I hope everyone had a great day! I'll get this week's stuff posted tomorrow...I hope...I got behind this weekend. I was out filling sandbags Friday and Saturday, and doing Easter stuff with my family the rest of the time.

I hate it when I'm already behind and the week hasn't even started!

We have Easter pails and eggs in the sandbox:

Easter gel clings on the light table:

Number-matching eggs at the Discovery Table:

Bunny ears and baskets of eggs to play "Easter Bunny":

A cardboard box covered with a sheet??

No, Silly! It's a Bunny Hutch!! (Shown with a couple volunteer bunnies.)

It's a sad, sad day in my world...my personal world, not my daycare world. My kids have heard hundreds of times the past 15 years, "hurry up and get to bed, ER's about to come on!"

Now I'm no fair-weather fan, mind you. I've never missed an episode. Had to tape a few and watch a couple in summer repeats, but I've seen them all. And while I've had times where I was disappointed or upset at storylines or characters leaving, I kept watching. I even made it through that ridiculously boring first half of last season. The writer's strike was a god-send for ER...they came back just as good, if not better, than ever.

And this season has been absolutely brilliant. The transplant episode a couple weeks ago - absolute genius! The only episode to produce more tears from me than when Dr. Pratt died this season was when Dr. Greene died. Ok, that's all before tonight...who knows what will happen?!?

So if you need to call me tonight...well, don't bother between 6:45 until after 10:00. I won't be available. Tracy has strict orders to take messages for me during that time and to be responsible for all kid, dog, and whatever other duties come up. My kids have strict orders that if they need anything during this 3-hour timeframe...ask Dad. Me and a kleenex box have a date on the couch!

My new light table is finished!! Yay!! Didn't Tracy and Chad do a great job?!?

Now, all's I hafta do is figure out how to take pictures while it is lit! The camera kept doing this weird focusing thing...and this is what I kept getting:

Fortunately, I have a couple people I can ask. My new friend, Annie, who takes great pictures of her kids and light table, and Nancy, who just plain takes great pictures.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Before today, that is! We did another Book Break today. We read "Olivia", and then discussed what we thought her favorite things might be (the color red because there is lots of red in the book, ballet because her favorite painting at the museum was of ballerinas). But we did find out that Olivia just doesn't "get" abstract paintings. And truthfully, we don't either. We also realized that Bev doesn't have an abstract paintings in her house, and nobody else thought they had any either. So, we made these that will hang in Bev's house for the next week or so, and then they can hang in your houses!

They were made by putting paint on the paper with spoon, and then running a comb through the paint. Of course, there was also a lot of spreading of the paint with the spoon!

Because I didn't exactly get a theme worked out for the week, I decided to do some Book Breaks that I have been wanting to do for awhile. Since "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" seems to be their all-time favorite book, we went with that one yesterday.

While reading it, I never actually said the words "coconut tree", I let them do that. I had made my own little tree for the magnetic board. As I pulled the letter magnets out of a bag one at time, they yelled out which one it was, and we added it to the board. They've been acting out the story on the board since then!

We then each made our own coconut tree craft. First, we had to sort out the foam letter stickers (Dollar Tree find), so that everyone had one of each.

Everyone then colored their coconut tree pattern and added their letters however they wanted.

This letter got a bit sticky on the fingers! This will also explains why some of their letters look like they fell out of the coconut tree!

The end results:

Peyton wanted to do some painting.

He even tried to hang up his apron.

The next time he went to the easel, I didn't bother with the apron. It distracted him too much from his painting, and I knew his mom wouldn't mind a little washable paint on the clothes.

So after Circle Time, where we had a discussion about rainbows and their colors and how the colors are in certain order, we set about making our own rainbow pictures. We used a rainbow pattern, paint and q-tips to paint the rainbow, a sun pattern, blue rice for the raindrops, and cottonballs for the clouds. They could make their picture however they wanted using whatever materials they wanted, although I did have a couple rainbow patterns available that I had colored for the older ones who would want to get the colors in the right order.

The finished products:

Note below Colby and Aiden's names. The first two C's in the corner was Colby trying to figure out how to write his name in the corner (his choice of location, by the way), so the two C's were his first two attempts. He then determined that there was not enough room to write it in that direction, so he chose to write it backwards...including the letters! Aiden then determined that this was the perfect solution, and followed suit.

The next day, we continued the rainbow theme. Since we had leftovers from yesterday's project, I  just added construction paper in the rainbow colors, and let them do whatever they wanted.

I also added some of my colored rainbow patterns by the easel. I also mentioned during storytime that each side of the easel had three colors from the rainbow. If you needed a color from the other side, you would have to ask nicely to trade colors with your friend painting on the other side. It was not only a lesson in manners and sharing, but cooperation and strategy as well, as they would also have to what color their friend needed or was done with, to determine which colors to trade. I said nothing about what to paint, just pointed out that these were colors from the rainbow.

So most of you know that Bev likes to do everything has cheaply has possible. I've paged through the supply catalogs and found neat racks for hanging wet paintings, for a ridiculous amount of money.

Problem solved! For $10, plus a $2 more for a bag of plastic clips:

Thanks, Shandah, for bringing this fabulous snack that fit perfectly into our St. Patrick Rainbow theme. I am so impressed...I do not the patience for that sort of thing.

In case you didn't get to meet her in person (or should I say "in chinchilla"), here is Misty...the latest critter to enter our lives. Shaila brought her home on March 3. The kids love her. Aiden did express some concern, however, and warned Shaila to not "let the dogs get Misty!"

So my computer problems have now been taken care of, and it's just a matter of me getting caught up again. I have added a bunch of pictures to the Photo Albums, and I have some fairly new ones to add to the Photo Gallery. I have started to work on the Tour Our Daycare pages, but don't expect too much there for the next couple weeks. I'm not going to devote too much time there until the new room arrangement is completed.

I'll let you know here when I have added new things. Also, there's a few pictures and things that I want to comment about on the blog from earlier in the month. So things may seem a bit out of order for awhile.  

Aiden:  Where are you going, Shaila?

Shaila (home on lunch break):  I have to go back to work now.

Aiden:  But you'll miss all the fun we are having here!

We are spending the week celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday.

Today we all wore a silly hat while we read "The Cat in the Hat", and then we made the Cat's hat. We also tried to see what sort of things we could balance on our heads, like the Cat did in the story.

By the way, awhile back I hit the wrong button at the right time....and deleted the Tour Our Daycare section. I'm slowly getting it back, but because of changes that are being made in our setup, it will be a "work in progress" over the next few months.

Friday was Realiti and Lyrik's last day with us, as they are moving out of state and the commute to Bev's house would be a bit impractical. We are really going to miss them.

Our last Circle Time with them:

I chose fingerpainting for our group activity, as Lyrik had never done that before, and Realiti really enjoys it.

The bestest buddies:

Goodbye boys. We wish you and your family the best of luck on your new adventure!

This week was all about bears. We talked about how teddy bears got their name and a lot of things about real bears. We also made several bear crafts.

Next week we will be continuing the teddy bear theme.

Setting: Circle Time. We are doing "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" for the third time.

Bev: Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, climb the stairs,

Aiden: (standing perfectly still) I'm taking the elevator! 

Do you see what's missing? Could it be the P?

We are all very happy that P is back in its proper place!