Creating Together Blog

Halloween Fun During COVID!

October 27, 2020 by Melanie

According to the government of Ontario, given the high transmission of COVID-19 in Ottawa, Peel, Toronto and York Region, traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating is not recommended. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have a tonne of fun, right?! Here are some trick-or-treat alternatives to get ready for this year, and make sure your family keeps the spirit of halloween alive!

1. Virtual Halloween Costume Party

The government of Ontario recommended it, and guess what – we are offering one! Creating Together Early ON Centre is excited to invite you to our Virtual Halloween Costume Party next Friday October 30th 🙂 We CAN’T WAIT to see everyone’s costumes and hopefully you all will enjoy our Halloween songs and craft activities!

On Friday October 30th at 10am, click this link to join: zoom.us/j/7391226799

Feel like hosting your own? Indy With Kids offers some great how-to tips here:

https://indywithkids.com/halloween-zoom-party/

2. Organize a candy hunt

It is recommended that this be with the people living within your household, due to COVID-19. So here’s some tips to do in advance, to make sure all goes smoothly ~

Get your costume ready! This would most certainly be better, of course, in costume 🙂
Treat contatiner – make sure every child has something to gather their treasures in.
Decide where to have the candy hunt. The sun sets around 6:15pm, so remember if it’s to be done outside, that the kiddos will need to have some flashlights / light sources 🙂
Plan an after-hunt Halloween activity to do while your children eat their treats (eg., one of the other activities here)

3. Carving Pumpkins

Looking for ideas? Spruce Crafts offers some awesome tips here: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/pumpkin-carving-ideas-for-kids-4153104

4. Share Scary Stories

KOA offers some awesome scary campfire stories which will do the trick, here: https://koa.com/blog/kid-friendly-spooky-campfire-stories/

5. Decorating Front Lawns, and Driving by the city’s best!

Trick-or-treat 2020 might be cancelled, but that hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from doing up their front yarns with some haunting delights! Once your done your own lawn, go and do a drive-by on some of the greates lawns in the city: The Brenyon Way houses, 1 Krisbury Avenue, and 27 Glenlake Avenue are just some of the usual spooky staples to check out!

Most importantly,

have fun, and stay safe!

Fun With Play Dough

October 13, 2020 by Melanie

Days are getting cooler, and it’s a perfect time to get cozy with some indoor activities and crafts – and one which we’ve noticed children just can’t get enough of, is homemade play dough! If you have a child who loves to bake and create, getting them involved in making it can also be a great activity in math, measuring, combining, mixing, and following instructions!

The Creating Together Play Dough Recipe:

You will need:

2 cups flour
2 Tbsp baking soda
½ cup salt
1 cup water
Food colouring
3 Tbsp vegetable oil

Directions:

Place the flour and baking soda in a bowl.
Combine salt, water and a few drops food colouring in another bowl and stir it well.
Pour the water and salt mixture in with the flour.
Knead with your hands until the desired texture is achieved. You might need to add a bit more salt or water.
Add vegetable oil and mix in well.

Tip: To keep the play dough from drying out, store it in an airtight container.

Once made, play dough can offer hours of fun and entertainment! In fact, in this blog by the artful parent, you’ll find 39 different fun activities that you can do with play dough: https://artfulparent.com/39-ideas-for-playing-with-playdough/

Enjoy!

Welcoming Fall

October 1, 2020 by Melanie

This year, the autumn equinox fell on September 20th, marking the first day of autumn. It’s a beautiful time of year, when the leaves start to change, we celebrate the harvest, and we start preparing for the colder days to come.

As a family or community, what are some ways we can celebrate and honour this time of year?

A time of balance…

Equinox literally means “equal night.” And during the equinox, most places on Earth will see approximately 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. This time of year can be celebrated as a time of balance. Play with the themes of balancing opposites, especially the symbolic senses of light and darkness in balance. It’s a great time to purge and let go of things you no longer need, restoring balance and peace in the home.

Getting curious about the science of it…

On the autumnal equinox, the sun is at zenith (it appears to be highest in our sky) over the Earth’s equator. The Earth’s axis tilts neither toward nor away from our sun, and the sun’s center is directly over the equator. After the northern hemisphere’s autumnal equinox, the subsolar point—the point on our planet’s surface that’s directly underneath the sun—travels into the southern hemisphere, gradually casting us into shorter and cooler days.

