Holiday Hours

The Prescott YMCA Child Care Department is offering full Day Camps for Kindergarten through 14 years of age. Operating hours are 6:30am-6:00pm Monday through Friday from December 20-31, 2010 (except Christmas Eve, see below). Daily rates are $18 for YMCA Members and $20 for Community. An annual $30 Registration Fee also applies. Please contact #777-9277 for more details.

Please note the following holiday closure for Christmas Eve, 12/24 (Friday).
Child Watch closed
Preschool closes early, at 1:00pm
School Age Day Camps close early, at 1:00pm

For New Years Eve, 12/31 (Friday) we will be open for regular hours.

Please enjoy a safe and cheery holiday with your family.

Seasons Greetings from your Prescott YMCA Child Care Staff

Prescott Resort Gingerbread Village

Have you been to the Prescott Resort lately? Well, gather the family and drive up the hill to see the "World's Largest Gingerbread Village"!

The Prescott YMCA After School groups worked hard creating their addition to the village which is their version of Rapunzel's Castle from the new Disney release, "Tangled". The gingerbread castle was the brain child of one of our youngest children, Ryder. It is fitting that Rapunzel's hair is made from red licorice, as Ryder is a red head himself.

If you've not had a chance, please go and visit Prescott Resort to see Rapunzel's Castle made by YMCA kids as well as all of the other impressive creations!
The Resort's display will continue through January 2, 2011. Click here for further details. Prescott Resort Gingerbread Village.
Happy Holidays!

Child Watch Spotlight

Did you know that you can participate in "free babysitting" at the YMCA 5 days a week, 12 months of the year?

If you are a Prescott YMCA Member and have a child / children that is between the ages of 1-9, you are able to utilize our complimentary Child Watch Services. Our friendly and knowledgeable staff will make sure your child is happy and safe in the Child Watch room, while you are just feet away participating in a fitness class, or just hitting the weights and treadmill for the day.

Child Watch is open from 8:15am - 12:00noon Mondays through Thursdays, and on Fridays from 8:15am - 11:15am. All participating families must have an active family membership at the Prescott YMCA. Parents are required to stay on the YMCA campus at all times that children are in Child Watch, and children may stay a maximum of 2 hours per day.

Stop by, check out Child Watch and sign up for your Family Membership at the YMCA today!

We're for youth development, healthy living and social responsibility.

Parent Appreciation Night

Dear Parents,

As our way of thanking you for choosing the Prescott YMCA for your child care needs, we are offering, once again, a FREE! night of child care for your kiddos!

On Friday, December 17th from 6:30pm-11:30pm your kids will have dinner provided plus swimming, crafts and other activities to keep them entertained while you enjoy an evening of shopping, having date night or just on your own for a change.

In order to participate, your child must be currently enrolled in our licensed child care programs (After School, Adventure C.O.R.P. or Preschool) and all payments up to date.

For questions or sign ups please see Alicia for School Age and / or Stephanie for Preschool.

We are looking forward to it. Check your calendar and sign up now!

Thanks again for bringing your kids to the Prescott YMCA.

Adventure C.O.R.P. Certification Update

Our Adventure C.O.R.P. program, which is for young adults ages 10-14, has been incorporating new curriculum in to their days since the school year has begun. Mr. Josh has been proactive in making sure that the leadership training and survival skills continue throughout the academic year.

The last few months Adventure C.O.R.P. took on a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training course which was largely successful. They learned Disaster Preparedness, Emergency First Aid and Fire Extinguisher 101. The C.O.R.P. had fun learning to create evacuation plans, applying first aid and learning how to triage someone. Most of all they learned how to extinguish, not play with fire. In the end they earned their CERT shirts and vest which are only given to those who completed the course.

A big thanks to Ms. Crystal Macari and the Central Yavapai Fire Department for brining this opportunity to our Adventure C.O.R.P.!

Annual Christmas Program Invitation

This digital invite personalized with Smilebox

Thanksgiving Feast

What a wonderful way to spend the day. Thank you to all of the families that participated and contributed food for our annual Thanksgiving Feast. Once again it was a great success and lovely way for us to all spend time together and show our love and support for the Preschoolers.

Scrapbook design generated with Smilebox

Newsworthy!

Our Lights on Afterschool Event (finally) made it to the press!

Please click this link for the Prescott Daily Courier to read the article and see the photos.

Thanks again to all that contributed in making our event special! Afterschool programs are hugely important in our communities. We appreciate your support in keeping kids active, healthy and well supervised.

