Penny Lane Child Care and Early Learning

10/02/2026

10/02/2026

🌿 Sensory Play at Penny Lane 🌿

Sensory play is an important part of children’s learning! Exploring different textures, materials, sounds and movements helps support:

✨ Fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination
✨ Language development and new vocabulary
✨ Creativity, curiosity and problem-solving
✨ Early math and science concepts
✨ Focus, self-regulation and emotional well-being
✨ Cooperative play and social development

Our sensory bin is offered during free play, allowing children to explore at their own pace. We also use it as a calming activity or something extra to do on rainy days. Sensory experiences may be teacher-initiated or completely child-led—both offer wonderful opportunities for discovery!

The materials rotate monthly, and we create special themed experiences throughout the year—from brewing witch’s potions at Halloween to exploring sand, snow, water and floating experiments. Outdoors, the children can also enjoy our water table, sandbox and mud kitchen.

This month’s bin featured birdseed, pinecones, twigs, shovels and cups. Next up: a colourful fall leaf sensory bin! 🍂

At Penny Lane, little hands are always busy exploring, creating and learning. 💛

10/01/2026

09/24/2026

🍎📚 This Week’s Learning at Penny Lane 📚🍎

This week, we’re wrapping up our Back-to-School and Apple units as we prepare to begin our Fall unit next week!

During circle time, we’ve been counting apples, learning new rhymes and songs and enjoying apple-themed activities and games. Alongside our Back-to-School learning, we’ve also explored stories about friendship, self-regulation and positive classroom behaviour. The children are learning how to play cooperatively, share with friends, follow classroom expectations and use calming strategies when emotions feel big. 🌈

Our Work Time activities focused on fine-motor development, pencil control, tracing, counting, number recognition and shape recognition. The Apple unit has been a lot of fun—the songs and nursery rhymes have definitely been a classroom favourite! 🍏🎶

Next stop: all the colours, changes and discoveries of fall! 🍂

Love • Shine • Grow

09/17/2026

Circle Time: Where We Learn, Share & Grow! 🌈

🌈 Circle time is where we come together to connect, share, learn and grow! Here’s a little look at why this special part of our day is so important at Penny Lane. 💛

09/17/2026

🚜🐄 This Week at Circle Time: Farms! 🐓🌾

This week, our circle-time activities are all about farms! We’re learning what a farm is, exploring different farm animals and crops, identifying animal sounds, labelling pictures, building new vocabulary, counting and playing matching games.

Our learning has included farm-themed stories, songs and games such as The Little Red Hen, Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Barnyard Dance!—which gets everyone moving and dancing for some gross-motor fun. 📚🎶

The children have been very engaged, especially when Alexa joins in and makes the animal sounds for us! 😂🐷

These playful activities support early language, literacy, numeracy, listening, memory and physical development—all while making learning fun!

Love • Shine • Grow 🌈

09/16/2026

🌿 Learning Beyond the Classroom 🌿

Today, we enjoyed a walk through our neighbourhood! Our walks are more than an opportunity to get outside—they are an important part of the children’s learning and development.

As we walk, children practise following instructions, staying together, observing their surroundings and learning how to move safely through the community. We look for familiar places, notice changes in nature and have wonderful conversations about everything we see along the way. 🍂🏡🐦

Our infants and younger toddlers enjoy the ride, while children around 2½ begin walking around the block with a buddy. The buddy system helps children build confidence, independence, responsibility and connection while learning to look out for one another.

Neighbourhood walks also support:

👟 Gross-motor skills and endurance
👀 Observation and curiosity
💬 Language and conversation
🚦 Community and pedestrian safety
🤝 Cooperation and friendship
🌎 Awareness of the world around us

Every walk is a little adventure—and another opportunity to Love • Shine • Grow at Penny Lane! 🌈

09/15/2026

🍎🚜 Back to School at Penny Lane! 🚜🍎

We’re kicking off the new school year with our September theme: Apples & Farms!

This week, our little learners explored how apples grow and how they are harvested on the farm. We talked about picking ripe apples from the trees and the different types and colours of apples we may find in an orchard. 🍏🍎

For our creative project, the children painted with apples, using red, green and yellow—our apple colours—to make their own unique prints. We also practised apple counting before enjoying a delicious apple snack together. Learning you can eat is always a hit! 😋

Painting and creative activities help children:

🎨 Strengthen fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination
🍏 Explore colours, shapes, patterns and textures
💭 Develop imagination and creative thinking
🗣️ Build new vocabulary through meaningful conversations
🔢 Practise early counting and math skills
😊 Express themselves and build confidence

It was a wonderfully creative—and tasty—start to our Apple Farm adventures!

Love • Shine • Grow 🌈

09/15/2026

🎨 Creativity is part of everyday learning at Penny Lane! Our child-led, educator-guided activities encourage imagination, self-expression, confidence and fine-motor development—all while giving children the freedom to explore, create and have fun. 🌈

Love • Shine • Grow