A new feature on our blog will be "Friday Flick". I'm hoping to take one video a week of the kids to post on Fridays. I can tell you about what we do, but it's not quite the same as seeing it. I'm hoping this will help you feel a bit more a part of your child's daycare experience.

Today's flick is from our afternoon Rainy Day Box time. We got out our animal action books, which is a first for most of these kids. Our second book, the one I taped, is "This is the Way".  When you see them looking above the camera, that is where I was holding the book. Each pictures shows the animal and a kid imitating the animal.

Enjoy!

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Today we played outside for 10 minutes after breakfast....and then the skies opened up and it rained the rest of the day! Since we couldn't play outside this afternoon, we opened up the Rainy Day Box, and got out the animal action books.

We learned our first letter today....Aa. We made an "A is for Apple" craft. Very simple...paper A with some apple stickers. But it helps them learn the "shape" of the letter, and begins the process of learning to write it. It also reinforces the sound. You will see one of these for most letters throughout the year.

I think the first week back in the "preschool" routine went fairly well. Since we don't have our big kids anymore, I have had to remember that I have a younger group, and back things up a bit. For example, I realized today that no one was going to guess that today was the 11th, and it didn't help to give the clue of what comes after 10. So instead of telling them, we found out the answer by counting the days so far in September. A few of them got it then!

Today we finally got started on our new "preschool" year with our new curriculum. I really don't want to call it preschool, but at least you know what I'm talking about! I had planned to start yesterday, but because of the previous night's storms, everyone (myself included) was tired and lacking energy/motivation.

Our first theme is apples. Today we talked about the parts of the apple. Please note that I don't get overly technical on anything we do. We keep it simple and basic.

We are also trying something new with our theme-related art projects. In the past, this has always been a large group activity with all the kids sitting down at once to work on these. For at least the time being, we will be changing this to a small group activity, which means only a couple kids at a time will be working on the project. Because of the current ages and abilities of the kids, I feel this will allow me to better help each individual child. It will also allow me to easily modify the project for each child's abilities. Sometimes in the past the kids have had to wait to begin the next step of the project, and this should eliminate some of that as well.

Today we made a paper plate apple. We left the one side of the plate white, and used our fingers to dab brown paint dots for the seeds. We then painted the other side of the plate red. It looks like the apple has been cut in half, and reinforces the parts of the apple. Once they were dried, I used brown yarn (stem) to hang them in our windows.

Yes, there is a baby fish in our playroom tank! Apparently, our two platies decided to give us a little gift. We spotted the little guy yesterday. Or at least we think there is only one. There is so many hiding places in that thing that there could be more!

Today has been a strange day. It got off-track a bit from the start, as I walked Jory down to his first day of school during breakfast. Grandma came early to stay with the kids. It was also quite odd not having our four big kids here today (Cody, Jory, Colby and Aiden). However, things happened today that I just wasn't expecting.

Because we didn't have our "leaders" here today, I knew things would be different. Anytime there is a change in enrollment, there is a change in the dynamics of the group. I was expecting the group to seem a bit more "lost", but instead it was the complete opposite. When we went outside this morning, they paired up very differently than normal, and had some great imaginative play going on. Towards the end of our outside time, Brooklyn had found a ladybug and the kids all formed a circle sitting on the patio and watched it crawl around.

During Circle Time, we talked a bit about what our school-age friends might be doing. Our indoor free play time was also different than expected. I spent most of it observing, and came up with some ideas on how to set up for next week.

One of my favorite moments this morning was when I put on a CD and almost everyone joined in to dance. Not sure who started it, but suddenly everyone had a stuffed toy to dance with!

Yesterday was a very difficult day for me, as Colby and Aiden were heading off to kindergarten. They have both been with us since they were 1-year-olds. We had a great day of celebration, though, even though Bev shed a few tears. Ok, I'll be honest, a lot of tears. Here's a couple photos from the day:

Water balloons!

I grilled burgers, and we ate lunch in our swimsuits. 

Sorry, forgot to take pictures during the Banana Split phase of the party day. That is traditionally our Back-to-School treat.

Our kindergarteners:

Have a blast in school, guys! Your teachers are very lucky to be getting such great kids in their classes!

 But we'll miss you like crazy. 

This week is "Off to School"! We are talking about how Colby and Aiden will be starting school this week, and reading lots of books about kindergarten. We also have some special activities out that are favorites of those two, and made sure we're getting in their favorite menues as well.

Wednesday will be our "Back to School" party day. I have a few special activities planned for that day, such as our traditional Back to School Banana Splits for snack. We are going to be working these in amongst the boys' open houses.

So we have all this going on, while I'm still not acknowledging the fact that Colby and Aiden only have a couple more days with us!

Yes, Bev's potty broke today.

Yes, Bev's potty broke even more when Bev tried to fix it because it is very old.

No worries, though. Tracy will fix Bev's broken potty tonight.

Here's some photos I snapped today, since I didn't manage to get an activity plan posted this week. It's been a day-by-day sorta thing. Sorry, I accidently deleted the Messy Corner photo. Our current theme is Ocean Adventure.

We are also reviewing our basics this month. This was a very popular activity today, and I was told it's very cool with the light coming through the paper! The green bin is holding shape stencils, half sheets of paper, and markers and colored pencils. They didn't just limit themselves to the actual shape, which is what I was hoping for. Some of the pictures they made using whichever shape got pretty creative! 

 At our art table we had ocean animal foam stampers. Bev also discovered today that it's time to replace these stamp pads. Provider's hint: Put out the extra money for the large-size pads. These small ones aren't quite big enough for these stampers.  

