Getting ready for the summer

I have decided to dedicate this Blog to my Family Home Daycare Business!!

Kozy Kids Family Daycare

A little about me... I am a 39 yr old Mom, Wife, Daycare Provider!! I love what I do!! I started out in the Fall of 2007 with 1 child. I quickly added another... but thought that was enough. I added some toys to the front room, a few crafts and "preschool" songs and lessons... and the rest is history. One parent told another, who told another and I am now the proud Provider to 8 full time and 2 part time children. I have hired a co-teacher to help me out with the Preschool part of our day and with our little one... who will be 1 next week... How time flies!!!

I can't believe that I went from this little... "I'll watch some kids to play with Ry" to this full fledged Preschool/Daycare Business. I am loving it.

I would love to share our photo's from this past year, but I have not asked permission from some of the Parents to show their children on the blog. So hopefully when most of them come back for the fall we will get that permission and be off and running.

We decided the Playroom needed to be painted and overhauled for the summer... so that is what we did below... we had a Great time doing it and I think the kids will be very excited. We are still working on our "messy" room in the sunroom, and I will post photos as soon as I get that done. I am excited to make the space more kid friendly, and they can have more independence in getting their material and doing their work. I found the web/blog from Annie Look over at Annie's Alphabet Home Childcare.... and WOW!!! If you want inspiration as a Childcare Provider or anyone who works with small children... That is where you should go!! I got so pumped just looking at her space and what "her kids" do all day!! They are learning, entertained, busy, happy, messy, quiet, moving, & safe!! You can just see how much pride she takes in her business and she has the passion not all childcare providers have. A passion for nurturing the child in children... letting kids be kids and have fun. So, if you want some inspiration jump over there and take a look. You can find the shortcut under my blog list.








Here is a picture of us trying to get everything picked up, after the last day for my kids who's parents are teachers. So those kids won't be here to much for the summer. I will miss them. I wrote about that at my other blog... A Boys Life 4 Me. If you'd like to read about that.




Here is Beth... my co-teacher... trying to keep things organized. She is the organized one and I am the one who makes her absolutely CRAZY!!! I take things out to use them and forget to put them back... I am a spur of the moment kind of teacher and if the kids look like they may want to take a lesson another way than I had planned... I run with it. I quickly get things out for them to use and in the process make a mess. Beth is there is keep me on track and make sure I pick up things at the end of the day. We balance each other out I think... I bring out her inner child and she brings out my inner Mom :)




Here is our messy computer area. I am not a huge computer advocate for the 1 to 5 yr old range so it kinda collects dust unless an after-schooler asks to play a game on it. Then we dust it off and hope it will work. We store a lot of our Montessori Manipulative's under there in those boxes. I also put our paint, new curtains, and curtain rods under there until we found time to get this overhaul under way.

Here is the wood floor part of the playroom under "construction." We usually do a lot of our messy work there during the school year. We are rethinking that for the summer. Maybe moving the messy stuff to the sunroom... we'll see.

Here Ry is helping with the painting of the room. Ry is my 4 yr old... the reason I started this adventure in the first place :) He really loved helping us, it made the room more of his own I think.

Here Em (Beth's 4 yr old) is also helping. As you can see we picked a yellow for the walls. I was a little afraid at first, but when it was all done it wasn't a big Banana like I thought it would be. I was really worried at first though. I am glad it came out as nice as it did.

Here is a picture of it after we finished and put the summer furniture in.. We added the Kangaroo Climber, the trampoline, and a car table. We have always had the swing and we put the Baby Play area in on the little rug off to the side.

Here is a shot of our entryway... we have some cubbies I made off to the side when you walk in and I downsized the computer table so it won't take up so much room. Hopefully I won't let it get so cluttered now :)

Here some of the kids are playing in the new room. They really love the swing and slide. Although they did play with the car table quite a bit too...

Behind T on the swing you can see the brown shelf and white cabinets... we plan on putting our bulletin board back up there. We want to add another cabinet on top of the ones you see (there is another on the right hand side also) and put the bulletin board in between.

Here is C in front of the car table... It's not a huge room, but it seems to fit us all nicely.

Here is the Baby Play Area... always a hit... we use Beanie Baby Kitty's a lot instead of babies though.

So, I think that is it so far except for the stuff on the walls... we need to put up our shelves and organizational stuff. We also need to get some of our Art Work back up there. I am excited to get going on the sunroom. T can't wait to help too, she loves crafts and painting so she want to get it done as soon as possible so she can begin.

We spend a lot of our time at our community pool in the sub-division during the summer. Though we have begun the overhaul of the backyard sometimes it is just to hot here in NC to play out there in the afternoon. We try to play out there in the early mornings so avoid the hottest part of the day. But in preparation for our time out there, we added mulch under the climbing structure & swings, added a pretty neat sandbox, and some stumps to climb on. Annie gave me some great summer fun ideas to try with the kids and we will soon be adding some 2 x 4's cut up, and some nice planks of wood to build with. I think they will be great additions to the yard. And provide hours of fun for all the kids!!