The last blog talked about the Hawks’ initial contact with the new routine and new activities. Once that was done, they were able to explore, discuss and adapt. This is not always easy but the Hawks have demonstrated that they are all ready to participate, work nicely as a group and have fun!
The trips to the track were a great example of this, we got to try six different athletic sports – steeplechase, hurdle jumping, hammer throw, shot put, relay races and long jump. For the first two, we actually made our own track right by the daycare, using some children hurdles and then adding plastic shapes to simulate the steeplechase water drop. The relay races couldn’t have gone better, the Hawks understood the technique almost immediately so they were able to have many goes at it. Even if hammer throw and shot put were quite tricky, the Hawks still tried their hardest!
What was also nice about revisiting the track was being able to try out the different routes there and back. Once we had gone through most of them, the Hawks got to discuss and decide which one is the best, which unsurprisingly ended up being the forest route!
In the first week of October, we had our last track day of the season. We left early that day, so we could try and play all the sports that we had learned. On that day there were some workers preparing the track and the rest of the sports areas for winter, which was quite an interesting for the Hawks to see. After we were all done, the Hawks had a cookie as well as a quick but super fun visit to the Angry Birds park. Now that the cold is here it is time for ice skating, but in spring we will go back to the track, and maybe even have our own little Olympics.
There were also some days that we had to take different routes, the first time was to the fire station. There, we got to see the inside of a real fire truck and learned about all the tools. Not only that, we even got to “put out” some pretend fires with the help of a fireman and a hose. Earlier that week we had our fire drill in daycare. It was raining that morning and all the Hawks got very wet…but we now know what to do in case of a fire, even for rainy days!
Our next trip was to the library, for story time. We listened to a nice story about friendship, and then got to color some space pictures. We couldn’t leave empty handed so every hawk chose a book to take back to the daycare to read during our own story time. We have now read all of the books, the Hawks chose some very good stories! Hopefully we can go back and get more some other time.
Lastly, the Hawks went on their first ice skating trip, which went excellent. The walk there is nice and easy, since most Hawks remember it from last year, which means they get to spend a fair amount of time on the ice. Everyone was very brave and seemed to enjoy the activity. Since this will be our sports activity for over a month, it will get better and better, just like our trips to the track.
This month they have also spent a bit more time inside than the last, mainly working on birthday charts and finalizing our first space project. The Hawks have done a lot of hard work and have learned very interesting facts about our solar system throughout this process. Earlier this week the Hawks had the first planning session for our next activity, the rocket, where they discussed what materials we will be using to build it. And of course, we also had some special days where we did special activities, such as the parents’ coffee, Pajama Day, Diwali…and the most recent one, our Halloween craft. There is also Father’s Day coming up, so that is probably the next craft the Hawks will start working on.
