Thursday, February 26, 2015

"Pete The Cat" Day


The kids are obsessed with "Pete The Cat" books. They have several of them memorized and say the lines with me while I read. Naturally, we devoted a full day to our friend "Pete The Cat." We decorated our own Pete cut outs, read all of our Pete books, and played a few games. This may have been the kid's favorite book theme day yet!
























Pete cut outs drawn by yours truly. The kids colored them with crayon and used black yarn for his whiskers.

 The kid's favorite book is Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. We did several activities with the buttons: first they colored them, then we played Find The Buttons (two of the kids hid the buttons and the other kids had to find them), color matching (just as it sounds, the kids had to put the correct color of buttons together), and we counted the buttons.
Hiding the buttons.


Color matching

Max helped the kids put the "Pete The Cat" puzzle together.

The last game they played was an energy waster: keep away with Harrison's stuffed Pete (MerryMakers Pete the Cat Plush Doll, 14.5-Inch). It was pretty entertaining to watch several 2-4 year olds taking turns attempting to play keep away. That may have been the highlight of "Pete The Cat" Day for me! (* I failed to get any pictures of their Keep Away game because I was too busy supervising what could have easily became a very rough game!)

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Family Fun And Dinner Nights

Our weekend wasn't jammed packed with activities like it is some weekends, but we still had our fun. Friday evening we went to Harrison's Family Fun Night at his school. 

I was busy helping out at stations, but Matt told me the kids liked "the really dark room" the best.

Glow in the dark water beads! I may have to try this sometime soon!
The kids were able to "write" on the walls. Max attempted to smash the water beads into the walls and made a huge mess. Matt made his grab a broom and clean it up.

Family outing selfie.

Matt took this picture so he could have evidence that I really do help out in a kitchen!

Saturday was a pretty laid back day since we were out late Friday night. Saturday evening we took the kids to dinner at The Tavern and to Barnes & Noble to buy new Easter books.


 Max pissed Elizabeth off (not hard to do).
 Elizabeth had issues sitting down and eating. Also not shocking.
And Max ate a ton. Again, not shocking.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

"This Is What I Come Home To?"

My husband is usually a pretty good sport about my crazy ideas for the kids: a flour sensory bin on our carpet? A mud day in the backyard? Last week's idea involved us rearranging most of our living space to create Book Store Day. Not surprising, the kids made a huge mess with all of the books and took their creativity to a whole new level. This was the mess he was greeted too:





How much of a good sport is he about this mess? He laughed, put his head in his hands and then helped me clean it all up while indulging in a beer with me. He's a keeper.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Week In Review: February 16 - 20

It was quite the busy week at daycare. Playing pretend, Lego building, and Barbie's took up most of the week. The kids didn't have much interest in doing any crafts or activities, but I did manage to get them to do Kool Aid Snow Painting. We ended our busy week with Book Store Day. Here's a quick peek at our week:

 I set up a Barbie corner for the week. The kids thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Barbie house (Calego Modern Doll House), tent (Barbie Sisters' Safari Tent Playset with 4 Dolls), camper (Barbie Sisters Life in The Dreamhouse Camper) and convertible (Barbie Glam Convertible). Even the boys enjoyed it.
Kool Aid Snow Painting (http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2015/02/kool-aid-snow-painting.html)
Flour sand sensory table. This wasn't quite as messy as I had envisioned. The messiest thing about it was when the kids put the Barbie's in and got them completely dirty.

The kids quizzed each other on letter recognition with the Alpha Bots (ABC Robo Alpha bot 26 pieces BOX (japan import)).
Shaving cream sensory activity.
The kids helped make spaghetti and meatballs one day for lunch.
Our oldest mini Max had such stellar school conferences that we treated everyone to Dairy Queen afterwards. I helped Harrison finish his chocolate covered waffle cone-yum!

The Barbie wash. The Barbie's got crazy messy with flour caked in each doll's hair from the flour sand table. I told the kids earlier in the week that if they put the Barbie's in the table, I would make them clean them. So, I turned their clean up into fun. I set a sudsy bin of water on a towel in the kitchen, tooth brushes and wash cloths to scrub with, and combs to get the flour out of the Barbie's hair.
Baking soda snow and polar bear pencil toppers. Mostly they just buried the polar bears in the "snow" and the kids took turns finding them.
The kids "built a house." I appreciated the creativity, Hubs did not appreciate the mess.

Next week the kids will get to enjoy a "Pete The Cat" Day complete with crafts, games, and books and they'll get to help me celebrate my birthday at the end of the week with a pajama and movie day (at the request of a daycare child) and a homemade berry cake!

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Book Store Day

Friday morning my living room was transformed into a book store, complete with a cafe, cash registers, a shopping cart, and bags.







Set up was rather time consuming taking 2 hours to organize the books. I enlisted Hubs and the minis help on this one. As you can tell, Matt was thrilled about it.

The long set up was well worth it for a day of end of winter entertainment.




 The dolls were laying on the pillow reading books too.

 The cat enjoyed the extra shelves around to lay on.

 Half way through the day, we read the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" and watched the movie. Whenever we read the book, we talk about how everyone has a bad day, but to have a good attitude about things. The movie was super cute and we all really enjoyed it.


The kids love doing these theme days, however they're way easier to do big ones like Book Store Day outside (check out one we did last summer: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/07/pasta-play-day.html). Clean up took a while too because the books were EVERYWHERE.

We're looking forward to summer when we can do our theme days outside!