Nature fun!

 Fall/Nature Fun at HDC!

    Our students have been enjoying the benefits of bringing nature into the classroom. This gives children opportunities to value, wonder and ask questions to investigate natural materials further. 

Here are a few of the nature based learning activities going on at HDC!

 

We are very lucky to have chestnut trees on our school property. The children love to collect the, "conkers" and use them for imaginative play.

Here the children are using chestnuts to make shapes.

The teachers and students then count how many they used to complete the shape. 

Lots of fun hands on math!

 

Here the children were using the chestnuts to cover the game board. The children had to roll the dice and identify the numeral that corresponded with the dots on the dice.

 

Chestnuts can be lots of fun to paint with using paintbrushes or by adding paint on top of them and rolling them around inside a box. This helps to strengthen their hand eye coordination and visual tracking skills.

Chestnuts are also super fun to play with!

Here the children sorted leaves by size. Big, medium and small. This activity also set the stage for great conversations about the characteristics of each leaf and helped the children use descriptive language and vocabulary. They were also able to compare and contrast the various types of leaves and learn which tree they were from. 

The children brought these leaf papers outside and tried to find which tree the leaves came off of. They had to use their visual discrimination skills to determine differences and similarities between the leaves and the tree. 

Leaves are great for a cutting bin too (and totally waste free)! This is a great way for children to start working on cutting skills and fine motor development. 

The younger children have been exploring apples! Marcie had cut ribbons of various lengths for the children to determine which one would fit around the different apples. This was a great hands on activity for our youngest learners to experiment with measurement and circumference.

Here the children were having fun weighing the apples and trying to balance them in the scale.

The children in our Kindergarten class went on a nature scavenger hunt! 

Click here for a copy of the scavenger hunt that they used.

Here are some of the children making a nature collage with some of the materials they found on their nature walk! They are going to use this to make a collaborative mural for their classroom. Great teamwork guys!

Here the children and teachers labeled parts of the pumpkin to explore and hung them in their science center. Since we are not able to have them all touch the pumpkin and explore together the teachers made sure to have them in a spot where everyone can see, discuss and ask questions.

Leaf rubbings are always a fun activity and help the children to look for details. The process of looking for detail strengthens essential visual discrimination skills, the same skills children use to learn the differences between letters.

Stacking pumpkins is great for hand eye coordination and learning through trial and error!

Nature truly is a wonderful teacher! It engages all the senses! We are so blessed to live in New England and enjoy the best of all the seasons, especially Fall! 

Happy learning friends!!!

October Books!

Here at HDC we truly love books!!!

The benefits of reading aloud to children is astounding and cannot be overstated! 

Click here to read a great article about the benefits of reading aloud to children and how to start reading to your own little one(s) if you haven't already.

Here are our favorite October books to read aloud with children!!! 

Missy - There's a Nightmare In My Closet 

by: Mercer Mayer

Aimee - There's Something In My Attic 

by: Mercer Mayer

Joan - The Very Busy Spider

by: Eric Carle

Marcie - Spookly The Square Pumpkin

by: Joe Troiano

Destiny - Five Little Pumpkins

by: Scholastic

Sonia - Dem Bones

by: Bob Barner

Maria - The Biggest Leaf Pile

by:Steve Metzger

Jasmine - The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything

by: Linda Williams

Mariah - Let It Fall

by: Maryann Cocca-Leffler

Cheri - The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear

by:Audrey & Don Wood

Celimar - Bear Snores On

by: Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman

Mel - Go Away Big Green Monster

by: Ed Emberly

Happy Reading Everyone!!!

Back to School 2020

Back to school looks a little different this year but we are still going strong!

HDC is happy to be your child's remote learning home away from home this year. 

We have also implemented a full time Kindergarten program to meet the needs of our families. 

We are nearing the end of our third week of school and the new students and classrooms seem to all be settling in nicely. 

