Friday Faces from the Day Nursery Clarian Center

Day Nursery employee awarded Bev Henry Celebration of Service recognition

Vanessa Fletcher

Congratulations to Day Nursery’s own Vanessa Fletcher who was honored Friday with the 2010 Bev Henry Celebration of Service Award. Vanessa is the Assistant Program Director of  Child Care Answers , Day Nursery’s community outreach program.  The service award was presented at the IACCRR (Indiana Association for Child Care Resource and Referral) Institute.  Nominees for this honor possess outstanding leadership ability while demonstrating compassion, kindness, life-long learning and a sense of humor.  Vanessa sure fits that description! Congratulations to our colleague and friend for this great honor.

Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln

Today Day Nursery honored past presidents of our association, Foundation and Auxiliary boards at a brunch at the Indiana History Center in a room that overlooked the Day Nursery State Government Center.

To get our guests in the Presidents Day spirit, we invited the preschool classroom lead by Tim Tegarden and Day Nursery Director of Center Administration Patty Fisher, to share with us their knowledge of President Lincoln.  We were treated to Abe Lincoln trivia and a song by the children.  I will post pictures of the grown-ups attending this event a bit later today, but first, here are a few pictures of the children from this morning.

All the students did a great job with their Lincoln trivia

The children helped each other get prepared before their big performance.

Day Nursery State Government Center students gathered in the Gibson Boardroom before their performance.

Mr. T shows his students a picture of young Abe Lincoln without a beard.

Family friendly Mardi Gras parade this Saturday

Our friends at AYS are holding their Annual Mardi Gras Mambo parade this Saturday afternoon downtown on Mass Avenue.  This is a family friendly event that grows larger each year.  The AYS website has some great information about Mardi Gras traditions including information about making your own mask to wear to the parade.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, the AYS Mardi Gras Mambo on Mass Ave parade will begin at 3 p.m. from the Center Township Trustee parking lot at 863 Massachusetts Ave.  The family parade will travel southwest on Massachusetts Avenue to the YMCA at the Athenaeum for the Carnevale Fair from 3:30-5 p.m. 
Set up for the procession begins at 2 p.m. and streets along the route will be closed to traffic briefly as the procession moves through.  

Heres’ the route if you want to stake out a good place for your family to watch:

·         START on Davidson Street at Massachusetts Avenue

·         South on Davidson Street to St. Clair Street

·         West on St. Clair Street to Massachusetts Avenue

·         Southwest on Massachusetts Avenue to North Street

·         West on North Street to New Jersey Street

·         South on New Jersey Street to Massachusetts Avenue

·         Southwest on Massachusetts Avenue to Vermont Street

·         East on Vermont Street to Athenaeum parking lot FINISH

Log on to the AYS website for  information.

With love from Day Nursery Indy Colts fans

I am packing up the books I owe Royal Castle Child Development Center in New Orleans.  They won the books when the Saints beat the Colts on Sunday.  We were winners too because we made some great new friends.  Center Director Pearlie Harris and her staff are just starting their quest for NAEYC accreditation, a process we have been through many times in our 110 years of service to the community and so we have promised to mentor them any way we can.  You can be sure I will be including some “local color” in the box with the books in the form of pictures of our pint-size blue and white clad Colts fans. 

Day Nursery centers are open

All Day Nursery centers are open this morning.  Drive safely!

Text4baby campaign

I just read about this on Ragan’s Healthcare Marketing and Communication News this morning.

Moms-to-be are going to be getting a new tool—pregnancy tips sent directly to their cell phones. The free “text4baby” campaign is being sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, WellPoint and CareFirst BlueCross and Blue Shield. Several wireless carriers have agreed to waive fees for receiving texts. Moms who text “BABY” to 511411 will receive weekly text messages that focus on nutrition, immunization, and birth defect prevention.

Please drop me a comment if you sign up for this service.  I would love to hear if you think it is helpful.

Ft. Harrison center closed today

 UPDATE AT 1:00 PM: Repair work is underway and all indications are that we will be open for business as usual tomorrow.

The boiler is out at the Day Nursery Start Smart 4 Children and we have no heat today.  The staff is in the process of calling all the parents of children to tell them to pick up their children. If you have a question and can’t reach the center due to the high volume of calls, you are welcome to call us at the Day Nursery administrative office at 636-9197 ext. 227.

Our Colts fans are true blue

It’s game day so I thought you might like a little last-minute blue spirit from the pint-size Day Nursery Colts fans.  These pictures are courtesy of Shannon Garrity, Director of the Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center on Central Avenue.

Prize puppets delight Day Nursery children

As we head toward the big game this Sunday, I wanted to share with you a picture of the puppets we won in our wager with Community Day Nursery in East Orange NJ over the Colts-Jets game. Since we have 7 locations, it was hard to decide which classroom should get these very special puppets so we may have to purchase some more so everyone can enjoy them.  Today I visited our Indiana State Government Center location for their Colts parade and presented three puppets to the Twos II room lead by teachers Ms. Patricia and Ms. Nikki.  They were just sitting down to story time when I arrived so Ms. Patricia quickly incorporated the puppets into her story. The puppets were created by dollmaker Ida Clowney, who, in addition to being a talented seamstress, also performs as rag doll clown Miz Happi.  If you would like to get in touch with Ida about getting some of these puppets for yourself, she can be reached at Iclowney@aol.com. Our thanks go out to Kathy Burke, Executive Director of Community Day Nursery for sending us six of these adorable handmade puppets.  It was fun to make some new friends in the early childhood community and we were especially thrilled to find out that Community Day Nursery was founded in 1897 which makes them even older than we are, which makes us both part of a very special group of early childhood professional!