When Your Kid Goes to a Co-op

By Amy My daughter was born in January, two weeks past the cut-off date for kindergarten for September 2013. We decided to put her in preschool and found a good fit at Katimavik Cooperative Nursery School.

We took her to an open house during the summer and she started the afternoon program in September.

Katimavik has three excellent teachers, and my daughter has made fast friends. They do lots of crafts, which is her favourite thing, they play outside every day and they sing and tell stories. Some days she doesn't want to leave.

But this isn't about our great nursery school, this is about a cooperative.

When your child goes to a cooperative preschool, you as a parent become responsible for a lot of the things that happen with that school. Each family at KCNS has duty days, where a parent actually hangs out and helps out in the classroom. We have cleaning duties, we provide snacks for the whole class and we help supervise the kids when necessary.

The parents also make up the school executive – I accidentally volunteered for a position on ours – and committees. As cooperative parents we fundraise to help the school budget for resources and supplies.

I was a little overwhelmed when we went to our introductory meeting and learned about all the things we would be involved with at KCNS, but now that we're a month in I feel great about the school we chose. I got to spend a day watching my daughter interact with her peers and I've had the chance to have some great conversations with the teachers and other parents.

I think there are a lot of things I'll miss about the cooperative environment when the kid starts kindergarten next year.

The Annual Biology Butterfly Show

It's that time of year again! I'm not talking about the start of football season, or Thanksgiving, or even Fall. I'm talking about the butterfly show! The Annual Biology Butterfly Show at Carleton University is here and is open until October 14th. This is a free event open to the public and is pretty amazing. You get to walk around a greenhouse and admire all the colourful butterflies flitting about. Pick up a piece of fruit and hold it up and you just may have a little guy land on it.

The colours are just incredible.. from dull grey to bright blue and red and green, but the most impressive, in my opinion, is the Owl Butterfly from Costa Rica. When it closes its wings it looks like there's a big eye peering at you.

So grab the kids and your camera and head over to Carleton to catch the show before it's gone. And don't forget to take your picture in front of the huge picture of a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail butterfly. It's a tradition!

Tips:

• Don't bring a stroller. It's pretty cramped in the greenhouse.
• Don't wear a sweater because it's muggy and, if your kids are anything like mine, you might end up carrying one.
• Wear bright colours to increases your chances of having a butterfly land on you.

By the numbers:

• 10 - Days the butterfly show is open (October 5th - October 14)
• 9am - 4pm - Time you can go
• 1300 - Number of butterflies
• 41 - Species from around the world
• $0 - Cost of admission!

Have you been to check out the butterflies? What was your favourite?

Welcome to FlowersInspire and Little Florist Birthday Parties

FlowersInspire, our new sponsor, is a great idea for kids of all ages. They are a professional floral design studio providing inspiring, fun flower arranging experiences for all ages and interests. It’s fun, unique and you get to take your flowers home to share with the whole family. When you’re trying to decide what to do for your little one’s birthday party, I bet you’ve never thought of Flowers.

FlowersInspire, located at 174 Colonnade Road, provides everything you need for a Little Florist Birthday Party - all of the tools, containers and flower supplies for your birthday child and their guests. They offer one-on-one training for each kid and a great space to do it all. There’s room for your floral creations, food and fun. They even have space to open gifts.  Plus, they take care of the clean up, which makes it tops in my books.

For older florists and adults, FlowersInspire also offers Seasonal Floral Design Seminars where you can learn to create different arrangements throughout the year, celebrating occasions with unique, decorative, floral accents. And best of all, when you take a seminar and make your own arrangement, the cost is about the same as buying the same arrangement in a store… but you get the fun and experience of making it yourself!

Working with flowers is a great way for kids and families to connect and to tap-into with their creative side.

With FlowersInspire, it'll be a blooming good time (excuse the pun!)

Welcoming the NAC French Youth Theatre

Giveaway Closed It’s pretty cool that we live in the Ottawa Capital area, home to the National Arts Centre and some amazing children’s theatre. As Ottawa is a fully bilingual city and many of our Kids in the Capital readers are French or have kids in French immersion or French language school, we are particularly pleased to be able to introduce our new sponsor - the NAC French Youth Theatre. What a great way to get your kids to fall in love with both the theatre experience and to be able to practice using their French in an everyday situation. And since it’s French theatre, this post will be in both French and English - a first for Kids in the Capital.

The French Youth Theatre season has a pretty awesome lineup this season. The first French theatre event this month is Pomme, a delectable tale brilliantly told solely in French by Isabelle Payant in a performance that brings to mind the popular children’s television character Fanfreluche, who liked to retell stories and legends—in her own unique way!

In rhymes and images, through the interplay of shapes and objects in an ingenious set made of giant boxes that captivates young audiences ages 3 and up, the show unfolds an evocative fable about the great adventure of life. Through the magic of puppetry, Isabelle skillfully guides her engaging protagonist through a host of exciting adventures.

Un délice de spectacle à savourer en famille

Une délicieuse épopée menée brillamment par Isabelle Payant. L’interprète a un petit quelque chose de Fanfreluche : À l’aide de poèmes et d’images, de jeux d’objets et de formes, surgissant au milieu d’une ingénieuse architecture de cubes qui émerveille les enfants, le spectacle compose une fable évocatrice sur la grande aventure de la vie. Pomme a de beaux et grands rêves. Elle voudrait bien défier les lois de la nature et devenir un homme… À travers mille et une péripéties, l’épopée de ce sympathique personnage compose une fable évocatrice sur la grande aventure de la vie. À croquer!

As a kid, I loved the idea of getting dressed up and going to the NAC and I’m so excited to be able to share it with my children as they get older. Each month, the NAC French Theatre will host a spectacular presentation of poems, puppetry and fun for kids of all ages. The lineup includes Cendrillion, Le Grand Mechant Loup and Gretel et Hansel and your kids will have a blast and get to hear French at it’s finest. Take a look at the full lineup here.

And to get our readers involved, we’re giving away tickets for one play in the lineup. To win, just tell us in the comments why you’d like to see Pomme, or any other of the the awesome plays in the Youth French Theatre Lineup. We will pick one winner at random on October 15th.

Welcoming Just Play Toy Rental

Have you ever stood in your playroom and looked around at the toys and thought “Am I crazy?” I know that when my kids were small, no matter what toys they had, they only held their attention for a month or two before they were ready to move on. That can get really expensive. Which is why our new (well, technically returning) sponsor Just Play Toy Rental is a pretty awesome idea. New to you toys delivered right to your door! It’s pretty simple. You can go online and pick out the toys you want. They have all kind of developmentally appropriate toys, both big and small. Just Play Toy Rental focuses on purchasing high quality, open ended toys that will stimulate your kid’s imaginations. The toys are thoroughly cleaned using a product called Benefect - it is a 100% botanical (non-toxic) disinfectant. Typically, the standard rental period is 4 weeks (although daily rentals are available upon special request).

To make life even easier, you can even enroll in the Just Play Toy Rental subscription service. When you do, you will receive new to you developmentally appropriate toys on the selected delivery date. The number of toys will vary slightly depending on their individual retail value. The rental period is 30 days, starting from the day the toys are delivered. The toys will be picked up and another toy package delivered 30 days later.

How awesome is that? Just when your kids are starting to get bored, boom! A brand new delivery of toys. And don’t worry if your child just cannot bear to part with a toy. If that happens, you can actually purchase said toy. All problems solved.

Welcome back Just Play Toy Rental. We’re so excited to be able to promote your awesome service. And stay tuned, we will have a reader review of Just Play coming really soon.