Monday, September 1, 2014

Week In Review: August 25 - August 29

Quite the busy, fun week! I am thoroughly enjoying having new and younger children because I get to re-do all of our favorite activities, paintings, coloring, etc. and watch them experience it for the first time. Another perks of my "job." Here's a look at our daycare week:

Vegetable painting. The kids rolled corn, stamped with green peppers and oranges, and painted "swoosh swoosh" (as said by one of the kids) with celery and cauliflower. Later in the day, we sampled the food they painted with (no worries, NOT the actual food they painted with!).
 Things got a little messy, but that's why we use super washable paint!
 We attempted the sprinkler, but the kids didn't enjoy it too much.
 We made two new slime recipes this week: grass slime and mud slime. Our backyard is extra muddy at the moment thanks to lots of rain, so I grabbed a scoop full and threw it in with our regular slime recipe (1 bottle of school glue and 1 cup of liquid starch mixed together). It was the perfect consistency and the kids LOVED playing with it.
For the grass slime I added freshly cut grass to our slime recipe. It smelled amazing! However, the blades of grass were rather sharp on little hands, so they mainly poked at it and smelled it rather than play with it.


A Bup in a barrel. She thought she was so funny.
 The kids have been working together and building entire Lego towns the past few weeks. This is what the kids have been spending a lot of their time doing.
 There was a slight mishap during bubble painting, which caused a frenzy with the kids (and Elizabeth was once again, pleased with her messy paper).

Elizabeth spilled an entire bottle of bubbles (dyed pink) on her paper and her's turned out the coolest! The kids love bubble painting, but I'm not a fan of how light the bubbles typically dry. I love how the background bubbles (aka-the spilled bubbles) bring out the colors of the other bubbles.
 The kids drew some very intricate pictures.
An afternoon in the yard: mud table, sprinkler, and swinging. 
 The kids loved Dr. Seuss Day. Read more about their adventure here: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/08/dr-seuss-day.html

 Looking out the window watching street sweepers and construction vehicles pass by. I love how excited they get and these simple vehicles keep the kids entertained all afternoon!
 One child brought a bag with him to daycare (he informed me it was his special bag). Of course, the cat got intrigued with it and got caught in the handle. The child started to cry and once I "got his bag back" he said to the cat "I just don't think we can ever be friends." Best part of my day! I love the simplicity of children.
 We had Harrison's back to school night....where we stayed far longer than needed so the kids could play. I'm really excited for this school year and Elizabeth is really disappointed she's not going to school yet. Before their playtime in the classrooms, the hubs and I had a parent meeting to attend and left the minis in a music program at the school. Max walked in and joined in, Harrison started crying "don't leave me!!" and Elizabeth  enthusiastically walked in, turned around and waved, and said "bye mom! I go school now!" and joined right in. I am constantly amazed at how different my children can be. After back to school night, we celebrated a good school year with Cherry Berry. I am not a huge fan of CB but it's the mini's favorite so I caved.

 The kids had a game going that I did not understand one bit, but they were sure having fun! They used this board map and pointed out places they knew ("see we live right here in Iowa!" as they pointed to New York). Soon the map became a gate and they were all puppies. Then a tornado came, got all of the puppies, and then they were all mommies protected only by the "map wall." It you walked outside of the "map wall" you were eaten. I tried to keep up with their story, but got lost somewhere around the map was a gate....but they all understood it and played great together.

 We had a daycare child's birthday to celebrate this week. They decorated cut out birthday cakes (made by me) with Dot Markers and ate cherry sprinkle cake. Not a bad way to celebrate.

Wheelie painting. The kids who hadn't done this activity yet got schooled by the kids who had on how to do it properly....we then had a discussion about bossiness.
 We broke out the foam balance beam for some fun. The kids walked on it, jumped over it, rolled on it, and used it as a ramp for their cars.
 We also got out the game center, but the kids used it to play monster instead. It provided an afternoon of fun, so I really can't complain!

Next week we'll be starting our fall activities, once again getting use to a new schedule thanks to two of the kiddies starting preschool, and at the end of the week the kids are thrilled to "get a baby here!" for two days. I'm particularly excited for our fall activities, fall weather, football, and nature hikes around the neighborhood. This year we're trying something new for fall: a corn sandbox and hay bales for the kids to climb on. I'm more excited than the kids about this!