Simple and Fun Sensory Activities to Explore at Home

We spend a lot of time at the Discovery Child Care Centre planning creative and engaging sensory activities for the children. Earlier this month, we spent time outside squishing “coloured” mash potatoes in the outdoor sensory bin. We used our hands and shovels to scoop up the mash, identify colours, and then squish them together with our hands.

The children enjoy exploring textures and colours with these types of activities, and they love to get messy and have fun. Sensory activities allow our children to learn through play, and they also help develop and cultivate different skills.

Activities like our mash potato play allow children to learn by using their senses – this is one of the most effective teaching methods as children learn best and retain the most information when they engage their senses.

By allowing children to explore and investigate through sensory activities, you’ll help them develop and refine cognitive, social, emotional, physical and creative skills.

Here are some sensory activities that’ll be fun (and messy!) and easy to do right from your home. Simply choose one of the following “ingredients,” fill up a bin or container and watch the exploration unfold. You can also incorporate different scoops, bottles, lids and measuring cups and spoons.


1. Mashed potato play.

2. Dry pasta noodles.

3. Sand.

4. Bubbles.

5. Cooked spaghetti.

6. Corn kernels.

7. Soapy jars.

8. Uncooked beans.

9. Rice.

10. Shredded Paper.


Feel free to add colouring to some of the ingredients to allow colour exploration – doesn’t “rainbow” bubbles sound more fun? And you can even make it a bit messier by incorporating paints with different tools like sponges, brushes, or anything unexpected like bubble wrap, ribbons or straws. A less messy option is to throw in some toys - farm, construction, dinosaurs or even holiday themes will help you engage your children even more.

Follow us on Facebook for more sensory activity ideas - we regularly post stories about our exploration adventures!

You can also check out some great examples of sensory activities here via PBS and see how each activity can be linked to learning a specific skill set.

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

Tips For Gardening With Kids

Gardening with your children is a creative and fun way to encourage love of nature and healthy eating. There are some major benefits to involving your children in gardening, from improving life skills, teaching respect for living things and encouraging exploration, to enhancing fine motor skills and forming early responsibility.

Whatever your reasons, gardening is a super fun activity that you can enjoy in your own backyard or community garden!

Here are some great tips to help you get started:

Start Early. The toddler years are the perfect time to start building a garden. You can encourage your children to take part in gardening with simple tasks like watering the houseplants or outdoor garden. When you’re ready to start building an outdoor garden, begin planning early so you’re ready when the nice weather hits. Encourage your children to take part in the gardening process starting from the first time you plant the seeds.


Encourage Involvement. Keep your kids interested by involving them in the entire gardening process. Ask them questions while teaching what plants need to grow. Depending on your child’s age, you can also encourage your child to take the lead. Encourage them to choose where you plant the seeds and allow them to plant the seed on their own.

Encourage Exploration. Play-based learning is one of the most effective methods of teaching. You can support the exploration not only with the garden, but also by growing plants that attract wildlife. Plants that attract insects will also pollinate your flowers, helping you get a good crop of vegetables!

Take Pictures. Encourage your children to take pictures of the plants throughout each stage of growth. This will help keep your children involved in the process while you’re waiting for the plants to grow.

Choose Your Plants Carefully. Try to choose plants that don’t require a lot of work. Sunflowers, lettuce, radishes, potatoes and snow peas are among the best options for children. Aim for plants that grow quickly or easily.

Harvest Together. If you decide to build a vegetable garden, encourage your children to help you harvest the garden. This is the stage of growing that you’ve been waiting for, and involving your children may encourage them to eat more vegetables at your next meal.

Make it Fun! Let your kids explore and get messy in the garden. Exploration is nature is an exciting experience that can lead to many teachable moments that are fun for you and your children.


Make sure to wear hats and tons of sunscreen when you are spending time outdoors gardening. Enjoy your garden!

Interested in learning how we incorporate gardening in our child care program? Contact us today for more information!

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO) Writes About Our Forest School

It was wonderful to have our new Forest School Kindergarten featured, and on the cover, of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario (ADCO)'s magazine recently. I enjoyed speaking with the author, Andrea Hannen, about forest schools and our experience at Discovery Child Care, here in Barrie.

Here is an excerpt of the article, "Discovery Child Care Launches Simcoe County’s First Licensed Forest & Nature School Kindergarten", and a link to read the full article in a PDF.

Discovery Child Care Launches Simcoe County’s First Licensed Forest & Nature School Kindergarten [by Andrea Hannen]

"This fall, long-time ADCO member Discovery Child Care in Barrie opened the first licensed forest and nature Kindergarten program in Simcoe County. There are only a handful of early learning forest schools available to Ontario families, but demand for this time-tested and holistic pedagogical approach is growing rapidly Canada-wide.

 Internationally, forest schools began to appear in the 1950s. There are more than 700 of them in Germany alone. Generally speaking, the children attending a forest school spend a least half of each day outdoors. In many cases, the children are outdoors 80% to 90% of the time. Woodlands, greenspaces and other outdoor areas provide the settings for a forest school, but a key component is repeated access to the same outdoor space, so the children can observe the natural cycles of the seasons and the local environment.

