Broad Street Family Daycare

Baking together is one of our favorite ways to learn and have fun! Today the kids helped make homemade cinnamon raisin bagels - measuring, mixing, kneading, and of course sneaking a little taste. Activities like this build teamwork, fine motor skills, and early math concepts… plus, the best part is enjoying a warm treat we made ourselves! ❤️

🍋 Check out our lemon clock experiment! 🍋
A lemon clock works like a simple battery where the lemon's juice and two different metals, zinc and copper, create a flow of tiny energy particles called electrons, which we call electricity. The zinc loses electrons, which then travel through wires and the clock to the copper, where they combine with other particles inside the lemon. This movement of electrons creates an electric current that powers the clock.

Our younger friends at daycare got in on the fun too! They were able to explore their senses by touching, smelling, and tasting the lemon along with helping push the metals into the fruit! We all had fun preparing, learning about and observing our awesome lemon clock! 🍋🕰️

⏳☀️ Last week, we learned how to tell time the old-fashioned way… with a sundial! We made ours using just a paper plate and a pencil.

A sundial works by using a fixed pointer, called a gnomon (our gnomon was the pencil), to cast a moving shadow onto a marked dial plate. As the earth rotates, the sun appears to move across the sky. This makes the pencil’s shadow shift to different spots on the plate, showing the time of day.

We absolutely loved watching the shadow move and learning that people used sundials to keep track of time long before clocks and watches were invented. Such a fun mix of science and history! 🌞🕰️

Happy International Day of Friendship!

Today we celebrate the little friendships that grow bigger every day at daycare! Whether it’s holding hands on the playground, sharing toys, or giggling through snack time - these little ones are learning the building blocks of kindness, empathy, and connection. 💛

Friendship starts here. Every day at daycare, we see little moments of connection like this one - that remind us how children learn, grow, and build meaningful friendships through play, kindness, and shared experiences. 💛

When daycare has a field day!
We ❤️ summer ☀️🍉🌻⛱️🌈

Check out our DIY solar oven! And yes, you're seeing that right - S'MORES! We built this awesome solar oven with just a few materials we found hanging around daycare like tape, glue, foil, black construction paper, plastic wrap, and a pizza box!

Here's the Science Behind It:

Solar Radiation: The sun emits electromagnetic radiation, including visible light and infrared radiation (heat).

Reflection: The aluminum foil lining the inside of the pizza box flap reflects the sunlight, concentrating it into the box.

Absorption: The black paper, placed at the bottom of the box, absorbs the sunlight and converts it into thermal energy.

Heat Trapping (Greenhouse Effect): The plastic wrap creates a transparent barrier that allows sunlight to enter but traps the heat inside, preventing it from escaping. This is similar to how a greenhouse works.

Thermal Energy: The trapped heat increases the temperature inside the box, allowing food to cook.

What would you try cooking in this oven? The kids had some fun suggestions!

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Welcome to BSFD! Our program is loved by friends and family for our nurturing and educational environment. See for yourself why BSFD is the perfect place for your child to grow and thrive! Call or text to set up an interview and learn more! ❤️🌈✏️

We had a blast creating catapults using simple materials like popsicle sticks, spoons, and rubber bands. This STEM experiment not only provided a fun and engaging activity, but also helped children develop a deeper understanding of physics and problem solving skills. By building and testing our catapults, we were able to see firsthand how different variables like tension and angle can affect the distance and accuracy of the launches. This hands-on experiment promoted creativity and fine motor development as the children carefully assembled and adjusted their catapults to achieve the best results, incorporating elements of physics, engineering, and math, making it a well-rounded and beneficial learning opportunity for all involved! ✏️📚✂️

Have you ever wondered how arctic animals actually stay warm? Animals like walruses, seals, and polar bears all have a thick layer of fat, called blubber, that keeps them warm in the icy waters of the Arctic and Antarctic. And polar bears have black skin underneath two layers of fur that help trap the heat when they are on land.

Today we experimented with icy water, a kitchen towel (in place of of shortening) which is the original (and much more messy) representation of a polar bears blubber (thick layer of fat) and a plastic bag (to keep our towel and hands from touching the icy water).

Students first touch the icy water without any insulator to better understand just how cold it really is in the arctic and Antarctic. Next, they wrap their hand in a towel which represents the blubber, then seal it with a plastic bag, and submerge their whole hand in the icy water bowl! Our hands actually stayed warm while wrapped up in the layer of “fat” while being completely submerged in the water. Pretty awesome way to show our little friends how insulators work!

Here is a fun fact: Although you often see Polar Bears and penguins together in books and movies, they actually live at opposite ends of the earth. Polar Bears only live in the arctic (North Pole) and penguins live in the Antarctic (and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere).
🐻‍❄️🦭🐧❄️🥶🧊

We had so much fun with our stem bridge challenge! We learned about the six basic bridge forms - beam, truss, cantilever, arch, suspension, and cable-stayed. We found out through research and demonstration, that the strongest bridge shape is made of triangles! This type of bridge is called a truss bridge. Triangles are structurally the strongest shape because they allow weight to be evenly spread throughout a structure, allowing it to support heavy loads. Beam bridges are the weakest bridge, and are usually good for spanning short distances. Cool! 🌉

Build imagination and creativity through play 💫🚒☀️