses...

Leo & Xander- "oh, a holiday"

Alarii- "they celebrate dreidels"

James- "you can dance"

Tori- "it's like a tradition for Jewish people"

Nyah- "where you have the things for light, with the big light, and you light that one first then the other ones"

Christopher- "it's when you celebrate for a whole year"

Zev- "it's where you light candles for every eight day for eight nights"

Tune in next time for another gripping edition of KIDS KORNER.

If you have an questions you think we should ask the children on KIDS KORNER, please leave them in the comments below.

-Jason

Dungeons and Dragons

Hi folks! Hope everybody had a safe and successful Black Friday! 

Due to the cold weather and early sunsets, the kids will most likely be using the gym for activities at Junior OSC. Music Club is therefore going to be on hiatus until spring when we have more space to experiment with our creative intuition. In the meantime, I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons (OSC style) at Junior. The kids seem to really be enjoying it. With Dungeons and Dragons, what your character in the game can do is only limited by your imagination. Of course, the Dungeon Master has to agree with you (that's me). I've been working on reinforcing teamwork, cooperation, and creative thinking within the game, for example, when trying to destroy the Evil Dark Wizard who kidnapped Tinkerbell. 

Until next time! See you around! 

- Peter

Another Day, Another Adventure!

Wednesday Out Trip Adventures!

Wednesdays are out trip days here in the Junior OSC program and the children seem to love it! So far our destinations have included The Village Garden Pumpkin Patch, Garden City Park and South Arm Park. However with daylight fading sooner and sooner we will likely be changing our trips to more indoor locations. So far each trip has been accompanied by a group of Senior OSC children and staff, who have been great big buddies for the younger ones. The big buddies have been amazing role models and both the Junior children and staff enjoy having them join us on our trips. 

Just a reminder that if we are going to an outdoor destination, that you pack proper clothing and footwear as it is getting colder as the weeks pass. Keep an eye out for out trip signups because the spots do fill up fast!

-Emmett

Garden City Park's bird nest climbing structure.

The children quickly discovered jackets make great luges.

KIDS KORNER

Ever wonder what kids think about REAL issues?

This week in KIDS KORNER:  "What do we do on Remembrance day?"

Here are some of the wise responses...

Emily- "when we remember the people who fought for this place"

Adrianna- "we watch a movie about soldiers"

Jackson- "no fighting...no pushing"

Nyah- "when you have to wear a poppy and care for the war"

Emily- "about poppies...about the war"

Noa- "to remember the soldiers who fought in the war"

Tune in next time for another gripping edition of KIDS KORNER.

If you have an questions you think we should ask the children on KIDS KORNER, please leave them in the comments below.

-Jason

Oh the Drama!

Drama Club is back by popular demand! Originally this was used as a rainy day distraction, but it has really caught on. Drama club has been an active way to exercise creativity, and some of the favorite games include “Death By…”, where the children act out a dramatic death by something thought up by a leader, “Museum” and “Silent Zoo.” Not only have the kids impressed us with their willingness to participate, but have awed us with their independence and group work. Some favorite moments from last drama club include a group of boys stumping Aislinn and I with a peacock impression, and three girls coordinating to act as a single spider.

-Gemma

Moments from a game of "Death By..."

Another dramatic scene.

 

Keva Blocks!

Keva Blocks have become incredibly popular among the children in our Junior OSC program here at West. Many of the children use the blocks to build marble tracks. Marbles have become some of the most popular toys at West Richmond since getting these blocks. Some of the children spend most of their day building complicated ramps for the marbles to roll down. Besides marble tracks, the children also enjoy making structures such as towers. They either create their own buildings or they try to copy buildings from a Keva Block pamphlet which ranges from easy to difficult projects. Some children have even built Beyblade stadiums out of Keva Blocks to host their battles. Overall the Keva Blocks are a huge hit at West Richmond.

-Aislinn

Our leaning tower of Keva.

Keva City

Pumpkin Patch and Halloween

Just in time for Halloween, we started our weekly mini out trips with the kids on Wednesday October 23rd.  So many children were interested, we sent another group again the following Wednesday! We got to take the children to the pumpkin patch! We went to The Village Garden Pumpkin Patch on No. 2 Road in Richmond, where a pumpkin farmer gave the children a brief explanation of how the pumpkins are grown before each child got to choose a pumpkin to take home for Halloween. Luckily the weather held up for the most part and all the kids had so much fun. We had some great costumes on Halloween. If you didn’t get a chance to see us, all the leaders dressed up as superheroes. Hopefully you all had a wonderfully spooky Halloween! 

-Katrina

The farmer explaining what's inside a pumpkin.

He had pictures to show us the different stages of pumpkin growth.