The activities that happen in a forest school vary, depending on the season, climate, landscape, animals that have visited the night before, trees that have blown down in the wind, and the kinds of provocations elicited by the educator. Forest school programming incorporates a wide variety of learning activities facilitated by various forms of play, such as ; symbolic play, creative play, exploratory play, rough and tumble play, fantasy play, dramatic play, social play and imaginative play. “Almost any kind of programming that we can do indoors, we can adapt for the outdoor environment,” says Karen Eilersen, RECE, owner/operator of Discovery Child Care.

Eilersen has nearly completed the Forest School Practitioner certification, a process that takes considerable time and effort. It requires one to be a certified teacher or Early Educator and to complete a five-day intensive training sessions, eight months to a year of at-home course work, followed by a series of practise sessions in the forest. Forest School Practitioners are certified by Forest School Canada.

 The Discovery Forest School offers Barrie-area families a legitimate and licensed alternative to regular kindergarten. It follows the Ontario Early Learning Framework, Continuum of Development, so despite its many non-traditional elements, it ensures children are well-prepared for grade one. Discovery’s Forest School program, which runs daily from nine until noon, is taught by two Level 3 certified Forest School Practitioners and two classroom teachers. The program maintains a one-to-four teacher/child ratio while in the forest and a one-to-eight teacher/child ratio while in the indoor/ outdoor classroom."

Contact us today for more information about our Forest School program!

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

5 Easy Activities that Will Help Your Bring Nature-Based Learning into Your Home

Learning through play is an essential element of the Discovery Child Care Centre curriculum because it has the power to significantly impact the development of your child’s skills and abilities. When we connect play-based learning with a natural classroom, it results in increased attention span, healthy brain development and many other amazing benefits!

Our outdoor learning centres are the foundation of our natural classroom and offer numerous opportunities for individual learning. Learning through nature and play can be easily extended into your home or backyard by incorporating some of these fun activities!

Build a Garden. Growing your own vegetables may seem like a huge undertaking, but it doesn’t have to be! A garden of any size can create opportunities for learning for children of all ages. Designing, planting, harvesting, preparation, nutrition - the teaching opportunities are endless! If you are concerned about the time and space required for a garden, you can start with an herb garden or even a small boxed garden.

Go for a Nature Walk. Let your little one explore as you head out on a nature walk. Balancing on logs, observing and naming elements you discover, and measuring and digging, are all elements you can incorporate. You don’t have to take a trek in the forest to take advantage of the wonders in nature. Simply rethink your take on nature. While you likely pay no notice to a patch or grass or pile of dirt, your toddler would surely love to explore it.

Create Nature Art. Collect some natural items such as twigs, bark, pinecones, stones and leaves, and create your own masterpiece. This activity will drive creativity and imagination – let your little artist pick their own materials and start creating.

Play with the Mud. Do you have fond memories of making mud pies? Give your children the chance to get their hands dirty and explore the wonders of the earth. Use earth, soil, dirt, mud, water and let them go wild! Try not to worry too much about the mess – designate a place for “mud play” and have fun!

Create a Backyard Habitat. This activity is a great option if you’re limited on space. Make a simple bird feeder or butterfly house to increase the frequency and diversity of wildlife near your home. Your backyard habitat can be built to attract birds, insects, toads, frogs, turtles, butterflies, worms and much more!

As your child learns and grows, you can expand your natural “classroom” to include a wider variety of activities.

Contact us today to learn more about our flexible, play-based curriculum and how we help connect children with nature.

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

5 Reasons Why We Love Ropes at the Forest School

The Forest School philosophy is based on nature-based learning in the beautiful outdoors! The natural environment provides numerous opportunities for exploration, while also helping to reduce stress, increase attention spans and foster healthy brain development.

The last few weeks allowed us to explore the forest as it goes through seasonal changes from summer, to fall, and to winter. You may have noticed in our Forest School Blog that we have had many adventures using ropes during play, but you might be wondering why.

Aside from being so much fun, using ropes during play has some amazing benefits:

1. Imagination. Our children enjoy playing games with the ropes, from crafting a rope web for climbing or swinging, to creating a rope pulley system, or even putting friends in “jail”! Ropes provide an outlet for new games and support a healthy imagination.
2. Building New Structures. We often use ropes to help build our tents – we hang ropes from the trees and can create a new structure every time we’re in the forest. The children learn how to adjust the size of the tent using different lengths of rope and tying ropes to different trees.
3. Fine Motor Skills. Practicing tying knots is the perfect way for children to develop their fine motor skills. Fine motor skills refer to the movement of hands and fingers, which also rely on gross motor skills such as strength in the arms.
4. Gross Motor Skills. Practicing climbing, balancing and bouncing on the ropes develops each child’s gross motor skills, which involve the large muscles of the body. Jumping over ropes and ducking underneath will also help build these skills.
5. Health and Fitness. Climbing, hanging, swinging…and sometimes even flipping…allow the children to participate in a healthy exercise, that keeps everyone moving, but most importantly, focuses on fun.

