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October at Room to Bloom was festive and fun with lots of the color orange and pumpkins taking over the space.
We hosted our first special event this month with Special Guest Snow White (@PartiesByCarole) performing for 90 minutes. She sang songs, acted out the story "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything" and played games like Halloween bean bag toss and ring toss. Families enjoyed pizza, Snow White cupcakes (from @OneLittleCake), ghost bananas and clementine pumpkins. It was a wonderful evening and the joy on all the children's faces was just amazing to watch.
October also brought multiple power outages, starting at the beginning of the month losing power on two different days from a downed transformer on County Way and culminating in losing power for a few days with the big storm. We stayed open knowing that it can be hard at home with little ones in the dark and handed out flashlights to the kids to play flashlight games with. Circumstances were far from ideal but we still managed to have a fun time!
Fridays in October were busy - Room to Bloom hosted Enza's weekly FREE New Mom's group and kids were encouraged to wear their Halloween costumes. I remember when my kids were younger they did NOT want to take those costumes off for weeks :) We had a last minute social media promotion for a Halloween discount for anyone that came in costume on 10/31. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @RoomToBloomBeverly to hear about other impromptu offers!
We're currently working on adding a few murals to our space at Room to Bloom for your children to enjoy. Behind the big play structure will be a menagerie of animals - monkey, giraffe, bear, hippo, turtle, elephant, and lion. It's been a really cool process to watch the sketch go up on the wall as white chalk, followed by paint with depths of colors. Our second mural will be on the column near the themed rooms and will feature an underwater scene.
Our enrichment has been going well. October saw Fall Foliage Week, Fire Safety Week, Columbus Day Week, Pumpkin Week, and Halloween Week. Hopefully lots of families have been able to enjoy our Monday thru Thursday curriculum. Please leave us feedback, either in person with an employee or through our "Get In Touch" button on our website, if you have suggestions of something that your child particularly loved or had difficulty with! Consider a 30 day unlimited membership to really maximize your opportunities to do our enrichment activities. On a cold late fall/early winter day, it's nice to be able to drop in for a quick visit and see what we have out that's new!
We have been focusing our enrichment on core competency skills such as:
Fine Motor skills (pinching a cotton ball with a clothespin to paint a fall tree; using tongs to pick up pom-poms and collect them inside a paper towel tree; practicing lacing and threading skills on a pumpkin cutout)
Gross Motor skills (dropping pop-poms through a paper towel maze taped to the wall - facebook has a fun video of this event!; bowling and stacking with ghost cups)
Writing/Coloring (fire safety booklets; coloring printables that match the week's theme)
Shapes (using shapes to make a firetruck & a witch; painting a pumpkin using a pool noodle; rolling out orange playdoh and using pumpkin cookie cutters)
Colors (mess-free color mixing - see what happens when you squish red + yellow paint together in a ziploc?)
Art (gluing Apple Jacks to create a colorful fall tree; creating fall leaves out of handprints; making a sailboat out of paper plates & popsicle sticks; designing a pumpkin suncatcher to take home; gluing white, yellow & orange tissue paper to create a candy corn collage)
Dramatic Play (playing pirate after making a sailor hat and decorating a telescope)
Sensory (popcorn kernels + mini pumpkins + leaves; stuffing fall leaves in (and out) of a container; firefighter sensory bin with firetrucks and Marshall from Paw Patrol; ice boats in the sensory bin; mess-free Halloween sensory bottles)
Can't wait to see what November brings!
From your steward to provide a clean, welcoming, and stimulating space for your family to grow and develop,
Kristin Besse, owner of Room to Bloom