The field the children got to choose from.

Happy Halloween from Super Cow!

Music Club

Hi folks! This past week has been a fun one. I'm excited to announce that I've started

a music club!!! It's still in it's experimental stage, but basically the kids have been learning the basics of music making using simple instruments like shakers, bells, and sticks. We may even work on a specific song and make a music video for it. Look out for more information. 

-Peter

Lantern Festival

This past Thursday was West Richmond's 14th Annual Harvest Lantern Festival, and I'd say a successful one at that! This was my first experience with the Lantern Fest and I was pleasantly surprised at the enormous turn out, given all the activities and family oriented atmosphere I shouldn't have expected anything less of our great community. The lantern festival has been around to celebrate autumn with family, both the blood-related kind and the West family. Some kid friendly activities and entertainment included Mr. Yo Yo Thrower, button making, face painting, pumpkin bowling and West's very own, world-class balloon animal artists (AKA our childcare staff, myself included). Winding down the festivities, our lantern processional began in front of the community centre, around the playground and circled back to be greeted with hot chocolate. I have to say, the way the lanterns lit up that chilly, foggy evening was really neat.

But what's a Lantern Festival without the lanterns?! For the week that led up to the event, the kids had been working on their own unique milk jug lanterns. Using the bottom half of a 4 litre milk jug, the kids used a paper-mache glue mixture to decorate their lanterns. They came out really well, resembling stained glass. We used a tea light glued to the bottom with a chopstick handle to finish off our lanterns.

I'm so glad that everyone who was able to make it out had such wonderful smiles on their faces, Thanks for coming!

-Sara

Busy hands at work!

Lanterns lit the way in a little fog.

A beautiful night for a nice walk.

Brainstorming Our Staircase

Earlier this school year it was announced that the staircase at West Richmond Community Center was due for an update. The redecorating project is called “Rising”. We were able to have the artist, Jeanette Lee, come in and brainstorm some ideas with a few of the children in our program about the project. She asked them what they love about using the stairs, and she got answers that included: “I can smell the snack in the stairway”, and, “when you imagine keys on a piano and walking up them”. The kids got the opportunity to give their ideas on how the staircase should be decorated. Some of these ideas were that the staircase should be colourful, the railing should be exciting and there should be poems on the stairs. There were many great ideas from the kids that the artist was able to take out of this discussion.

-Aislinn

Listening closely to Jeanette.

Asking questions and giving feedback.

Dungeons and Dragons

 Even on a rainy day we were able to enjoy a great game of capture the flag. Who needs to go outside when we can create our own land filled with potions, spells, traps and enemies. Alden, Cole, Jonah, Leo and Xander faced off against our new villains; Beast from the East, Geronimo Joe, Queen Liz and BooGrrr. Our villains got off to a great start and were the first to break down the barricades of the young adventurers and soon jumped the black hole to enter the flag zone. 

Characters doing battle!

The boys were forced to play defensive with the onslaught of attacks by the villains. After many battles the young adventurers broke through their enemies barricades and jumped over the rubble hill entering the other flag zone. With a lack of defensive troops on the enemy team, Jonah was able to dodge, get past his opponent, grab the flag , and once confronted by Queen Liz he was able to overcome her attacks and sprint back to his castle. With that good prevailed over evil once again and were victorious on this beautiful sunny day. 

-Jason

The playing field.

Baking With A Purpose!

As most of you know, our kids love to bake. Whether it’s for the baking experience or for the yummy treat that they get to take home at the end. This week our kids baked delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies. These cookies were not only made for the pleasure of the children and staff but were made for National Seniors Day that will be recognized at West Richmond Community Center on October 1^st, 2013. These cookies will be handed out to show our appreciation. Although it’s often a race to sign up for the baking activity in the afternoon (with so few spots available), many batches of cookies were needed for this special occasion so several hard workers took part in the preparations. These little treats brought smiles to our children’s faces and hopefully their hard work will bring a smile to someone else’s face too!

Katrina 

Adding the ingredients.

Taking turns mixing. 

Starting to look like cookie dough.

Fresh baked goodness. 

The final product. YUM!

Play Dough Funanza!

Hopefully both students and parents are settling in their work and school schedules well! 

I can't believe we're approaching fall already. But I am surprised to hear myself say that I'm kind of looking forward to it (I'm surprised because I am very much a summer gal). And with the changing of seasons, we prepare to welcome the seemingly perpetual rainy days. With that in mind, I got my hands on a super easy play dough recipe to test out with the kids in the hopes of occupying some boredom as the weather gets gloomy. I liked this recipe because many play dough recipes call for cream of tartar, something that I know is not a commonality in all kitchens, but this recipe doesn't use it at all. I did find when making this with the kids is that you will need more flour than it calls for, but that's easy enough to tweak as you're kneading. I also noticed that it didn't make enough for our kids in one batch (however I did have about 10 kids in my group), but it'd be plenty for 2 or 3 kids. 

