Another busy week with the daycare kiddies. We mostly spent time getting into our schedule, finishing up workbooks, and welcoming new kids. Take look at our week:
Building the tallest block tower they could and screaming when it fell down.
The kids spent an entire day playing with boxes. Read more about their day here:
http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/08/if-you-give-kid-box.html
The kids colored rectangle boxes and a tooth that Max drew and cut out. Max took a few minutes to tell the kids all about losing teeth, the tooth fairy, and read the kids a story about the tooth fairy.
Harrison build "an amazing spaceship" with the Magformers.
We set up the Little People preschool set. The kids off to school have enjoyed playing with this using their teacher and friends names.
The handprints didn't turn out as great as I had hoped. We did handprints last week (read more here:
http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/08/week-in-review-august-4-august-8.html), but the Model Magic was very sticky. Only two came out and on one, I had to have a child use flour to keep their hand from sticking. The flour trick worked great, but left flour on the handprint.
A few of the back to school books the kids have been enjoying--we've been reading them everyday before naps for weeks now! Max added "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" because it was his favorite book in kindergarten.
Elizabeth figured out if she stood on the picnic table she can play "boo!" to the kids climbing the tree house and going down the slide.
Playing their favorite "Starbucks drive thru." I can now tell you what everyone orders at Starbucks and McDonald's!
We finally did a Barbie Day despite only a few Barbie items. I tried to find Barbie stuff (house, cars, accessories, etc.) on craigslist and at garage sales for the past few weeks, but was completely unsuccessful. The kids only had a dozen Barbies, a swimming pool, car, and a couple of little sets to play with, but that was plenty for them! They mostly loved taking their Barbie's for a slide into the pool.
My sister's puppy Jack came for a daycare visit. Read his review here:
http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/08/puppy-jack-visits-daycare.html
The kids decorated stick figures. The idea was to have them put on a show or something with them, but no one was on board with that idea. Mostly the kids just colored them and put them right into their cubbies.
They also decorated girl cut outs. They loved coloring these and a lot of the kids went into great detail coloring their people.
I printed out all of the pictures I took this summer (well over 2,000 photos!) and had the kids pick out the pictures they liked. I then had them color the pages of their books. When they were done decorating them, I put their pictures they chose in their books. It's been very time consuming putting the pictures in the books, but the kids love them so it makes it all worth it.
I was doing pretty good with back to school time and saying good bye to several of the kids. I opened one of the kid's pages of their book and found a page decorated for me with writing "I will miss you Ashley." Enter tears.
5 kiddie pools in the backyard: a basketball pool, a purple water pool, a bubble pool, a glitter pool, and a slide pool. The glitter pool was a new one and left the backyard and kids all glittery. It was one of their favorite pools all summer.
Matt enjoyed his day off with the minis at the zoo. It was the kid's last full day off from school to enjoy dad's day off with him and they did it up with camel rides, train rides, carousel rides, feeding the animals, souvenirs, and a lunch date. Not surprising they came home exhausted and full of stories.
Monster Feet! Read about the making of and how the kids enjoyed them here:
http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/08/monster-feet.html
Imaginext Play Day kept the kids entertained on a rainy day. I set up all of the mini's Imaginext play sets and a day full of imagination unfolded.
Next week we'll be saying goodbye to more kids, lots of meet the teachers and school meetings for the boys, school starts, and a special Daniel Tiger Day that the kids have been talking for weeks about!