Here are some fun activities to do with your child, to help them understand the meaning of the fall equinox: https://www.kidzworld.com/article/2526-autumn-equinox

Why do leaves change colour?

When days begin to grow shorter, deciduous (green leafy) trees begin to signal to their leaves to stop producing chlorophyll, the green pigment responsible for the leaves’ color and photosynthesis. Because the color change is more dependent on light than temperature, it takes place at basically the same time year after year.

This fall, try making a game of watching the leaves turn in Parkdale. Gather them up for your nature table, or make some beautiful autumn art together. Check out these videos together, and have fun learning more about the mystery of changing leaves:

Why do leaves change color in the fall? from DNews
Why do autumn leaves change color? from Scientific American
Why do leaves change color in the fall? from Super Scienced

Celebrating the harvest…

Traditionally Autumn Equinox was a time of great celebration. The harvests were coming in and food was plentiful. Celebrations focused on gratitude and thanks for the bountiful harvests. In different traditions, the autumnal equinox takes on several names, including Mabon, Harvest Home, and Alban Elfed.

People give thanks for the sunlight and the fruits of the earth, recognize that we must share those fruits as we enter the harsher months, and prepare to turn inward in the winter darkness, to which they pay their respects. To celebrate, you could make a gratitude list, visit a local farm or farmers market, eat a fall harvest meal together, and decorate your home for the season!

Books to read together…

Here are a few great family books to read together for the autumnal equinox.

Grace Lin’s Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, Deborah Heiligman’s Celebrate Thanksgiving, and many other excellent picture books explore different cultures’ autumn traditions.
We Gather Together: Celebrating the Harvest Season (Wendy Pfeffer) introduces the science, history, and cultural traditions surrounding the autumnal equinox. This book also includes projects and recipes to try at home.
Pat Zietlow Miller’s Sophie’s Squash and Dahlov Ipcar’s Hardscrabble Harvest playfully bring our attention to the bountiful fall harvest we get to enjoy.

Orange Shirt Day: Because Every Child Matters

September 26, 2020 by Melanie

September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, “a day when we honour the Indigenous children who were sent away to residential schools in Canada and learn more about the history of those schools”. (CBC.ca).

Between the 1860s and 1990s, approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children were sent to church-run residential schools. The schools harmed Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forcing them to speak English or French instead of their ancestral languages, disconnecting them from their culture and traditions and forcing them to adopt Christianity in order to assimilate into Canadian society. The government has since acknowledged that this approach was wrong, cruel and ineffective, and offered an official apology to the Indigenous people of Canada in 2008.

Why an Orange Shirt?

The legacy of Residential Schools is still felt by survivors (former students), their families and communities, and on September 30th, the time when children were taken to these schools. But why an orange shirt?

The “orange shirt” in Orange Shirt Day refers to the new shirt that Phyllis Webstad was given to her by her grandmother for her first day of school at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in British Columbia. When Phyllis got to school, they took away her clothes, including her new shirt. It was never returned. To Phyllis, the colour orange has always reminded her of her experiences at residential school and, as she has said, “how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.” The message that Phyllis wants to pass along on Orange Shirt Day — and every day — is that every child matters. Orange Shirt Day was started by Phyllis to educate people about residential schools and fight racism and bullying.

What You Can Do

Share Phyllis’ story. You can watch it on YouTube or below:

2. Continue learning about what happened to Indigenous Peoples. Take a look at Phyliss’ book “The Orange Shirt Story“, written for younger people, and these 12 books, recommended for adults by CBC.

3. Join over 10,000 teachers and over 500,000 of Canadian youth on September 30 to honour Residential School Survivors, their families and communities at an extraordinary virtual event to support and encourage meaningful Reconciliation across Canada. For Grades 5 through 12: https://education.nctr.ca/

4. Wear your orange shirt on September 30th – not only because of the pain and tragedy that was caused, but to recognize the strength, resilience and healing of the indigenous peoples and our commitment to creating a better future, where every child matters.

Virtual Programming at Creating Together

September 8, 2020 by Melanie

Creating Together staff are committed to ensuring families are supported and having fun. Our doors may be closed, but our virtual programming is fully open!

Take a look below for a snapshot of our Virtual Programming offered on Facebook and Zoom, and download the pdf file here to access the embedded links to connect you directly to our facebook and zoom channels. Each week we explore a different theme, and there’s something special planned for you Monday through Friday so enjoy – and let us know if you need anything!

Virtual-Programming-Poster-Final Download