Community Reception Invitation

Please join us!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16th
5:00-7:00pm
Prescott YMCA Lobby
Help us prepare for 2011 with a community reception!

Meet the Y Board, our caring staff and our valued Members

Learn about the exciting things that we are doing at
the Y today and share your great ideas for the future!

Annual Thanksgiving Feast

We can hardly believe that it is that time of year again...our Annual Thanksgiving Feast is scheduled for next week! Be sure to make time to join your child or grandchild for the best potluck in town!

The kids will be in costume and the food will be a'plenty. So pencil us in for your lunch break next week and bring a dish to share! We are looking forward to this very special day.

This scrapbook personalized with Smilebox

We kept the Lights on Afterschool

Thanks to all that helped (especially the YMCA School Age Staff) with our Lights on Afterschool Event! It was wonderul.
Despite the wet weather, the kids enjoyed games and colored their Lightbulbs indoors. We then had sub sandwiches as well and enjoyed parents and other community members visiting with us. Stay tuned to the Prescott Daily Courier, where the event will likely be featured.
See you next year for Lights on Afterschool.

Lights on Afterschool

Help the Prescott YMCA Celebrate Lights on Afteschool on Thursday, October 21st from 4:00-6:00pm in the After School Building. We will have a potluck, bring a friend day, games, special snacks and more!

Afterschool programs are a vital support for youth, families & communities. They keep kids safe, inspire them to learn and help working families. The engaging, hands-on experiences provided by afterschool program help youth develop the skills they need to succeed.

The Lights on Afterschool program helps to highlight the importance of these programs for kids.

Did you know?
15.1 million school age children--more than a quarter of all youth--are alone and unsupervised after school. That's an increase of nearly 1 million children in the past five years. (America After 3 PM, 2009)

The hours between 3p.m. and 6p.m. are the peak hours for juvenile crime and experimentation with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and sex. (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2002)

Currently, the federal government contributes only 11 percent of the cost of afterschool, while 29 percent of the children in afterschool meet the federal government’s definition of low-income and in need of federal assistance. (Afterschool Alliance, 2009)



We hope that you will join us for our special event! Please contact Jessica Leary, Child Care Services Director for more information. 928 445 7221 ext 36
(E) childcare@prescottymca.org (W) http://www.prescottymca.org

The Y: We're for youth development, healthy living and social responsibility.

Fire Department Visit & PHS Pep Rally

I must say we are lucky to live in a community like Prescott where Preschoolers at the YMCA can enjoy a special safety visit from the Fire Department and a field trip to the high school all in one week! It was lovely to see the support from the F.D. and PHS students and faculty in taking the time to enrich the days of our Preschoolers. Thanks also to the parents that assisted us in the Fire Department presentation and the field trip too. The children behaved so nicely, practicing their best manners and walking safely all the way to the high school. I encourage you to follow up with a conversation about the week's events with your child. Perhaps they can show you how to "Stop. Drop. and Roll" or demonstrate the cheers they used to encourage the Badgers.

The SPOT Children's Museum

This summer we had the pleasure of experiencing the SPOT Children's Museum Field Trips with both Preschoolers and our young Summer Campers. The SPOT is a new museum for exploration and experimentation with art for our young Prescottonians. The YMCA kids had a blast making collages and playing with all of the magical manipulatives at the SPOT! Located at the Gateway Mall in Prescott, this is a convenient and economical way to spend the afternoon with your kids too.

Quality First Funding at Work in our Preschool

Did you know that the Prescott YMCA Early Childhood Center (Preschool) is participating in Quality First?

Quality First is a statewide system created by the Arizona Early Childhood Development & Health Board, knows as First Things First. Quality First is designed to increase access for Arizona families to quality early childhood developmental and educational programs. Through financial grants, academic scholarships for Child Care Staff and individualized coaching, our Preschool is receiving wonderful support…and it shows!

In the upcoming weeks you will notice new material (rubberized mulch in addition to sand) on the Preschool Playground area to improve the safety for the little ones playing. We are excited to be receiving the funding from Quality First to enable us to execute this project. Later in the year new furnishings, dramatic play items and learning tools will also be purchased using our grant monies. In addition to these visible changes in our Early Childhood Center, there are “invisible” improvements too in the way of additional training for our staff in the areas of allergies and sun safety, courtesy of our Child Care Health Consultant as well as topics such as supervision, maximizing classroom arrangements and incorporating Arizona’s Early Learning Standards.

Our Preschool is AZ State Licensed and DES Approved and currently accepting children ages 2-5, that are non-diapered, to join our active, dynamic program.

