Taking Care of Our Environment

Did you know that we get about 700 paper bags from one tree?  Or that each person in the United States uses about 10 pounds of paper every week?  Do you know where paper comes from or do you know the story of paper? 

The children at Joy Kids Learning Center will be able to answer all of these questions by the end of August.  They will start a composting pile, create a "pulp puppet" out of paper, and make a dirt cake by the end of next week.  We are not just learning about the "world around us" but also how to take care of the "world around us". 

It is very exciting to watch these children get excited about taking care of our environment and helping create a cleaner and brighter tomorrow.  We would like to hear how you are helping create a cleaner and brighter tomorrow. 

Seeds are growing!

We're so excited this week because our Lima beans started to sprout! We'll keep watching them closely.

Lima beans are pretty big seeds. We had to use the magnifying glass to see the seeds in the banana and strawberry, but we could see them!

Then we got to taste them in our fruit s'mores, YUMMY!

You can tell by our faces that we liked them. They disappeared pretty quickly!

Eating roots, leaves and flowers!

We've been so busy learning about plants this week! Our carrot top has really started to grow! We soaked beans in water, and planted seeds in dirt. Our mint plant did not grow roots when we let it sit in a bowl of water. One child pointed out that's because we didn't use any dirt! We're going to try a basil plant next to see if we can root it in a bowl of water. We learned about roots, leaves and flowers, and that we eat all of those! Some children didn't like thinking about a carrot being a root.

On Thursday we made a salad of roots, leaves and flowers and we enjoyed eating it with our lunch.
Yummy!!

The children at Joy Kids have been very busy! As part of the Eco - exploring unit they have been planting seeds, soaking seeds in water, and watching a carrot top grow in blue water! We've learned how God created this beautiful world that we are exploring! He's got the whole world in His hands!
We've done a lot of painting also. We love to paint! We've been able to spend some time outside in the mornings, and we're looking forward to cooler "playground" weather later this week.

Hurray for cooler weather!

We're thankful for cooler weather! More fun in store for us this week.We went on a bear hunt last week, and this week we're learning about how God created this beautiful world, bears and all! We're exploring all the things that God created. Come explore with us!

Holiday week fun

We are having a fun Holiday week here at Joy Kids. Our new teacher, Ms. Barbara started with us and she is keeping us very busy. We have gone on a bear hunt, marched in a parade, created fireworks on paper and made Independence Day hats. We really enjoyed wearing our hats and singing Yankee Doodle Dandy while we marched.
We also had our first Spanish class with Senorita Kelsey today. We all like singing the alphabet in Spanish. We will have 6 more Spanish classes this summer and continue on with them weekly after Labor Day.  Ms. Barbara will also be helping us learn American Sign Language. We will have a multilingual class!
We hope everyone has a safe and fun Independence Day!