Tuesday and Thursday were Water Days. The kids spent a good portion of their day outside running through the sprinkler, playing in the kiddie pools, having squirt gun fights, coloring with side walk chalk on the wet pavement (they like how the chalk appears brighter when the cement is wet-fantastic observation for 3-5 year olds), and doing ice painting. We also started a Grow Snake, which we will see the results of next week. I occasionally buy grow animal kits from the zoo gift shop (these are the best but the most expensive) or I buy a pack from Dollar Tree. These do not grow as much but hey, they're cheap and the kids really don't care!Wednesday the kids had an impromptu music day, coloring, and creating a Little People village with all of the playsets.
Friday the kids did the Letter Dig through the pasta, built a Lego town with the Duplos, and painted with sponge brushes.
Max completed his two weeks of swimming lessons and did a fantastic job this summer! Learning to swim is an important safety skill I think all kids need to learn. We also had t-ball practice twice this week (of course on the hottest two days of the year!). Busy week and ready for a rest this weekend! By rest, I of course mean activities planned for both indoors (in case of rain) and outdoors Saturday and Sunday.
I will end this post with a humorous (at least for me) story of how kids think: Several weeks ago, the kids were playing outside, doing a great job of playing imaginatively and began screaming "help! Help me!! Help!" loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. I quickly explained to them why they shouldn't and resumed my spot on the patio watching over them. Since they were told not to yell help, logically, they started screaming "fire! Fire! There's a huge fire! The house is going to come down!" at which our neighbors ran out of their houses. This brought about an intense conversation (at least, as intense as a conversation can get with 2-5 year olds) about how it's important not to yell "fire!" if there's not really a fire and more importantly not to yell for help when there's no problem. I believe I put it like this: "you can't yell for help when you're not really in trouble. I know you were pretending but when you yell for help when you're not in trouble, no one will be believe you when you DO really need help." We then talked about other ways to pretend, how it's okay to yell for help if you get hurt or there's something really wrong, etc.
Today, the kids were playing with Lego's and one of the kids started yelling "help!" with the little Lego figurine. Another child snapped at the offending child and said "you can't say that! Ashlen said you can't say that or no one will help you when you're dying!" Knowing full well how this statement came about, I attempted to correct her, but couldn't control my laughter!
I have to wonder what my daycare families think when their children come home and tell stories about our day!