Teddy Bear Day

Our Teddy Bears were pretty active today, considering they should be hibernating right now.  Try as I might, I couldn't get this crew to "hibernate" today :)  Instead, I called Teddy Bears to come up to the Circle Time Center to help us count and do our daily activities... we thought that was pretty darn silly.  

Scamp didn't think her Teddy Bear, Sherbert, was up to the challenge of counting... 

But she sure was!!!

After Circle Time we took our Teddy Bears to have a bit of tea... 

My lion is ready Shell!!

We even tried to fill our Bears up before they had to go hibernate again :)

A little "tea" for my friends!!!
(I need to invest in some real china tea cups and plates... I think it would be fun)

After we had our fill of the tea, we got zipped, bundled, and cozy'd up and off to the park we went to celebrate our friend Big Man's 2nd Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Big Man!!!

"What's going on??"

Weeeeeee....

I got this!!!

With slippery shoes, these two tried to get up the slide.
Every time they slipped and slid they would laugh and giggle!!

What a nice Teddy Bear Week we had!!  We read lots and lots of books about Bears (thanks to all my families that sent in bear books to share!!), we learned about the color YELLOW, explored the number 3 and even had fun with the letter Aa!!  I know next week will be as much fun when we explore a mini-unit on Mittens!!!

Teddy Bear Parade

Today we had some silly, mixed berry muffins.  Why are muffins silly??  Ours are silly because they had feet and if that isn't silly enough, I must have put to much muffin mix in each container because they rose up and over the sides... Now that's SILLY!!!  We talked about the different color holders we had and who were the ones who got the Yellow ones... Scamp had one and she would not let it go :)  

YUM!!

Opps!!

At Circle today we read Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson (thanks Little Man's Mama!!) and Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury & Michael Rosen!!  I thought the kids would like the Bear Hunt book a lot, but they didn't get into it.  They did, however, love pretending their Teddy Bears were snoring like the Big, Brown Bear did in the book Bear Snores On.  It was pretty noisy!!

We then took our Teddy Bears on a Teddy Bear Parade around the neighborhood.  They loved it!!  Those Bears had the time of their lives, they not only got to see the neighborhood, but they even got to get piggy back rides, and see the Nature Area.  Fun Times!!

I think my bear likes the forest!!!

I'm going to protect my bear from the animals
(I'm guessing  her friends? :) )

Scamp got to walk part of the way on our Teddy Bear Parade.
It is her first time walking with the big kids, and she thought she was something else!!

Bring Up the back of our parade

Teaching our Bears to "walk" and giving a tired Bear a ride

Is that to cute or what!!!

After being cooped up inside the last few days, it was really great to be able to get outside and not only enjoy the sunshine, but get rid of all that pent up energy.  There was running, singing, hopping, walking backwards, seeing the sights and having lots of fun!!

Yellow, Yellow Everywhere!!

Yellow is so bright and energetic.  I love that it is on my walls, I love that banana's are yellow, I love that the sun shining so bright looks yellow sometimes.  Yellow makes me happy, it makes me silly, any most times, just looking into my playroom with it warm, buttery yellow walls it makes me SMILE!!  So, come and see what we did with the wonderful color YELLOW today...

Sprout and her mommy made us some yummy, sweet Sunshine Cakes!!  

We practiced using scissors in our Yellow Shirts!!
Yellow shirts always makes the hard stuff more fun!!

We took out some plexi-glass and finger painted with sparkly yellow paint!!
It was so slippery, slimy and smooth!

"Look Shell!!"

Can't be outside, so bringing the outside in

We got out the yellow do-a-dot markers... what fun!!!

Keeping the bottle down was hard for some of us, but everyone got the hang of it eventually ;)

Lil Bits Mommy lent us the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?? by Bill Martin Jr
She also let us borrow 2 piece puzzles what went along with the book.
The kids loved trying them out.  Little Man was intent on getting them together!!!

Sprout had fun putting them all together and then we retold the story with the puzzles.

