This morning was the first day since it snowed that we went out with all 6 kids. We have been going out in the afternoon so only the ones that are awake have went out...no more than half. I was quite impressed with us that it only took a little over 10 minutes to get everyone ready. Of course, I had my helper Colby to assist (Colby, can you grab Peyton's hat for me, please? Colby, can you grab Realiti's boots, please? Colby, can you....you get the idea!!)

All seemed to have a good time, especially Lyrik. He loved the snow! He was crawling around all over the place...and then he discoverd that snow is yummy. Except he doesn't just pick it up and eat like Brooklyn did last winter. He just sticks his face in it! 

Peyton, on the other hand, was perfectly content to just watch from the spot where I had plopped him.

Brooklyn joined in on the snowball throwing with the boys; however, she was wearing fuzzy mittens, so sometimes the ball stuck to her mitten when she would throw it.

Good naps this afternoon! 

This week is all about Thanksgiving! A lot about turkeys and some about being thankful. And it's a short work week - hafta be thankful for that!!

We will be introducing are Ii and 8. We have a new setup in our playroom and our trying out the idea of learning centers. While we always have some of the standards (blocks, art), we are going to have two special ones that will change every day or so. 

Have a great week and a wonderful Thanksgiving!  

Ok, so I've gotten a bit behind on this blog. Actually, I've gotten a bit behind on everything. My personal life has been taking a toll on me...and now it's time to get back on track!

Anyways.....

Today was the first day we have been able to play out in the snow! It was only the three oldest kids (the rest were napping), but that worked out ok as we need some retraining on how to get ready to play outside in the snow. They had a good time though!

Aiden instructed everyone on how to make snow angels: (1) Lay down in the snow; (2)Move your arms like this (Bev: Hey, Aiden, do you need to move your legs, too?  Aiden: Oh yeah!). (3)Before you get up, look in the sky for the shapes in the clouds.

Step 3 got me thinking. With all the craziness that has been in my life, and a lot of yours, in the last few weeks, and the stress and craziness that will be created by all the upcoming holidays....maybe we all just need to remember to stop to look for the shapes in the clouds, smell the roses, or whatever works in your life.

I think I should make that my new motto.

We had a lot of fun playing in the haunted house this week! And we ended the week with our big Halloween party. Be sure to check out the photos!

We will spend the week doing a variety of Halloween activities. The haunted house has been a huge success, and we will be having two halloween-related learning activities inside each day.

We will end the week with our Halloween Party. Lots of games and activities that morning!! We will end the day with a special snack and bobbing for apples. Don't forget your costumes!!!

We had a great week! We found out all kinds of interesting things about spiders, and made some neat spider crafts.

And on Friday, the haunted house was up! It's just a big piece of cardboard painted up to look like a haunted house, and propped up in the corner, but the kids can open the doors and crawl on in. Inside, is the dress-up closet and some sort of learning center activity set up. This will change daily. The activity will be listed in the daily report.

Have a great weekend!

This week we will be learning about spiders, and we will also be working on some Halloween activities.

We will be introducing the Letter F, and continuing to read 100 books. We have a fabulous surprise that will hopefully be ready very soon...I'm very excited about! I had planned on getting it ready Sunday, but my sudden out-of-town trip that day prevented that.

We spent the week just catching up on things we had missed last week. We didn't really have a theme in place, just went with the flow! I also spent some time observing, to determine things we could do better.

We're off to a great start! This week will be continue discussing fire safety. We will be talking about what to do in case of fire and dalmatians. We will have a couple of fire drills as well.

We will introduce the color orange, the letter D, #5, and Triangles. I am also hoping to start the "Snacktivities" packet. And, of course, we will continue to work on reading 100 books!

I'm hoping to keep up with the blog better with a couple weekly updates. One at the beginning of the week to discuss our plans, and one at the end of the week to review what we actually did. I may also occassionally post in between when there is something interesting to report.

Have a great week! 

Well, plenty of things went wrong this week (do I need to remind you about Thursday's red paint disaster???). But plenty of things went right, too, and we did have a lot of fun this week.

We talked alot of fire safety and firemen, and learned about the number 4 and the color black. We made firemen badges and hats.

 We are off to a great start with our 100 books project! We didn't read as many books the last three weeks as normal, but I do believe that will change now that we are going back to our regular schedule next week. Plus it's supposed to be rainy the next few days, so we won't be outside all the time.

I made some changes at our art table that have been very popular. Our art table and supplies were not being used during free play, only during our art and activity times. It's always been open during free play times, but it just recently occurred to me that the kids probably didn't realize that was an option. I think this happened a couple years ago when we had such a young group and they weren't seeing the older kids choosing this option. So I recently reorganized the area, and made a big production of introducing this "new" area. The 4-year-old have went crazy there. Sometime they choose drawing paper, sometimes coloring books. I will also be changing up the supplies and materials occassionally to keep things interesting.

I'm going to be adding a Parent Info page to the website next week. So far, I plan on including the yearly calendar and the Exclusions Policies information. Please let me know what other information you would find helpful.

We have lots of exciting things planned, or are planning, for October! I really do love this time of year.

Our current theme is Fire Safety. We have been learning about firemen and fire safety. Next week, we will work on Stop, Drop, and Roll, work on our escape routes, and have a fire drill or two. We will also be making a trip OUT the egress window!