Here's the recipe for any parents who might want to bust some boredom in the future...

Ingredients:

1 cup flour (will likely need more, but easily tweaked)

1/4 cup salt

1 packet of Kool-Aid (for colour and pleasant scent)

2/3 cup hot water

1 tbs oil

Instructions:

1. Mix the flour, salt and Kool-Aid together.

2. Boil the water. 

3. Add oil to the water.

4. Pour some of the water into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or spatula. Keep adding water and work the dough until the colour is even and feels like play dough. 

The Junior OSC kids had a lot of fun with this play dough, making all sorts of shapes and creations with cookie cutters and 'play dough tools'. 

Sara 

Heart flower!

Some silly cutouts.

A carved heart and the tools used.

A tasty waffle.

Welcome back!

Welcome back new families and old to the Jr Out-of-School Care program!

Our staff are looking forward to getting back into the routine of the school year. We hope everyone had a relaxing summer soaking up some rays, but are ready for fall. The weather is changing and we ask that you provide your children with the appropriate clothing to be comfortable playing outside. If it is not raining we will try to get the children out to enjoy our playground. Staff will try to get blogs out on a weekly basis to give families an idea of what kind of interesting and engaging projects we do here.


If your child will not be attending Jr. OSC on any given day, please call 604-238-8408. If no one answers, please just leave a message and we can mark down the appropriate information. Also, please be clear about who is leaving the message and the first and last name of the child as there are some children with the same name.

We are excited to meet all the new families and children and help them settle into a comfortable routine here at West. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to ask any of the staff or email me at Emartyniuk@richmond.ca.

Emmett

Jr Daycamp Summer Calendar

Jr Daycamp July 2013

Jr Daycamp August 2013

Bubble Tea Thursday

Bubble tea for snack? Bubble tea is a Taiwanese tea based drink that combines a delicious beverage with yummy tapioca balls. Our staff made a variation of this drink by using frozen fruit, yogurt and orange juice instead of the usual tea based recipes. Although the tapioca balls resemble frog eggs, many of the children still devoured the tasty drink. Dustin and I were working vigorously when serving snack to meet the demands of the children when we realized how messy this snack really is. Our usually very clean snack table and cart were littered with straws and drops of smoothie. In the end, most of the children and all of the staff enjoyed the unique snack and would be happy to have it again.

Emmett

Yummy yum yum.

Tapioca balls.

What a mess!

Sara and Sarah enjoying their drinks.

Dustin surprised at how tasty it is.

Happy Hillwood.

Faulty Towers

What's there to do on a soggy Tuesday afternoon? Dustin and Emmett had it in mind to inject a little Keva chaos! We challenged those able and willing to some heats of compelling competition. It all started with who could build the tallest tower in five minutes. Towers tumbled and were rebuilt within the five minutes. We repeated the heat to see if the children learned anything from the first round. The excitement (and number of participants) only grew as we introduced rounds with "best house in five minutes" and "strongest tower in five minutes." After this, Emmett injected further Keva chaos by introducing the "Revenge Block", one block per team that could be thrown at an opponent's tower at any time during the heat. Most teams chose to use their Revenge Block near the end of the heat, aimed at the leading competition. We doubled the time to ten minutes to see what chaos would ensue. Winners of each heat were rewarded with Timbits, courtesy of Cole V's birthday. After the competitions were complete, Emmett and Dustin conceived of future challenges for our enthusiastic builders. Stay tuned for further Keva chaos...

Cheers,
Dustin

One of the candidates for tallest tower.

Attempting to build the strongest tower.

Devastating!

Mother's Day Flower Pot Art Extravaganza

In celebration of Mother's Day, Sara E., the kids, and I got together to make some cute flower pot Mother's Day cards! The pot is rather difficult to draw so Sara and I had drawn the shape of the pots on construction paper for the kids to cut out. After cutting out their pots and the flowers they had drawn, they added text and assembled their cards. My favourite part was watching them write their adorable little messages to their mom in their own handwriting. We even added a row of grass to the top of the pot decoration. After, we attached the flowers to a green string. We then attached part of the string to the pot and glued the sides of the pot together. Finally, we gathered the flowers into a pile and put them in the pot "envelope" for mom to pull out. I hope the moms that had received them liked them!

Happy Mother's Day!

Sara and Monica

Monica lending a helping hand.

Adding flowers.

Assembling the stem.

Happy Mother's day Mom!