Friday, December 26, 2014

2 Day Week In Review: December 22 & December 23

These were the busiest two days of my life but so much fun! We brought in a new special helper in the afternoons to help out with all of the extra kids I had around thanks to schools being out on Christmas break. We played games, colored, had a Sensory Play Day, made cupcakes, had a balloon party (it's just as it sounds, a bunch of blown up balloons that the kids hit up in the air over and over again) and had our daycare Christmas party...all mixed in with the every day craziness. 

Take a look at the few moments I was able to quickly capture:

I scored a few new Little People puzzles from the Target dollar section. The big kids had a great time helping the younger kids put them together.

Our sensory activities: Christmas play dough (I used our salt dough ornaments recipes and put cinnamon in for the red and peppermint in for the green) and Christmas snow (I used this recipe: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/09/pumpkin-snow.html) and used cinnamon for the red and peppermint for the green. The kids love this stuff! Luckily it's an easy clean up because things get messy!


Always a hit: a veggie tray in the middle of the living room. We watched a new winter episode of Daniel Tiger while the kids ate. By the end the tray was demolished and nearly every child had tried something new (or something they didn't like) at the encouragement of their friends.
A card game while they ate apple slices.
Our special helper for two afternoons was my cousin Silvia. The kids loved having her around and it gave me a bit of a break!
Paper plate wreaths. Last year the kids colored them with every color of green crayon they could find. This year we used paint. Their favorite part was choosing which bow to put on the top.


A couple of our party games: Christmas tree bowling (our Christmas trees were 2 ltr. bottles filled with paint, they used the Snowball Fight as their balls) and Christmas tree ring toss. The rings were too small so eventually we just used the kid's paper plate wreaths that they made.
The kids left the sidewalk chalk out in the rain. Before it was tossed, we got one more use out of it: coloring Christmas pictures with the wet chalk on construction paper. The kids had Silvia drawing flowers for them.
Dancing with daddy to her favorite Christmas song: "Santa Baby." Her other favorite songs include "Shake It Off" and "All About The Bass."

Next week will be another short week, but jam packed with fun. We'll paint, read our few New Year's books we have, enjoy a few of the new crafts the kids got, and have a New Year's party!