Building a Sand Castle Is More Than Fun!

Water and sand play are exciting sensory activities that will engage children of any age…and what better place to play with water and sand than at the beach!

The hot summer weather opens up so many opportunities for play-based learning. If you’re planning to take your family to the beach this year, you can incorporate some simple activates that will encourage learning and exploration.

One of the easiest, and more memorable experiences you can create at the beach is building a sand castle. You’ll have a blast with this classic activity, but the benefits far surpass excitement and fun!

Sensory Fun. I love sensory activities - they are easy to incorporate in most activities, but when you are playing with sand and water, it becomes even easier! No matter the age of your children, there are many opportunities to learn during sand castle building. Learning everything from cause and effect, to texture, scooping and sorting, is possible when building a sand castle. Your children can start off by exploring and building with their hands, and then you can add in tools and buckets to help their creativity flourish.

Fine and Gross Motor Skills. Shovelling, building, and even just walking through the sand have major benefits. They all improve gross motor skills. Combined with fine motor skill activities like filtering sand through fingers, sifting, patting and measuring, your child will build their physical development skills in a fun and exciting way.

Like Skills. Building a sand castle will allow your family to work together to create something unique. Cooperation, team work, creativity and communication are skills required to complete your very own castle.

Measurement Skills. Filling up a bucket of water and then dumping it out is super fun for a toddler, but it can actually help teach some basic measurement skills. Basic understandings of depth, volume, weight and measurement can be easily explained when your building your own castle, or even just playing in the sand and water.

Next time your at the beach, keep these skills in mind. You’ll be able to support the play-based learning that goes along with exploring sand and water. And don’t forget to help your kids find a new stick, stone or seashell to decorate their sand castle. This can turn into your own exploration of nature, or even a pre-planned scavenger hunt.

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

Mud Day 2015 Kicks Off Our Summer Camps!

 Mud Day was the perfect way to kick off our summer camp this year! We have many new friends in the program and we had plenty of fun getting to know one anther as we squished, rolled and even slid in the mud!

We ran out to the playground and much to our amazement there were buckets, pools, sensory tables, and more filled with MUD! We kicked off our shoes as quickly as possible and jumped into the buckets. We noticed that the mud was "squishy and wet and cold."

We enjoyed squishing the mud between our toes and making big mud splashes. Next, the children got the idea to paint the cars with mud. C said, " It's so cold on my feet! Wow it's nice!" We used the fly swatters and brooms to paint a large mural with mud. It was amazing to see the shock in the children's faces as the mud flew back and hit them in the face. The end result was an amazing mural of dripping mud and water. As it dried the children came to touch the mud. We enjoyed having a small water and mud fight and splashing each other.

In the afternoon, we came back out for some time in the mud kitchen. We filled the sinks up with water and mud and the children went wild cleaning and making lots of soup and pizza. We also put our mud kitchen to good use as we cooked up mud treats & decorated the walls with mud handprints.

This day was so exciting for all of us to explore this messy, muddy world! Our toddlers love any opportunity to get messy and explore. We wish that every day could be mud day!  The children were super excited to play in the mud. Some were a little cautious at first while others dove in. Literally!! The pool full of mud was a hit. They jumped right in squishing it between their fingers and toes, sliding in it, making mud balls and even rubbing it all over their legs and arms. They also enjoyed the water and mud table. Some friends made "mud pies, smoothies and milkshakes".

Their favourite thing to do with all the mud was to chase Michelle with it. They got her good. She was covered in it! I think she had just as much fun as they did!

Indoors (after we hosed down and dried off) we enjoyed mud dough (playdough with coffee grounds in it), muddy water and brown mud paint. Getting dirty was a whole lot of fun today! Brooke made us a special afternoon snack in honour of mud day. Dirt n worms of course! Yum! (we'll also have fruit too).

Summer Camps at Discovery started June 29th and run until week 10, Sept. 4th.

Here is a list of our 2015 camp themes.

Week #1 Oh Canada, "Eh"? June 29 -July 3 Kicking off the summer could only be made better by celebrating our wonderful country together! We will have a week filled with red and white fun and facts and will learn about a wide range of all things Canadian. Children will be introduced to our nation’s diverse and interesting cultures and languages, lands, sports and leisure activities as we enjoy fun in the sun together. 

Week #2 Globe Trotting July 6-10 A trip around the world in a week! Experience and learn about foods, crafts, culture and languages of other countries on the map. Children will also go on a “geo-caching” adventure this week.

Week #3 Eat This! July 13-17 Using our garden and smart grocery choices to learn and create healthy, nutritious and delicious concoctions together. We will also learn about herbs and spices, their health benefits and just how they change the flavour of the things we like to eat.

Week #4 Befriending the Forest July 21-25 Connecting with nature through daily forest adventures, hikes and picnics. We will get to enjoy a small taste of Forest School as we discover ropes, shelters and tool use together.

Week #5 CLOSED July 27-31 

Week #6 Gelling with Geology Aug 4-7 What is a geologist and what do they do? Learning about rocks and minerals and how they are mined, where they are found and what they are used for. We will also explore and learn about fossils and where they come from.

Week #7 Community Helpers Aug 10-14 Learning about some of the many helpers and emergency professionals in our community, what they do and why we need them.

Week #8 Weather Wonders Aug 17-21 Examining weather together in its many forms from precipitation and temperature to wind, rainbows and extreme weather. We will also learn about why and where different types of weather occur around the world.

Week #9 Space is the place! Aug 24-28 Exploring the stars, satellites and planets. Learning about our solar system and what exactly those astronauts are up to and having fun with rocket ships and “aliens”.

Week #10 The Birds & the Bees Aug 31-Sept 4 Learning how to identify Ontario’s birds as well as how to attract them to our yards through feeding and gardening. We will also learn about the importance of bees in nature and the problems they are facing

For more information about our summer camps visit our webpage.

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