Day Nursery celebrates International Mud Day

Today marked the second international celebration by the Nature Action Collaborative for Children and the World Forum community of International Mud Day.  On International Mud Day children and early childhood professionals all over the world celebrate nature, outdoors, and mess by getting really muddy.  Two of our Day Nursery centers took the celebration to heart and sent notes home to parents this week so their children would come to school not dressed to impress, but dressed to mess.  Oh what fun they had at our Day Nursery Hendricks County Early Care and Education Center in Avon and our Day Nursery Northwest Center in Pike Township.  Thanks to our center staff who went the extra mile to make this a day to remember.

Here are pictures from today’s fun plus the Top 5 Reasons to Play in the Mud from Christine Kiewra, Nature Explore Education Specialist, World Forum Foundation Global Leader, and Farm Girl.

Day Nursery Northwest

1. Sensory: Mud is best explored with your whole self, using all of your senses as tools. It feels good, smells good, and can even sound good! The deeper you ‘jump in’ and push yourself beyond your comfort zone, the more you discover.

Day Nursery Hendricks County

2. Timeless: Mud can be played with over and over and never wear out. Our ancestors likely played with the same mud our children play with today. Experiences with mud can help children develop a sense of being connected to something bigger than themselves.

Day Nursery Hendricks County

3. Messiness: Playing in mud is messy. When you invite messiness into learning, it increases the complexity and opportunities for children to solve problems and figure out how the world works.

4. Flexibility: There is no right way to use mud. It can turn into anything your imagination conjures up. The longer and more often you play with it, the more delighted you are with what you discover and create. Leading scientists today who are studying soil have discovered that in addition to some harmful bacteria, there are also beneficial bacteria that may boost our immune systems.

Day Nursery Northwest

5. Universal: All over the world children play in mud. The more we know about the things we have in common and share with people everywhere, the more likely we are to understand and care about each other.

Day Nursery IU Health preschoolers explore nature

Ms. Cyndi and Ms. Brenda’s Preschool II class at the Day Nursery IU Health Early Care and Education Center found this creature on their playground and captured it with a plastic jar. This is what the children had to say about the bug which they later found out is called a Dobson Fly.  It was about 6 inches long.  Thanks to Ms. Charity for sharing the picture and the documentation of the comments made by our student scientists.

Ruby— “The big bug has pinchers.”

Kristopher– “It has wings.”

De’Andre — “It flies.”

Hailey– “I has a lot of legs….16.”

Noah– “That bug tried to get my face.”

Aiden– “Sometimes they like to play around.”

Molly– “We saw the big bug on the sidewalk and Ms. Natasha got it for us.”

Sean– “I think it eats grass.”

Genesys– “We can put it in the thing we had for our worms.”

Flashback Friday: Day Nursery Indy 1964

Flashback Friday takes us back to 1964 at the Day Nursery Lockerbie Street center where Gail Wilson (then known as Gail Brooks, RN) was a Public Health Nurse with the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County. She made monthly visits to Day Nursery to check on the general health of our students and administer TB tests. We are happy to be back to touch with Gail thanks to Facebook and our friend Jenny Rosebrock of the Day Nursery
Auxiliary.

Day Nursery Thankful Thursday: Summer Fun

Day Nursery Federal Center students enjoyed meeting Mother Goose after the performance at The Civic Theatre this week.

Hello summer!

Our children are enjoying the sunshine and have some great activities planned for the summer.

We are grateful to PNC, the Lilly Endowment Summer Grant and the Shaw Burckhardt Brenner Foundation for providing some of our summer activities including a trip to the Civic Theatre to see “Once Upon a Shoe“, Ruth Lilly Health Education Center, an Indianapolis Indians game and summer water and safety swim lessons at the IU Natatorium.

Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center Preschool graduation

The Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center Preschool graduation was on June 5.  The children sang a few songs and several of the children acted out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Teacher Marti Gough shared these photos.

Day Nursery Indy participates in United Way Event

Day Nursery senior management team at Thursday’s United Way of Central Indiana READ.TUTOR.MENTOR event on Monument Circle

Friday Faces: Day Nursery State Center Preschool grads

Mr. Tim’s Shining Stars of PS3 of the Day Nursery Indiana State Government Center led their preschool graduation ceremony yesterday. Teacher Tim Tegarden shared a few thoughts about their program when he sent this picture…..”All my stars shined brightly on stage. This is the American flag we made for our honorary graduate Ms. Amy. She received this flag at our ceremony presentation. My class said the Pledge of Allegiance and told the guests what they learned about the number of stars on the flag and what city and state our school is in. The children sang the song by John Lennon “Beautiful Boy” in sign language.”

Day Nursery preschoolers visit IPS kindergarten classroom

The PreK class of the Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center on 3522 N. Central Avenue had a blast going across the street yesterday to visit IPS School 48 to shadow their kindergarten class.  Day Nursery Center Director Shannon Garrity shared her observations about the visit…..”With graduation earlier in the week, our Pre K students are now ready for kindergarten. So, they got to experience what happens when you get to kindergarten. They made a chart before they left of all of their questions. When they got back to the room, they re-read all of their questions and had some great answers. One student asked if the “new friends in big school would be nice?” when she got back to her room, Ms. Caroline asked the child if the kindergarteners were nice to her and she responded a resounding “yes”. Upon pick up this afternoon, I could hear all of the Pre K class telling their parents how much fun it was today at the school across the street.”

Day Nursery PreK graduates leave IPS school 48 after their visit to shadow the school’s kindergarten class.

Day Nursery Friday Faces: Lemonade Day

Teachers and students at all 7 Day Nursery Centers said they really enjoyed the Lemonade Day experience from start to finish this year. At our Ruth A. Lilly Center on Central Avenue, Lemonade Day wasn’t over when the last cup was sold. The students in the preschool classrooms couldn’t wait to give back their proceeds to the Indianapolis community. I hope you can see in today’s Friday Faces  how Lemonade Day planted the seeds of philanthropy in our students.

Thanks to teacher Marti Gough at Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center for sharing this picture of her preschool students presenting a donation of $121.45 from their Lemonade Day Indianapolis earnings to the Mozel Sanders Foundation which feeds 40,000 on Thanksgiving each year.

Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center teacher Sara McHenry and one of her three-year old students made a presentation recently to Tracie from Project Home. The three’s class donated their $183.59 lemonade day proceeds to Project Home. This will buy the girls living at the home a dresser and a night stand.