We will also soon start making things to decorate our playroom for Halloween! We didn't do as much with Snacktivities  and Book Breaks as I had wanted to in September, so I'm hoping to change that this month. Plus we will be doing lots of reading for Classrooms Care.

We have been having so much fun playing outside this week! We couldn't ask for better weather. Monday morning we walked to the playground, and both days this week we have had snack outside and played out until parents have come.

Which brings me to my next point. Ending the day outside is so far going very, very well! So I think we are going to do this again whenever the weather permits. Nice change of pace for a few months! However, should the kids get difficult again at pickup time(which is why we stopped this a couple years ago), we will go back to our regular pickup routine.

We did not have one single time-out today! YAY!!! Nobody got in trouble, and I only had to give one little reminder to play nicely. It was a great day, even though it was pouring rain out and I keep waiting for some to end up in my basement!

And the big boys had a lot of fun playing the new Alphabet Bingo game. And while they were having fun, they were practicing letter recognition, matching, and I'm sure some other skills that my very tired brain is not thinking of!

Ok, so I've not done a very good job the last few weeks of keeping the site current. However, my life was utter chaos and most nights we were heading out the door as soon as daycare was done for games and music programs and graduation preparations and whatever else had to be done. I'm looking forward to a much calmer summer!

Today I introduced the Turtle Totes. I believe I mentioned them in a previous newsletter. Turtle Totes will be replacing the Closing Activities. I fill a few totebags with a variety of activities, and hang them on the the hooks. While we are waiting for parents to arrive at the end of the day, the kids choose a bag to keep them busy. Some will just be an activity we don't do too often, or some might be a theme bag. It could be lacing beads or bristle blocks, or it could be a story with props or flannel board. I will try to list them on the daily report so you know what your child is talking about! 

The kids seemed to enjoy them today. We will see what happens as time goes on.  

I just added new photos to the Photo Gallery. The purpose of the Photo Gallery is to showcase the newest photos. Whereas, the purpose of the Photo Album is to store all photos. The Gallery space is too small to have more than just a few photos, which is why I created the Album pages. The Gallery is nice, because you don't have to go through a whole bunch of pictures to find the latest ones.

Hope you enjoy them! 

I didn't realize how long it had been since I updated! Time flies!!

So the kids are still completely fasincated with their chef hats and restaurant play. It does seem to be slowing down a bit, but we apparently hit on something good there! And Chef Combo was a HUGE hit!

Chef Combo is our new puppet friend. He, and all his stuff, were given to me by a provider friend who had gotten the the kit at a training class and had never used it. Most of it was still in the original packaging. It had been setting around here for quite some time, and now that I've totally gotten into the puppet thing, finally dug him out.

It's amazing how the kids can completely overlook the fact that this is just a puppet. As long as that thing is moving and talking, they don't even notice my hand or voice. I didn't realize the full effect myself, until Aiden said to Colby "the Chef waved bye-bye to us!"

It's been quite a week...lots of crazy stuff happening! I'm hoping that things have calmed down for a few days and we can get back on track.

Or maybe we should all learn how to do a rain dance!

You may have noticed on the bulletin board and the daily report that we made flowers that grow. We were doing the project where you put a flower picture on a craft stick, and then punch the stick through the bottom of a styrofoam cup (from the inside). When you push the stick up through the cup, the flower appears to grow.

Well....we may have been using a larger size cup. And now I know why the instructions said to use a jumbo craft stick. I used regular ones because that's what I had, and I happened to have some green ones that made perfect stems! Now, our flower just reaches the top of the cup. But they still get the idea, and it's all about the process, not the product, anyways.

However, using the cupcake papers for the flowers worked perfectly! 

It seemed that the theme for my day was that all my plans weren't completely thought through!!

Some days you just need to throw all the plans out the window and go with the flow. That's what happened today! We all seemed tired and not really into the idea of structure. I wonder if all the extra outside time has worn us out?!?

So, that's what it means when the daily report says "Free Play Day". Because some days are just like that....  

We have been having some issues lately in following our schedule. Which has actually always been considered more of just a suggestion. Of course, we have been working around whatever Peyton and Lyrik want.

Today we really got off-track. We got behind pretty much right away. Then, when the natural progression of the day would have been for us to do our circle and activity times, we went outside because both babies were napping. Then, when we came in, Lyrik was ready to eat, then it was time to get lunch ready. We didn't actually do our morning activities until 2:20. And then both babies were sleeping again, so we snuck outside a bit before snack. Even Realiti and Brooklyn came out with us, as they both woke up earlier than normal.

So we all already know that there are not enough hours in the day. And I'm sure some of you will be surprised to hear that sometimes there isn't even enough time in the daycare day to do everything we would like!

And fortunately for us we are all pretty easy-going and flexible. And fortunately Colby isn't quite so fussy about keeping things on schedule!

Oops, I almost forgot our most exciting news of the day! Brooklyn got a BIG sticker because she went poop in the potty!!!

We saw robins when we were outside this morning!

And speaking of outside...the kids were thrilled to get to go outside TWO times today. We did use boots and snowpants this morning because it was kinda cold, and we discovered that Colby has apparently grown a lot recently! But it was also pretty exciting that we got to go out this afternoon withOUT snowpants!

And speaking of exciting, we are very proud of Brooklyn. She got a potty sticker today!!

Later this week, we will be introducing Turtle Totes. More on those later.

Have a great week!