Games, Gold & Rainbows

It started off a rather damp, yucky day. We thought we would have to put our mud boots and rain jackets on again (not that the kids would have minded) to go outside again... but instead during our Quiet Work Time, it cleared up and the sun began to shine!!

This is what I found after cleaning up from breakfast... these two found our Trouble game and got it out all by themselves. I played a modified version with them last week, and Princess wanted to play the "real" way today. They did good for a little while, but the long time it takes to play wore D-Man out and he wandered away after a little bit.

Sprout was a busy girl today... we love this Lock Box House from Melissa & Doug. You can ring the doorbell, use a key to open each door, and inside (usually) there is a little doll that wear something that coordinates in color with the door you opened. They really love it. The Toddlers have a hard time working the keys, but as you can see Sprout is determined (hence the little tongue sticking out, too cute!!) to get the door open. She worked on it for a good 7 or 8 minutes, but she finally opened it. She decided that it didn't need to be locked up again and quickly walked away after she opened the door :)

Sprout really enjoys the Practical Life shelf, I feel bad because it is lacking some good work trays right now. She is getting very proficient in using the spoon to transfer the beans, only dropping a few each time. Not pictured is her using the rice pouring tray, she really loves that one and will get it off the shelf many times throughout the morning. She also loves pouring in the water table. Sprout is even trying to pour at the lunch table, with help, but she is starting to gain more control over her pouring technique. How cool to watch the progression and varying degrees of success a Toddler goes through as they grow and learn.

We also talked about the letter Rr today. R for Rainbow, which so happened to go right along with our St. Paddy's Day & Leprechaun theme. We completed a rainbow pot of gold craft. It was a fun, no nonsense kind of project. Not to much process, but they liked the product. We also talked about our Leprechaun trap and decided to use an old black Halloween plastic pot I had lying around and turn that into the trap. I hope we catch him, because I could really use that pot of gold!!!

Another 2 hour Delay...

I can't even give you a photo of what led to a 2 hr delay here in our little town in NC... it was melted before I took the kids out to the bus stop. I love this town!!!

Anyway, we had a condensed morning, as most of the kids come from families of teachers (who were also on a 2 hr delay).

These great big Dinosaurs were brought out this week, by my husband, who knows D-Man LOVES Dinosaurs!! They have been getting a lot of attention all week!!

More Games, Games, Games!!!

Princess brought her special Strawberry Shortcake memory game to play. Little Miss M loved it. I tried to get my Princess Girl to NOT put out all the matches, but she couldn't resist. So, Little Miss M wasn't as successful as I would have liked, but she lasted a whole lot longer than I thought she would. She just kept picking up cards, looking at them, and getting very excited about whatever was on the card... didn't matter if it actually matched or not. She did finally wander away though. I tried to tell my (very upset) Princess, who was now without a partner, that she was just to little to be able to remember where ALL those matches were. So, she promised that tomorrow she would pare it down. I love her!!

I received a letter game, Letter Soup, from Little Miss M's Mom. I had never seen it before and when I looked online I couldn't find it anywhere but in Australia. So, where ever she got it I don't know, but I love this game!! The main purpose is to make 3 and 4 letter words by ladling up the little balls with letters on it. Since only 1 of my kids is ready for that (and she gets to play with me sometimes) we just ladle out the balls, state the letter and/or sound, and put it in our own little pot. We then count how many balls each person has, they then tell me the letters again as they put them back in the soup pot. The 2's love to just ladle, but when they put them back in I make sure we look at the letter on the ball and I tell them what it is. They love it too.

Little Man loved it too, but he had something else entirely in mind... he's so cute and innocent until that mat came flying off of the table and balls and pots were bouncing everywhere :) Gotta love that boy!!!

"Hey Mom!!"

A Great Ending to a Great Week

We had a great week getting back into the swing of things. We received some great musical instruments from The Princess and her family... this Melissa & Doug set. The xylophone is wooden and it has the most beautiful sound. I don't mind the kids banging on it all day. I wish all our instruments made such beautiful noise :) The kids have been having a grand time having musical parades, and when I am feeding Little Man we are lucky enough to have our very own "concert" to keep us entertained. I have to position the kids right in front of us so Little Man will pay attention to his bottle while he watches, but otherwise he absolutely loves it.

Today for Show-n-Tell we had some great items!! Little Miss M brought in her Hi Ho Cherrio game. I love that game!! Though I need to get out our Don't Break the Ice game, I was checking out Ms Debbie at Once Upon a Day in Preschool, and it seems her kids are loving it. I think we would love it too. I need to pull it out for next week. But... I think Hi Ho Cherrio is great for our Toddlers also. The fine motor skills it takes to get that spinner moving was a lesson for me too, the counting and one to one corresponding is a skill I like to use all the time, and during a fun game like this is great!! The turn taking was great for Sprout & Little Miss M, lessons in patience can always be practiced.

Little Man is getting so big!! He is moving and shaking... never one to miss out on what the kids are doing. So, he is crawling all over and getting into his fair share of mischief. You see that gate behind him... yeah, I tried to create a nice little baby friendly space just for him, and no, he won't stay in it without crying for more than 1 minute. Now, if I leave the gate open he will come and go no problem. He is going to give me a run for my money... in a good way, of course :)

BFF's

Walking to the park is always an adventure!! The "big" kids are very fast and the 2's love stopping to look at everything, smell everything, inspect everything, and just hold hands and meander down the sidewalk. But, it is all worth it to explore the great outdoors.