These two discovered the dancing ribbons in with the scarves today. We were playing an ocean CD during free play today. However, I'm sure no one is surprised to hear that these two, because the ribbons are orange, red, and yellow, began to make fire movements instead!

Busy, busy children!

It was also very exciting today when it got warm enough to open up the outside water table!

That's really the only word to describe it. I'm just plain behind on absolutely everything. I've given up on the idea of blogging about some of the pictures...I'm just going to get them in the Photo Album. I'm even going to skip putting them in the Photo Gallery, as I have too many to do.

I just created a new album page for the photos that are from 2008 and older. I thought it would make a few less photos to go through each time you check out the album.  So if you find some empty album pages, that's why! I just haven't gotten the new ones added yet.

It was wet...it was messy...and we all probably smell a bit fishy. But the kids had a blast! The intention was to have a bit of catch-and-release with the minnows and nets, but the next thing I knew, the hands had plunged into the water! It was a fun and different activity to enhance our pond and fishing theme.

Enjoy!

(Click link below for video)

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How cute are there?!? I saw this idea a few months ago, and knew immediately we would have to work these in somewhere!

Bev became extremely busy today dealing with phone calls regarding the accident. For my non-enrolled readers, my daughter Shaila's car was hit last night. It was parked on the street and no one was hurt, but the front of the other car is wrapped around the back tire of her Escape. We were awaken at 1:10 by the cops pounding on our door. Needless to say, Tracy, Shaila and I are all exhausted today.

So, anyways, it was a good thing that Grandma and Cody were here to help today. And even though there were no actual group activities happening today, the kids were all still very occupied and engaged with all the activities going on around our room.

I don't think I should have made the statement that things should calm down around here this week. I'm still planning to get some new pictures posted this week, but it won't be tonight.

This week will be a bit hectic yet, although we finished our final assessment today so the rest of the week shouldn't be too bad. We still have the relicensing inspection on Wednesday.

Today we talked about summer, and then we will be moving into our pond theme for the next few days. Ok, so I just glanced at the calendar and am shocked to realize how far into June we actually are!

I hope all the dads enjoyed their Father's Day gift. The kids had a great time using real tools to build them with Grandpa! I have a ton of pictures sitting on my camera. I will try to get them uploaded this week.

The forecast is also looking pretty good to get a water day or two in this week as well.

This was such a fun project! On Wednesday, we decorated the treat bags (dangit, it just occurred to me that I forgot to take pics of the finished product!). On Thursday, we colored the gift tags while we waited for Grandma to get here, because we all know that Bev wasn't going into a major baking project without Grandma!

The kids had a blast and are really good at this baking thing! Colby is an ace at egg-cracking! We didn't even have to pick out any eggshells like Bev usually has to! (Colby did ask if I got a picture, but unfortunately, I was too busy trying to help him, which he didn't need anyways.) He's also very good at measuring, pouring, cleaning blueberries, filling muffin cups, and supervising.

Brooklyn poured milk, put all the liners in the muffin pan, turning the oven on, and did an excellent job filling muffin cups. By the way, let the record show that I let her turn the oven on, not the stove. That one got me into a bit of trouble with Colby and his mom, haha!!

Aiden is also very good at cleaning blueberries, measuring, pouring. He even measured out the sour cream!

Peyton and Hadyn made some lovely cloth muffins over in their corner. 

Brennin did a superb job of overseeing the whole operation from his carseat.

I suddenly remembered that my camera does take video, so I captured a couple minutes of Brooklyn working hard at filling a muffin cup, Aiden was also at that task, and Colby stepped into supervise (he also had a couple turns at filling the cups).

(Look for more pictures in the Photo Gallery)

Nice try...but I'm not telling here either! You Moms will find out your surprise in the morning! 

However, come back tomorrow and I'll show you pictures of all the fun we have had the last couple days making your surprise.

I received my Module 6 materials after I had already printed the May newsletter, so this is information not included there. Module 6 is all about Activities, so that will be our focus. I have decided that we will not have a theme this month, but instead will focus on finishing up with Right From the Start assignments and requirements. There are some blank days on the calendar, as I have not yet determined what we will be doing those days. We will either be catching up on the RFS activities or doing Book Breaks or something. I'll keep you posted here.

Anyways...we had a fantastic day. Today was all about our Friends. We talked about all the fun things we do with our friends, and made some Friend pages for our "Me" books. We also discussed how sometimes grown-ups go out to lunch with their friends, and so that's why we were going to Taco Bell today. I can turn almost anything into a teachable moment, lol! Of course, we had our first (with this group) knock down, yelling screaming, "you hit me in the eye" fight between a couple of our oldest friends in between things this morning (really, guys, on FRIENDS day?!?), but as you can see below all was well by lunchtime.

Your little angels were...well, all perfect angels! But you expected that, didn't you??

Welcome to our new friend, Brennin! He is three-months-old, and just joined our group today. The kids were very excited to have a baby with us again!

It is Week of the Young Child! It is time to celebrate all the wonderful things these little monsters bring to our lives!!

We are going to be doing a lot of fun things to celebrate the week. We will be talking about all the things that make us special. We will also have a movie day, a carnival day, and go OUT  to lunch with our friends to Taco Bell.

The Taco Bell outing was planned for Friday, but due to a rainy forecast, we may be changing it to earlier in the week. It's only a block away, but that's too far to walk in the rain with little ones.

Today was All About Me day. We made life-size "Me" posters: