Displaying Art

How is your artwork displayed?  We have several displays at any given time and thought we would share.  If you like my posts, please follow me!

The blue background here is painted on the wall, and then we just blue sticky art work on top of that.  Often times we will also put a description (translated by the child who made it) next to the art work.

We like things like this dream catcher hang from the ceiling so our babies have great things to look at.

Framed art work means that we value it.  We try to value every child's art work in a frame.  Dating it and helping them sign if they can't sign themselves add to the importance of a piece of art.

This is in our entry room.  It tends to be seasonal, and they are usually my most favorite art works.

This wall is dedicated to what we are learning about in preschool.
Infant art display

 3-D art and another framed piece.

Learning art display

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcoming art that shows what we are learning about.

Some of our most favorite pieces seem to hang around forever.  This chicken was one of our projects from 2 years ago.  All of the rest shown are current.  I hope you have enjoyed our art displays, but I would really like to know your creative ways of displaying art.  Write to me!!

Chickens for a Project?!?

We are always striving to be more green, environmentally conscious, eco friendly as a business teaching children.  That is pretty hard for me, because it really was NOT how I was raised, but we do make an effort, and I think we do pretty well.

A couple of years ago, our town changed the ordinances to say that we could have up to six chickens in our yard.  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!  I took all of the preschool down to the courthouse to get our chicken license!

The whole project took over two months and included visitors, art projects, cooking with eggs, field trips to the court house and farm supply store, stories, raising and caring for the chickens, building a chicken coop, and then a couple months after we were finished, someone noticed an egg on the floor of the chicken coop!

 

 A couple of our art projects

Here are some picturs of our chickens growing up:

 We had visitors come in and show us their grown up chickens.  They also showed us how friendly they were and told us how to care for them.

This was the chicken coop that I picked out.  The chickens were getting a little big.  I had to move them out of preschool and into my garage, and I REALLY wanted them out of the garage, so we started building.

I really liked our chicken coop.  Especially after we put a metal roof on it.  It looked urban chic!  Hahaha, get it? Chic?

The best part of this project was all of the experiences the children had for over two years with these chickens.  They knew which one belonged to them.  They could even tell the differences in eggs.  The children would collect bugs to "sneak" to their chicken.  I hope we have such an engaging project again one day!

March Menu

I think that we have a pretty healthy menu.  Especially with all of the fresh fruits and vegetables from Bountiful Baskets.  But I am just like everyone else and think that I get into the same ruts where we are serving the same things over and over and over again.  That is why I like to do our lunch menus up a month at a time.  

Making the menu up a month ahead of time allows me to bulk purchase our meats or wait for a really great sale, also.  How do you prepare your menus?  Do you feed the same food to your family that you serve to children in your care?  What is the number one stand by meal?  Ours is spaghetti.  

 Here is a link to my March Menu.  Hope you find some good ideas.

Health and Safety Checklist Week 2

Here is the second checklist just like I promised.  Hopefully it is in a better format for you!  Two more checklists to go, so come back next Friday for the next one.  Health and Safety Checklist #2

Tip for Feeding Healthy Food without Breaking the Bank

Who has heard of Bountiful Baskets?  What a God send!  Bountiful Baskets is an entirely volunteer lead group that brings produce "to the people" every week in a lot of communities. 

I first heard of it several years ago in a magazine, but it was nowhere close to being in my neck of the woods.  Then guess what happened?  It showed up in my home town in WYOMING!  No way!  My jealousy is over now because it is in my area.

I hope I can explain this well, because, I get so excited about it.  I think EVERYONE should do it!  This is how it works.  On a Monday, you login to your account at Bountiful Baskets.  There are several different things you can order, but we will just stick to the produce here.  You order a "basket".  Then on Saturday, you go to your Bountiful Basket site and pick up your "basket".  It is really two baskets.  One with fruit and one with vegetables.  At LEAST 5 different fruits and 5 different vegetables.  I DON'T mean you get five fruits and five vegetables, either.  You get a LOT!

I order two baskets every other week, because we have to drive in from our weekend house to pick up, but this is what we got at our last pickup:

• Blackberries
• Bananas
• Apples
• Oranges
• Lemons
• Mangoes
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Yellow Squash
• Sun chokes

I forgot to tell you the best part!!  It is only $15.00 a basket.  We have fresh produce everyday for my family and the childcare/preschool.  I hope you check it out and I hope it is in your community.  Tell me how you like it!