Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Bananas

While shopping in the produce department of my local grocery store I spotted something I had never seen before – red bananas.  I was curious so I bought a few.

DSCN0196

Now, I’m always a little cautious with food related activities because I don’t want to encourage playing with food instead of eating it and sometimes negative food experiences can influence the children’s willingness to try new food items.

My plan was to compare the new red bananas with familiar yellow bananas so as I prepared morning snack I sliced the bananas like this;

DSCN0197

I tried a piece of red banana – advance preparation while the children were all still playing.  The experience was not what I expected.  For what seemed like an eternity I debated about trying to swallow the partially chewed banana slice or spitting it out.

I finally managed to swallow it.  It wasn’t the flavour that bothered me – actually, I wasn’t even certain that it had any noticeable flavour.  I was focused on the texture – it was horrible – grainy, dry…not like anything I have eaten before.

There was no way I could serve these red bananas to the children. Most of the children love bananas – these red bananas might change their opinion of bananas forever!  The children happily ate their YELLOW bananas with homemade biscuits and milk for morning snack.

The red bananas were left sitting on the counter while I did some research and debated about what to do with them now.  I wondered if they were maybe just not ripe?  I love under ripe yellow/green bananas because of the texture.  If the red ones were just under ripe would that account for the horrible texture?

I checked the red bananas daily – after a full week they finally seemed to soften a little.  Tentatively I tried another small piece.  It was fabulous! Wonderfully sweet, mild banana flavour and perfect texture.  Today we would have yellow and red bananas for afternoon snack.

I showed the children the whole red banana and asked them to identify it.  “Banana!” was the unanimous response so I asked if they noticed anything unusual about the banana.  The responses included;

  • “They are tiny.”
  • “They are straight, not curved.”
  • “They are made of meat – ham.”

OK, this is not at all what I expected.  I asked if they noticed anything about the colour.  They replied that the bananas were red – a fact they seemed to think was so obvious that it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Now, enough talking, let’s eat.

Everyone loved the red bananas as much or maybe more than the yellow bananas.  The only exception was the one child who doesn’t like yellow bananas – she wouldn’t even try the red ones.

I doubt the response would have been the same if I had given them the bananas last week.  I guess that they are ripe now but the colour hasn’t changed, just the flavour – and the texture.

Monday, June 16, 2014

MCCA Conference 2014

So, I’m finally getting around to writing about my experience at MCCA’s conference – only a few weeks after the event.

There were some fabulous speakers – my favourite was Jeff A. Johnson.  So inspiring.
I also took several hands-on workshops.  One on woodworking activities;

Conf14-01

Conf14-02

Conf14-03

And one on creating water walls;

Conf14-04

Conf14-05

I’m planning to add a woodworking centre and water wall to our outdoor space this summer.
Then I also spent a day learning to play the ukulele – loved it!  Robin & Toni Christie from New Zealand kept us busy – no time for pictures.  I suppose I could have included a picture of my bright yellow ukulele but I haven’t taken one yet – maybe later.   :-)

I’m looking forward to even more hands-on learning – outdoors with local presenters – at the upcoming Nature Summit in September.

Never stop playing and learning.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Nap Time

Wow, it has been almost four weeks since I’ve written a blog post — bad blogger. I’ve been super busy – full days with the children, practicum student visiting, conference, presentations, and several evening meetings every week. There has been plenty to write about but no time to write. I started this post more than a month ago so I better finish it before I move on to other topics.

Nap time. When my own children were young we sometimes struggled over nap time. The ones who I felt most needed naps were the ones who were reluctant to take them. There were battles. So, when I first opened my childcare home I was a little apprehensive about being able to get so many little ones to nap.

At first I had used the second floor bedrooms as nap areas – infants in playpens, toddlers on beds. The daily set-up and take-down process was arduous but generally everyone was cooperative. There were, of course, a few exceptions. My frequent trips upstairs to check on the (non)nappers were sometimes disruptive to those that were actually sleeping.

Before the end of my first year in childcare I relocated the toddler/preschooler nap area to the main floor using cots and the living room couches where I could supervise more easily. I continued to use playpens in the second floor bedrooms for the infants to nap. There was still a lot of time required for daily set-up and take-down and many trips up and down the stairs.

I found it interesting that the older children napping on the main floor often slept longer than the infants who were napping upstairs. Many parents seemed surprised too – most of these older children resisted napping when they were at home yet here they actually enjoyed helping with the nap time set-up, fell asleep quickly, and were often difficult to wake after nap.

There came a time when I began to question the safety aspect of having the infants napping upstairs. Yes, we did practice emergency evacuations monthly and sometimes even at nap time. The evacuation times were considerably longer at nap time and although the older children were cooperative during drills – waiting patiently while I ran upstairs to get babies – I wondered if they would do so if there was a real emergency.

It wasn’t something I wanted to risk. I relocated the playpens to the main floor – giving up a little play space but giving my family back the privacy of their own bedrooms. I chose to leave the playpens set up – losing a small amount of space vs. a large amount of time. I detest setting up playpens.

In my most recent renovation I expanded the space allocated to the playpens. My intention was to eventually replace the playpens with cribs. Eventually came earlier than I anticipated because I found some affordable – compact – cribs at Quality Classrooms. In all my year of perusing equipment catalogues I had never noticed that some of the cribs were compact – taking up no more space than a playpen – and on wheels too.

CCC-nap03

The extra space is now used to store the preschooler’s cots so they too are out of the way when not in use. Nap time set-up and take down now takes less than five minutes and all the children are visible while I complete the task. When not in use the cribs and cots are out of sight behind these rolling room dividers.

CCC-nap02

My intention is to use these dividers as easels for art activities but we haven’t tried that yet.
The best part is that all the napping children are within 12 feet of my centrally located desk and within 20 feet of an emergency exit. I’ve come to another conclusion too. As I’ve observed the children as they settle down for nap time I’ve noticed that there are no arguments when they can see me. They lay happily in their beds, talking or singing quietly, occasionally smiling and waving at me until they fall asleep.

I wonder if nap time struggles are not really caused by resistance to napping but rather by the feeling of being left alone in a ‘quiet’ space where the children may actually feel abandoned. Or, maybe these children sleep so well because they’ve been busy playing all morning and getting plenty of outdoor time too.