Friday, October 10, 2014

Donut Day

The sweetest daycare theme day yet: Donut Day! Inspired by the book "If You Give A Dog A Donut" we dedicated a day to all things donut.

The kids started their day with donuts from Dunkin' Donuts. Not my top pick for donut places, but the kids loved them. After breakfast, the kids had a chance to make their own donuts thanks to Pillsbury Funfetti mix. Instead of using the sticky glaze (that I knew would get messy) we used powdered sugar. I had the kids eat some fruit before they got to sample yet another donut!


 The play area was set up as a coffee shop, complete with real coffee beans. The kid's favorite part of the day was pouring the coffee beans from one cup to another, using the sugar cube tweezers to pick up the beans one at a time and put them into cups, and smelling the beans. The coffee beans wound up being a great hand eye activity for the kids. I did have to remind them NOT to eat the beans or put them anywhere they might get stuck (nose, ears, etc.).
 The kids got colorful when they colored donut cut outs (drawn by yours truly and cut out by the oldest mini). The kids colored the donuts in very bright colors and claimed that was their "dream" donut.

During story time, we read the book "If You Give A Dog A Donut." We also watched a YouTube video of how donuts are made and then talked about it.
 After naps, the kiddos woke up to find the kitchen transformed into their very own donut bakery! Chocolate play dough (use a no bake play dough recipe and add in cocoa) served as the dough for creating their donuts. The kids favorite part was rolling up the dough into donut holes and pouring the sprinkles everywhere....and I mean everywhere.









 The sprinkles made the biggest mess. Especially when they got tracked onto the carpet. There was lots of sweeping and vacuuming happening later that evening.

We are using the "If You Give" book series ("If You Give A Mouse A Cookie," "If You Give A Pig A Pancake") as our basis for theme days this fall. Our next theme day will be Cupcake Day. The kids will make their own Halloween cupcakes and decorate them, we'll read the book "If You Give A Cat A Cupcake," and they'll open up their own cupcake shop for the day. Since I have a younger crowd of kids this fall (during the summer's I have slightly older kids), simple concepts like this tend to have a big impact and gives them plenty of hands on learning. Any theme day that does that is a keeper!