Volcano Project

In May of 2010 the After School group worked on a special Volcano Project. They designed, constructed and engineered a functional volcano made of pvc pipe, paper mache and a wooden base. Candy and soda were the secret ingredients for the eruption, but the mechanism had to allow for distance between the volcano and the person(s) releasing the candy / soda mixture. The video is attached of the eruption and below are the credits for those responsible for this project, which we hope to duplicate again in the 2010-2011 school year. The kids (and parents, leaders, etc.) talked about it for weeks following. It was a blast! (pun intended).


Lead by: Mr. Josh
Eruption Crew: Max F. Dalila G.Caleb M. Brianna B.
Eruption Design: Max F.
Eruption Assembly Crew: Max F. Olivia B. Brianna B. Chris S.
Volcano Crew: Shelby D. Max F. Dakotah L. Zeke A. Skylar A. Madison L. Jewell A. Ashley V. Taylor H. Caleb M. Brianna B. Dalila G.

Summer at the YMCA = busy days for Child Care!

So, if you are a follower of this relatively new blog, you may have noticed a lack of recent postings for the last several months. My explanation boils down to one word: SUMMER. Summer is a busy time around the YMCA. With the kids being out of school, we are the place to be for young and old. This year, with the addition of several new programs such as Adventure C.O.R.P., Snack Shack, and Enrichment Camps the summer was busier than usual. We are happy to provide exciting opportunities for the kids here in the Quad-City area. Field trips were another point of success for our Child Care Programs. We are extremely grateful to the community agencies and businesses that contributed to our summer programs.

I will attempt to highlight many of our summer happenings at the YMCA. Better late than never, as they say. The pictures alone are worth a thousand words. I am sure you will agree.

Dramatic Play, Painting and Show and Tell

Dramatic Play (i.e. dressing up, pretending and acting out real life situations) is very important for the development of children. At the YMCA we try to offer various levels of dramatic play opportunities that are age appropriate and long enough in duration to satiate these needs for the kids. Boys and girls alike enjoy dressing up and playing "house" or "teacher" and sometimes more unique fantastical situations are created by their imaginations as well.

Painting is an obvious choice of activities for children and adults alike. For our preschoolers it allows them to practice fine motor skills, express creativity and experiment with color combining (blue and red make purple!), etc.

Show and Tell, which is done at the Preschool on Fridays, is a wonderful way for children to develop verbal skills and confidence speaking in front of a group. Are you fearful to address large crowds? Perhaps you did not have enough opportunities for success when speaking to groups as a child. Practice, practice, practice in a safe environment makes for a less stressful experience as an adult.

Look at our Garden Grow

In an effort to give kids the chance to learn about how our food grows, we have started incorporating a children's garden in to our ongoing curriculum and experiences here in our YMCA Child Care Programs.

One of their first steps was to release some worms in the ground. Ms. Sara explained how the worms would help by making "air tunnels" in the dirt and also that their droppings would fertilize our young plants. The kids sure found that last bit entertaining...and talked about it at length for the rest of the day. The children had made pinecone bird feeders made of pinecones rolled in peanut butter and dipped in bird seed the week prior. They hung them with care to attract the birds to our garden area also. The finches flocked there for a couple of weeks until the bird seed was all eaten up. They were fun to watch from the playground.

These photos show of some of our Pre-K classes planting seedlings that they started indoors in the early spring. They were planted in early May and now surely look different! Stay tuned for photos upcoming of the current state of our wonderful Children's Garden.

Preschool Graduation and Open House

Once a year we like to take the opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of even our littlest scholars. The Prescott YMCA Preschool holds an annual "Graduation" where parents and family members come and celebrate the growth in the children over the last academic year. This year, our School Age Director, Alicia and Group Leader, Josh learned to play Pomp and Circumstance to add some special bits of ceremony to our event. It was wonderful.

Following the Graduation event, we held and Open House for all of the soon-to-be Kindergarteners and their families in the School Age Building. All of the School Age kids and their families were also invited. Jessica, a group leader barbequed, we had a celebratory cake, and other snacks contributed by parents as well. The School Age children were awarded merit badges based on their improvements throughout the school year. The group leaders also provided fun with water baloon toss and other games to keep the kids smiling.

Although the Open House was an inaguaral event, we will surely include it in the future. The families seemed to really enjoy the festivities. Stay tuned for the date next year, in early May.

Healthy Kids Day was a great success!

Thanks to all of the families that came out for the fun and the opportunity to register for summer programming last Saturday! We had a nice turnout and all of the staff had a nice time entertaining the kids while the parents got summer plans worked out!