Scamp kept saying "Balk, Balk" for every animal in the book, it was quite funny.
I would tell her what the animal sound was, and she would look right at me and say,
"Balk, Balk!!"

Our bear cave was still out today and the kids had fun playing with the bears today.  Since it was rainy today we had the sandbox open and got our hands dirty.  Also, there was A LOT of sliding, climbing and jumping today.  I can't wait for dry weather so we can get outside!!!  Even if it's cold, as long as we are dressed for the weather, it's great to get out into the wide openness of the great outdoors... Ahhhh, I can't wait :)

Teddy Bears and a Race Car

Today has been a very unusual day for us.  There was a lot going on outside our doors and it was hard for any of us to concentrate on what was going on inside.  We did manage to get through our Circle Time, introduce our Bear Cave (a tent), and then look through and choose a special Bear from Miss Michelle's stash.  Well, it was my boys stash, but they were willing to share!!

Playing Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear was a huge hit, again!!
This time we had our Teddy Bears to help us, so it was even more fun!!

"What's next Shell??"

Look at those smiles!!

Having a silly teacher is always so much fun!!!

So what's going on out there??

They were shooting a Dt. Mt Dew commercial, of course!!!

It was great fun to watch a commercial be filmed.  I can't believe what goes into such a short commercial.  The amount of people was unbelievable to see.  The amount of work to get the house (next door) ready to shoot was exhausting to watch.  Yesterday, in the rain, 2 gentlemen were out there for 6 hours painstakingly twisting fake silk leaves onto the trees.  Wow!!  Today we got to watch how it all gets done.  They start very, very early in the morning.  The noise woke me up around 4am, banging, dogs barking, and diesel trucks.  When the sun started to rise, we got to see the number 88 car being rolled off the truck and begin it's set up.  Lots of tinkering, people milling around, photos being taken, neighbors watching.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids would hear the roar of the race car and no matter what we were doing they would all run to the window to see what was happening.  When it finally was over, they were disappointed that it left. It was a great experience.

Yellow, Teddy Bears, and Fun

Sometimes it's quite an achievement to have all your activities and ideas for a theme to flow correctly.  Today actually was one of those days that things just flowed the way they were supposed to.  During Circle Time I introduced our Winter Theme.  We talked about the weather, winter animals, and that brought us to BEARS.  Who doesn't love bears.  We read Bears Feels Scared, by Karma Wilson  It was a cute book, not quite what I wanted to read today, I wanted to read Bear Snores On, by Karma Wilson, but I couldn't find my copy :)  of course.  

We also talked about the color Yellow, the number 3, and introduced the letter Aa.  We read Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!!  by Bill Martin Jr & John Archambault which is a favorite of mine and the kids.  I wasn't sure how all these seemingly random things would come together for us, but they did.  We made a sun (that was yellow) to help Bear feel not so afraid, we found yellow around the room, we related the letter Aa to different things around the room that start with that letter, and at lunch decided we should name our bear an Aa name.  So, tomorrow we will pick one.   

Bear sat with us for Circle Time, and while we were waiting for our lunch to cook we played the jump rope game (without the jump rope) Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Turn Around!!  Lots of fun, giggles, falling down, and spinning around!!!

We counted out 3 YELLOW gumballs for our Gumball Machine

Little Man showing off the YELLOW in his shirt

Painting is always so much fun

Not sure which is more fun, getting the paint on the plate or her hands!!

Very serious work going on!!

Lil Bit enjoyed working with all three paintbrushes, swapping them out and having one in both hands as much as she could :)

Scamp loves sitting in chairs now and will climb up into one any chance she gets.  Today I found her with these 2 little people at the table just moving them about and jabbering away to them... she was very cute!!

Lets just hope the whole week flows like today and we get all our crafts and projects in.  Although, tomorrow is supposed to be mighty warm out and we may have to scrap it all and play outside... warm weather isn't likely to happen much in the next couple of months.