Little Man turned 7 mths old over break, he came back to me bigger, moving, and more beautiful than ever. We found that he loves the park, even in the cold. He also LOVES the slide. He must have gone down that slide 20 times... both on his bottom and on his belly.

Oh, and I did find a way to keep the mulch out of his mouth... I flipped the hand protector things on the snowsuit, so he can't get his hands out. It kept his little fingers warm, as well as tucked inside and out of the reach of mulch!! Yeah for me... I can still think I'm in control :)

Peek-A-Boo!!!


Have a GREAT weekend!!!

Outdoor Friday Fun!!

Just a few shots from our day... we have enjoyed starting our mornings out with Operation. We are learning some great turn taking skills, patience, and fine motor. The kids love to be the one to hit the patients nose when they get their piece. We didn't know that you did that yesterday, so we heard the drip, drip of his runny nose the whole time we played. Silly me, I must have missed that in the directions.


We have been doing a lot of water play outside. Today I promised the kids they could run in the sprinkler. I also got out the turtle sandbox and the outdoor water table, they enjoyed both.

The sprinkler was a lot of fun. I think Little Miss M enjoyed that the most. I was surprised my friend D loved it as much as he did... He really got wet and ran in and out of the sprinkler spray.

Of course any kind of water play at my house turns in to this!! MUD!!! The orange clay is the worst, it gets into their bathing suits and it's REALLY hard to get the orange out. It was very slippery and the kids started out just "skating" around.

Then is went on to all out mud wearing. They sat in it, they ran through it with their trucks, and painted themselves and each other with it. I wish I got more of those photos, but I was to busy watching and enjoying them enjoy themselves. One of the kids said, "Yeah, summer is really here!!" It was cute.

Another Great Hump Day

Yeah I got my Memory Card back!! I miss my camera when I don't have it. We do so many things and I want Mom's and Dad's to see us at work!!! I know if I had to go to work it would brighten my day to stop and take a peek into their day :)

Little Miss M is actually "writing" her name. She would wait until someone started saying letters and she would tuck her head down and start "writing." Too cute!!

This is a huge reason I love multi-age learning. Little Miss M has the best of both worlds. She has all the time to play and socialize, but when she wants to, she can pick up a crayon and "write" like the big kids. She gets the positive reinforcement from her friends, and they get the feeling of "teaching" her to write her name. They enjoy helping each other.

We had some time today to take out the water colors. You can't tell in this picture, but she really loved mixing the colors in the water and would continue to dip the brush in the water then a color, then the water, then a color again. In the end it was a nice shade of black and Little Miss M was very proud of herself, and rightly so!!!

Here is our Valentine Creating Center. We have been going through about 4 to 5 sheets of stickers since Monday. I think I need to run out and get some more :) I also added lots of the Valentine Day Cards you see at the store for school, but they haven't been the hit I thought they would be. They instead like the pre-cut paper hearts or the ones they trace and cut out themselves. Then they embellish them with the stickers or the many different stampers I have available.

As you can see... Our Kitty's are never to far from the fun :)

Spending a little time in the sensory table.

Here Ry is tracing a large Heart onto his paper. He is making a Valentine for his Grandma!!

Ahhhh... here the crowd has gathered to make their Valentine Card holders. Tomorrow we will begin sorting all our Valentines into each bag. I will also have some special name cards that will sort tomorrow and then use to play a variation of musical chairs (more later).

Again, the stickers and smelly markers were a hit!!

I introduced these cards about 2 weeks ago. They are a mitten matching and counting game. It is hard to explain, go to Prekinders and take a look. (They have a huge amount of printables!!!) Well, these cards have sat on the shelf getting no traffic. Today I took out cards 1 to 5 and showed the kids how to play the Memory game with them. It was a huge hit.

It was really cute to see them root for each other. Only a few of them (usually those with older siblings) know that there is a winner. Yet, for the most part, even those who only got 1 match had fun rooting for the other person they were playing with. We try to keep the competition to a minimum :)

The end of the morning was a nice quiet time to sit, converse, and practice tracing and cutting. The kids were so excited about tracing and cutting out the hearts that they went through a lot of paper practicing it. The then colored, glued, and made some beautiful hearts for their families!!

We had a really great morning... productive and fun. My sister and niece are coming to visit next week... just in time for Chinese New Year!! So I have been planning how I will fit in Chinese New Year, Presidents Day, and the Dental Health activity I want to do!! We also have more birthdays, St. Patricks Day, Easter, my, my... what a busy, busy time :)

A Busy Week

A Busy Week we had... we did many different things. I am amazed at all we do. When I go through the photos for the week, I am amazed at the things we do and what I get on camera. I then have the fun of going through them and deciding what to put on my blog and which ones to send to each family in a Smilebox.

This week we finished up our Community Theme. We learned about Group Games with our After-School Helper, she taught the kids Red Light, Green Light, Simon Says, & Duck, Duck, Goose. They had such a fun time!! The laughing and giggling was so much fun to watch!!

We also did some Halloween crafts. We did some marble painting spider webs, paper plate pumpkin, and construction paper black cats. They were a combination of Teacher Directed and Child Centered activities. I decided that after they were done with the craft themselves then they could explore with the the mediums all they wanted.

Simon Says

A new toy from Discount School Supplies!! We loved this toy too!!

Our Halloween Sensory Table... I got the idea from Chasing Cheerios... who got it from No Time For Flashcards!! Well, I would like to give a Huge Thank You to both of them because the kids Love it!! They absolutely Love It!! Thanks!!!