The teachers (and older children) are all wearing their masks and keeping up with the EEC approved cleaning schedule and procedures. 

The children are all super eager to learn, see their friends and we are so happy to be your child's school!

Here are a few snapshots of all the learning going on!

Looking forward to a great school year!!!

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns throughout the year and we will be happy to help you! 

HDC Virtual Tour 2020

 Hi everyone!!! 

With all the new regulations in place due to Covid-19 we decided to create a virtual tour for you to see our Center. 

Here is the entrance (below) from the parking lot where children in rooms 1 and 5 get dropped off and picked up. 

Here is the entrance for room 2 for drop off and pick up.

Here is the entrance from rooms 3 and 4 for drop off and pick up.

We ask you to please scan your child in using the brightwheel app. Simply open the app, press check in, scan the qr code, complete all the screening questions, enter your 4 digit code, sign your name and hit submit. If you do not have the app please complete the paper each morning with the screening questions. For pick up, the teachers will sign out each child to keep everything touch less. 

Room 1 

Here is our Pre-K room!

Sonia and Maria are the teachers in this classroom.

Room 2

This is our Kindergarten room this year! 

Typically this is a preschool room but many parents asked us to consider doing a Kindergarten program as they knew their child was going to have a very hard time with online learning. We were happy to offer this service for our families this year to meet their needs.

Joan and Celimar are the teachers in this room and Jasmine in the afternoon.

Room 3

This is one of our preschool rooms!

Destiny is the teacher in this classroom.

Room 4

This is another preschool room!

Marcie is the teacher in this classroom.

Room 5

This is our School Age Classroom where we are assisting with the children's virtual learning this year.

Cheri and Aimee are the teachers in this classroom.

Here is the preschool playground!

Here is the school age / kindergarten playground!

Here is our tour of the office!

With the new restrictions the children are only allowed to stay with their classroom group and teacher(s), so we understand many of you do not get to see the other teachers...so here is a quick look at their staff frames and what rooms they are working in.

Click here to learn more about our staff members!

Here is the downstairs bathrooms, the upstairs classroom has its own bathroom inside the room. The teachers make sure to sanitize the bathrooms after each use.

Here are the children's cubbies to store their belongings. We ask that you please send everything in a zippered back pack and be sure to label everything.

We are following all the safety protocols and procedures set forth by EEC, CDC and DPH.

Feel free to look over the requirements set forth by EEC here.

End of tour, please feel free to reach out to us for more information! We hope to hear from you soon!

Haverhill Daycare Center

(978) 372 - 3901

Haverhilldaycare@yahoo.com

Shark Week 2020

 We hope everyone had a very happy Shark week!!! 

Our preschool classroom certainly had lots of fun learning all about the sharks of Massachusetts!

A few fun facts about sharks!

Hammerhead Shark - This shark's unusual name comes from the unusual shape of its head, an amazing piece of anatomy built to maximize the fish's ability to find its favorite meal: stingrays.

Great White Shark - When a great white shark is born, along with up to a dozen siblings, it immediately swims away from its mother. Born on the east and west coasts of North America, the south of Africa and southwest Australia, baby sharks are on their own right from the start. Their mother may see them only as prey.

Sand Tiger Shark - Sand tiger sharks are also known as sand tigers and gray nurse sharks. Like all sharks, they breathe underwater, through their gills. But sand tigers have one unique habit. They are the only sharks that come to the surface to gulp air, but not to breathe. The air ends up in its stomach. The air makes the shark more buoyant, so it can float motionless in the water as it watches for prey.

Basking Shark - Although it has hundreds of small teeth, the basking shark does not use them when feeding; instead, it usually swims with its mouth open and catches whatever plankton is filtered through.

Short Fin Mako Shark - The short fin mako shark is a large, predatory shark that lives in the open ocean and reaches lengths of 12 feet (3.8 m) and weights of at least 1200 pounds (545 kg). With top speeds of 45 miles per hour (74 kilometers per hour), the short fin mako is the fastest shark and is one of the fastest fishes on the planet.

