Creekside WonderKids

06/22/2024

Tide Pool Camp 2024 🥰

06/22/2024

Bug Love Camp!

06/22/2024

May and June have been a whirlwind and I’m kicking myself for not posting in ages. Being a mom of 4 active kids and wrapping up end of school year activities extended further into summer than I wanted. Posting pictures for my memory book! I’m not sure what this Creekside page will evolve into but I’m hopeful it will give people encouragement to slow down, smell the roses, hunt for snails, build resistance to weather, and give parents/grandparents the courage to live by a Mantra that: Five and under PLAY is enough! Thank you all for following along! ❤️

05/05/2024

Two amazing weeks in the books. These outdoor explorers have had the best weather to romp and play! We are starting to find more creatures in the woods and got to explore 104 earthworms in our sensory table!

Tinkergarten invitations have included: “What can you weave or bend together to make something new?” And “What can you turn something ordinary into?” (aka This is not a stick….its a _______).

We have celebrated birthdays and keep inching closer to the end of the school year. Lots of chatter about Kindergarten and summer plans. Lots of feelings going on about all those topics. In the meantime, Ms. Ricka is just going to take each day at a time and soak up these sweet children I’ve been blessed to learn and grow with this year ❤️

04/22/2024

Happy Earth Day! Sometimes I feel like every Creekside day is an Earth Day ❤️. We had a wonderful week last week! The weather was spot on and the creek started finally going back to its home. We had some very determined preschoolers who wanted to find a box turtle and the forest didn’t dissapoint!

Our Tinkergarten invitation this week was “What can you make by blending things together?”. We have been working on this skill from day one in the mud kitchen but I offered novel items this week with colored chalk, shredded paper, and a bag of potting soil. We had mud pies, cakes, cupcakes, soup, and some artwork.

We are so blessed to have such a fun outdoor classroom that allows kids to create, problem solve, and learn to share material. We are getting closer to the end of the school year and I’m in denial with my buddies flying the coup soon. Bittersweet feeling.

04/11/2024

04/11/2024

04/11/2024

Creekside Soupy Spring Days are some of my most favorite days to witness the creative process preschoolers embark on. So much learning goes on during these days. To a lot of you this just looks like “play”. The ”p” word has unfortunately been given a bad reputation and to many equates to non-learning. Im here to tell you that mindset is pure rubbish.

Today (and everyday at Creekside if I’m honest) I witnessed scientists, teachers, cheerleaders, chiefs, artists, mathematicians and detectives navigate gross motor, fine motor, social emotional (perseverance, joint attention, confrontation, empathy builders) and most importantly problem solvers to concur tasks. What does a preschooler need to know? Can it be taught during calendar and worksheets? Is that really the best way?! I sure don’t think so!

Our Tinkergarten invitation this week was: “What can you build with things(nature items)you have broken into pieces?” The creativity was beautiful and it had nothing to do with me as the adult in the room. I just created an environment, extended the invitation, and stepped out of the way. Days like this make all the mess worth it.

Learning is fun. If it’s not, you are doing something wrong.

04/04/2024

Abracadabra it’s Spring! At least it was on Tuesday! Today it felt more like winter but that didn’t hold back the magic at Creekside!

We loved getting back to our indoor and outdoor classrooms and kicking off a Spring semester of Tinkergarten Creativity!

We loved our invitation to create Nature Nectar potions this week and happily reconnected with our favorite preschool treat: Friends!

Over Spring Break and this week we celebrated 3 friends turning 5! My little birds are hatching and gearing up to fly out of the nest and onto their next adventures! I‘m so grateful for this amazing group of kiddos! ❤️

03/14/2024

We didn’t catch a leprechaun or their pot of gold this week but we did catch some JOY! We had so much fun this past week getting into the holiday spirit! Crafts, good books, and the absolute BEST puddle jumping day! Can’t believe Spring Break is HERE! I’m pretty pumped about having some rest and then jumping into a semester of CREATIVITY using Tinkergarten curriculum! We are so excited for Spring!

03/14/2024

Rainbow week was full of color and crafty fun! We loved the Spring-like weather and ditched our hats and gloves!