Every day we spend in the forest is full of new adventures. Our ropes help us explore, climb and build new things...and most importantly, the children love playing with the ropes!

Contact us today for more information about our Forest School program!

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

Rawrrrr! Apatosaurus, Triceartops, Tyrannosaurus and more!

Have you heard of the Dinosaur School Curriculum?  This is a program created by the Incredible Years that we use in our preschool and kindergarten classrooms 2-3 times per week.

The Incredible Years Dinosaur Social Skills and Problem-Solving Curriculum©  is a comprehensive video and theme-based curriculum that is based on social skills, emotional regulation and problem-solving.  The main goals are:

• Positive social skills

• Conflict and anger management skills

• Emotional literacy

• Appropriate school behaviours

• Reading, writing and communication skills

• Positive self-esteem

The program consists of seven units with their own dinosaur themes:

Apatosaurus Unit 1: Learning School and Home Rules

Iguanodon Unit 2: How to Do Your Best in School

Triceratops Unit 3: Understanding and Detecting Feelings

Stegosaurus Unit 4: Problem-Solving Training

Tyrannosaurus Rex Unit 5: Anger Management

Allosaurus Unit 6: How to Be Friendly

Brachiosaurus Unit 7: How to Talk With Friends

The Dinosaur School is an amazing way for us to teach these important skills, but in a way that is incredibly fun for our students.  All aspects of the curriculum focus on:

• Using a child-centered, relationship-building teaching philosophy

• Integrating research-based principles of learning

• Valuing the developmental stages and abilities of children (ages 3 to 8 years) as well as acknowledging individual differences in temperament and learning styles

• Opportunities for encouraging cultural diversity

• Regular involvement with parents in all aspects of the curriculum and learning process

• Utilizing learning approaches based on children’s active experiences with peers and materials

• Integrating academic competencies (i.e., reading, writing, math, oral language) with social and emotional competencies

• Activities that encourage children’s choices and self-direction in learning

• Respect for children’s and parents’ input and inclusion of adaptable materials to address themes meaningful to children within a particular classroom and community

• Multiple opportunities designed to encourage language, literacy and writing development

• Strengthening children’s emotional regulation and problem-solving

We will be opening a new toddler program at our Big Bay Point location on January 12. Contact us for more information on the program or information about our Dinosaur School Curriculum.  

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychid.on.ca

Its Snow Time | 11 Family Activities for a Flurry of Fun

It’s a winter wonderland.  Or at least it will be!  Our first snowfall has already melted away, but we all know that won’t last too long.

Your kids are all set with their own snowsuits, snow mittens and boots – but are you? Invest in your own snow gear and take advantage of these 11 family snow activities that will encourage learning through play, during the most wonderful time of year.  

1. Go Tobogganing.  There’s nothing more fun than this classic winter activity!  Find a safe hill and head out as a family.  This is a great learning opportunity – make sure your children are aware of their surroundings and know how to stay safe.  Once the safety rules are clear, you can encourage exploration.
 
2.  Build a Snowman.  How can you make this classic activity more fun?  Search for different sticks or other nature-based items to dress up your snowman.  You can even incorporate old clothing or food colouring.  

3.  Colour the Snow.  Create colourful sprays using food colouring and water.  Then let imaginations go wild!  Your children will love spraying different colours all over the snow’s blank canvas, leaving trails and “artwork” everywhere.  Our Forest School children loved this activity – see how much fun they had here.

4.  Make a Snow Angel.  Create your own angels and try exploring different depths of snow.  Laying in the snow will also allow your children to explore a new perspective – encourage them to describe what they see.

5.  Make a Snow Sculpture.  Encourage your children to create their own snow masterpiece.  Use hands, shovels, spoons – or any other tools you can think of!  

6.  Build an Igloo.  Explore different shapes as you build your snow blocks, or consider creating a family igloo project that incorporates ice and colour.  Did you see this igloo last year?  What an amazing family project.

7.  Have a Winter Picnic.  Hot chocolate is the perfect addition to any winter activity, so why not plan a fun outdoor picnic?  Check fire regulations to see if you can incorporate a toasty winter campfire.

8.  Go on a Winter Hike.  Take a walk through the forest and explore the seasonal changes. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for animal tracks.

9.  Set Up a Scavenger Hunt.  In your backyard or during your forest walk, you can create an exciting scavenger hunt to find nature-based items such as pine cones or sticks.  Consider incorporating colours, letters and numbers into your hunt.

10.  Check Out Holiday Lights.  You can walk around your neighbourhood or look for municipal light displays like the Barrie Festival of Trees display at Centennial Park.

11.  Do A Good Deed.  Consider shoveling your neighbour’s driveway as a family.  Whether they are on vacation or have difficulties shoveling it themselves, your neighbour will be incredibly grateful and you will be passing along a valuable lesson.

Enjoy your family fun - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychid.on.ca