Thresher Shark - When hunting schooling fish, thresher sharks are known to "whip" the water,using its tail like a whip herding and stunning prey. The elongated tail is used to swat smaller fish, stunning them before feeding. Sometimes the thresher shark will slice the fish in half before eating.

Blue Shark - Blue sharks are curious, open-ocean predators that live throughout the global ocean, from the tropics to cold temperate waters. They spend most of their lives far from the coast and are truly a pelagic species. The common name comes from the blue color of the skin, unique among the sharks.

Fun facts were found on National Geographic for kids!

The children loved finger painting the ocean and worked their fine motor muscles by tracing, cutting, tearing,and gluing the paper for the sharks!

The children did a fun match the shark activity! 

By identifying patterns and comparing similarities and differences in the sharks the children are learning problem solving and representation of different species. Since the teachers have it on a wall chart the children are also using their fine/gross motor skills and having to cross the midline** to put the sharks into their correct spots!

**Crossing the midline means that a body part (eg hand or foot) is able to 

spontaneously move over to the other side of the body to work there. The ability to cross the midline is important on the physical level as well as on the brain level. On the brain level, a lack of midline crossing may indicate that the left and right sides of the brain are not communicating well together. On a physical level, when your child spontaneously crosses the midline with the dominant hand, then the dominant hand is going to get the practice that it needs to develop good fine motor skills.

They painted shark hats with water colors

complete with fin and tails!!!

Each child had a bag with fish, each fish with a letter of their name. They were then encouraged to identify the letter and feed the hungry shark!!! They also worked on putting the letters of their name into the correct order! 

We are big advocates for hands on learning and this was a fun way to work on name and letter recognition. 

They learned a fun ocean song too...to the tune of Old MacDonald. 

Old MacDonald had an ocean, e i e i o. 

And in that ocean he had a shark, e i e i o.

With a chomp, chomp here,

chomp, chomp there, 

here a chomp, there a chomp, 

everywhere a chomp, chomp!

Old MacDonald had an ocean, e i e i o. 

We changed it up with a few other ocean friends too!

Crab - pinch pinch 

Fish - swish swish

Whale - spout spout

These were just a few of the fun activities that were going on throughout the week! The kids and teachers both had a ball learning all about sharks!

Hogwarts...no HDC!

Magical things are happening in our school age room this summer!

The children were sorted into their houses via a random drawing on the first day at HDC this summer. 

Just like at Hogwarts the children are able to earn points for their school triumphs. In our case at HDC we are focusing on the kind deeds that the children are doing in the classroom. After the lock down, we know that it is more important than ever to give special attention to the children's social emotional health. So by focusing on the kind deeds that they are doing for their peers and teachers we are hoping to build positive social relationships among the students. The teachers have decided to only spotlight the positive and not take away points for any negatives at this time, their hope is to build up each students self confidence and self worth. 

Here are a few of the things the kids know the teachers will be looking for. The kids also can give a shout out and let the teachers know when a peer helps or does something nice for them. 

They also brainstormed as a class how they might feel if another house has more points at the end of the summer than another. They also talked about what they can do to cope if they do get upset. It is important for children of all ages to learn that it is ok to not always win and that having fun throughout the summer is the most important thing. We also believe it is important to learn coping and self regulation strategies at a young age to be able to regulate their emotions more effectively and become successful adults. 

Here are the students house point logs, recent things they have done to earn points and their house maps they made!

You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart.

 Their daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart. 

You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal.

Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil. 

Or perhaps in Slytherin you'll make your real friends, 

those cunning folks use any means to achieve their ends.

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind.

Where those of wit and learning, will always find their kind.

The kids have had so much fun with the Harry Potter theme so far this summer and we love how excited they are to do kind deeds for one another!