SD10 - Arrow Lakes Nakusp Early Learning Child Care Centre

May is Child Care Month and we are recognizing the incredible early childhood educators who make a difference every day. We want to take a moment to appreciate the amazing team of educators at Nakusp Early Learning and Child Care Centre—Cheryl, Kimberly, Kumi, Lora Mae, and Michele—who bring dedication and care to our little learners.

Today, we're shining the spotlight on Michele Hildebrand, the newest member of the team, who joined us this past November. Her hard work helped open our new Infant and Toddler room, creating a nurturing space for our youngest learners.

Thank you to our fantastic educators for your passion and commitment to early childhood education! ❤️

Keep reading for a special Q&A with Michele as she shares her experience and insights:
💬 How long have you worked in the child care field?
"I have been working with children for about 20 years."
💬 What inspired you to pursue a career in child care?
"Knowing that I can make a positive impact in children’s lives is what inspired me to choose a career in this field."
💬 What is the most rewarding part of your job?
"There are so many rewarding parts to this job. One of them is observing the students explore the activities at their own pace and learning through play."
💬 Can you share a memorable moment that made you feel proud of your work?
"Building a safe and happy foundation for the kiddos to learn, trust and grow is one of the memorable moments that make me feel proud of my work."
We are so grateful for educators like Michele who bring warmth, dedication, and expertise to our little learners every day! 💕

🌟 We've Been Busy Since the Summer! 🌟
We are so excited to share that Nakusp Early Learning Child Care Centre has been hard at work expanding! 🎉
We’ve officially opened our new Infant/Toddler Room AND our second Multi-Age Room! 👶👦 Both spaces are designed to offer a nurturing, engaging, and educational environment for children of all ages.
And the best part? We have open spaces available! 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️
If you’re looking for a wonderful place for your child to learn and grow, we’d love to welcome you to our community! 💖🌈
Contact us today for more details or to reserve a spot!
nelcc.sd10.bc.ca [email protected]

Our School Age Spring Break Camp was a real hit with a full house of kids enjoying outdoor games, arts, crafts and science activities!

Our children continue to learn through play at the Childcare Centre! Mr. Garvey and Ms. Kumi are seen here with our amazing children sharing stories, and then lots of outdoor fun!

In the After School Care program, we love to build and create! The Lego offers endless hours and possibilities to create, construct, and collaborate with each other to make our ideas come to life. A recent discovery of a Lego app furthered our explorations!

We love to cook and bake! We’ve had many kitchen adventures, including making cookies, cupcakes, pizza (starting with the dough!), and pancakes with apple butter. The kids love to participate in the whole process, from measuring ingredients, to mixing them, and kneading the dough for the pizza - their keen interest in eating those tasty treats and foods we prepare encourages them to see the project through to its completion.

From Miss Kate: In the After School Program, we enjoy pursuing our interests in exploring materials and science experiments. Here, we are making slime. We have discovered, through doing this experiment several times, that the borax solution (the activator) should be minimal and the process of kneading the slime creates the stretchy texture we are going for. Some students further explored adding soap into their batches, creating an even softer, smooter slime. As another experiment with the slime, weeks later, we tested our theory that the slime could stretch all the way down the hall to reach the library. Working together, we stretched out our slime - made it at least half way down the hall! We have also made edible slime using marshmallows - a particular favourite for the kids!

For our book theme on the left, we told a learning story on the book “I am not a BOX” The children decided what it was and we wrote it down and put it on the board. “I am tow truck, my name is Mater(FM) I am a blue car( WC) I am a bunny (AF) I AM a dinosaur. I am big car(WC)

From Kumi and Cheryl: In our multi-age program, we continued to work on winter activities. We are thrilled to have Grade 7 students come as big buddies and read stories to our children! We continue to work on our social emotional development, creative arts and developing our fine motor skills. Every day we learn letters and make sounds. And as you can see on the slide, physical education is very important to do every day both outside and inside!

We like to do pedagogical narration which simply telling learning stories and making it visible. So on Pink Shirt Day we read books and spoke about kindness. As you can see in the picture, we then documented what the children said in response to the question: How can you show your kindness at school? We wrote what the children said on the pink shirt art work, “Give hugs, Smile, Be helpful, Share my Toys, and Caring.”