Spring Break In Days

Spring break arrived fast this year, it has been a nice change in our everyday routine for the kids and also our staff team. For staff, we enjoy planning a variety of themed in-days for the kids. Some of the themes we choose this spring break included “Everyday Superheroes” where we looked at the people in our everyday lives who in a big or small way make a difference. We were lucky enough to have 2 RCMP officers come visit us and answer all the questions the kids had, and believe me there were a lot. They showed us all the equipment they carried on their belts like handcuffs, a radio, and pepper spray. Unfortunately we weren’t able to see their guns for good reasons. They then took us down to take a look inside their police cars and all the kids got a chance to sit inside.

 

Another fun day we had planned was “Jedi Training” the kids got to make their own balloon light sabers, make their own jedi trading cards, and run through our homemade jedi training obstacle course. There is still one more in-day left this spring break called “Build It” day, we're very excited to see all of the kids creativity come alive as they learn to build, use their imaginations and cooperate together in teams. We hope everyone has enjoyed their spring break so far and before you know it, summer will be just around the corner.



Corey

Short Stories by Short People

The Princess Who Lived in the Kiss!

Once upon a time there was a princess, she lived in a kiss. She got married to Ja-Hans. They ate a rainbow flavoured cake and it tasted like cotton candy and ice cream. After eating the cake they got poisoned and they died. Then the fairy ambulance came to save them, they gave them a sparkly star potion and they came back to life. They did karatae to celebrate at their birthday on April the 1st, they gave away goodie bags which had poisoned chocolate eggs but only kill you for 1 minute because they taste like a skunk and the eggs were half poison and half not poison. 

The End

by Ava, Isla, Lily & George

The Baby That Ate a Tree!

Once upon a time in January a baby did kung fu, he ate a tree that made him into a half baby-half tree. He fought his uncle one day who he destroyed and his uncle turned into a monster. His uncle came back for revenge and defeated the baby. 

The End

by George, Kieri & Max W

Mommy, Daddy, Sister, Four Babies.

Once upon a time there was a mom, a dad, a sister and four babies. They lived in a pretty house. The sister was doing her homework, the mom and the dad were talking together and the babies were sleeping. One of the babies woke up and pooped in their pants, the mom took the stinky baby to the washroom and the mom changed the stinky babies diaper and she tucked the baby back into the crib. Another baby woke up and wanted to play with his toys, the dad heard the baby playing with the toys. He said, "Baby you have to go to bed, NOW!" The dad tucked the baby back into the crib and then went back to the couch and finished watching his show. The third baby puked in his crib, he told his sister. The sister had to take care of the puke, the sister took the baby into the washroom and cleaned her up. The fourth baby was sleeping.

The End

by Savannah

- Jason

Catgrass

Hello families!

Well spring has almost sprung, and what better to do in the spring time than to garden! Over the past few weeks, we’ve done a couple of activities that have brought out the green thumbs in our kids. First, we made our own chia pets! Some of you may have heard about “Catgrass,” or seen him hanging out on the windowsill. Catrass is our current JR OSC pet, a chia pet – who grows cat grass as hair! Catgrass is an extremely friendly raccoon who loves water and enjoys hanging out amongst the wild flowers. That being said, the second gardening activity that we’ve done was decorating large pots and planting wild flowers. From what I’ve heard and seen by the planters we've kept, we have a few sprouts starting to grow.

At this point in the season, it’s probably best to keep the flowers inside and they could be repotted or moved outside once the rainy season slows down. As for cat grass, feel free to repot it and let it go wild! If anyone has a cat, or neighbourhood cats, I’d love to know whether or not they actually enjoy eating it.

Keep your thumbs green kids, there will be more gardening in May!

 

Katie

Pasta Art

Hey West families,

Though it's only February, we've been lucky to be able to enjoy some milder, more spring-like weather. With that in mind, as well as being over winter myself, I decided to do a quick and messy activity to get the kids excited for spring! Bowtie pasta butterfly paintings. We began by using our hot glue gun skills to carefully glue our bow tie pastas to our paper, then got right into designing and painting our 'spring scene.' Most of the kids painted their butterflies with bright colours accompanied by a classic nature scene - grass, sun shining, flowers or trees. A couple of the kids got really creative though; Isaac used his pasta shells to form a tree as opposed to using them for butterflies which looked super cool! Lucy used her pasta shells as frets of a guitar which I thought was so outside the box - very impressed! 

 

After all this talk of milder weather, with spring also comes RAIN, lots and lots of rain! Keep in mind that even if it's sprinkling outside, we may still take the kids outside to the playground to run around and let off steam, so make sure your child has appropriate rain gear! Rainboots, raincoat, extra socks (this one is key), even mittens if you so choose.

Thanks again!

 

Sara E

Love Day

Hi Families,

It was just last weekend where many of us celebrated Valentine's Day and so, many of our kids handed out cards at school and out of school care! At first thought, Valentine's Day seems like a day to celebrate the romantic type of love, but one particular little girl at our program reminded me that it's about all sorts of love. She had noticed that some of the kids' Valentine's mailboxes were emptier than others, so she and Gemma decided that they were going to spend the afternoon trying to make cards for everyone at out of school care to make sure that everyone went home with something.

We also talked about what Valentine's Day meant to a group of kids who I ran an art with last Wednesday. I asked them if they knew what the holiday was for, just expecting my question to be a quick segway into our activity, but they actually spent several minutes talking about it. They were very aware that Valentine's Day is a time to not only write to a crush, but also to show your friends, teachers, parents and siblings how much you appreciate their love, friendship or their "friend love" for one another.

Til next time!

Sara E

Cupcakes Yum!

Bags, bags and more bags

Lily working hard on those cards

Kids Yoga

For the past couple weeks we’ve introduced yoga as a new activity here at junior osc. We had Stuart run this activity on Friday and with all the kids signing up we had a great turn out for the class. To set the yoga atmosphere we had the lights dimmed and relaxing music playing in the background. Before the kids could enter our room of zen there were two rules they had to abide by:

1) No Shoes
2) No Yelling

Stu gathered everyone in a circle and started with breathing exercises to calm the room, this helped us focus on rule #2. Next, he introduced a handful of moves to the kids. The most common pose’s taught were the airplane, downward dog and the tree stance which was the most popular pose. After showing them our poses and once the kids got comfortable they were free to create their own moves. We had Emily lying on her stomach while grabbing her ankles with her back arched; she called it the bow pose. This became a fun and creative part of our activity as many unique yoga poses began to emerge. After all the fun ended we had many sweaty faces with some still practicing what they had learned. We continue to encourage healthy lifestyles through physical activity and I recommend everyone to give yoga a try.


Namaste,
Corey

 

 

 

 

 

 

A day at the Spa!

Gorgeous darling, work it!

Couldn’t we all use one? Well the kids sure got one this week. Nails and hair gel have always been a favourite with our kids, but we’ve stepped up our salon game! We’ve recently added hair chalk to our list of services, and better yet – it’s free (ha-ha)! All the kids were rocking the best styles this afternoon, with everything from rainbow nails to rainbow hair. Today’s salon brought out a whole bunch of characters from our kids; one decided they were going to have fire hair, another was a mermaid, and a third became a hair and nail model.








Ombré

What really took off this afternoon, and has been in style for a while, was the ombré. Our early techniques involved only three to four colours, as ombré is quite a difficult technique to master, but by the end of the day we had seven coloured rainbows going every which way possible. Please remember to wash out with shampoo and condition before getting into those white bed sheets!

Yours truly,

 

 

 

JR OS-salon.