Monday, August 15, 2016

Week In Review: August 8 - August 12

We're in the mist of the last days of summer and we've been doing them up big at daycare! Here's a quick look of some of the things we did last week at daycare:


The Olympics have caught the kid's attention. So much so that we held our own Olympics Day. Read more about that theme day here.


We had a Building Day with the large Waffle Blocks and the cardboard boxes. The kids got very creative and made a dog mansion out of the blocks, gym mat, and outdoor toys. They even created cages that they actually fit inside as they played puppies!


Our pools days aren't just simple kiddie pools. Oh no, at the kid's request we had: a water bead pool, a shaving cream pool, a glitter pool, a bubble pool, and a goop pool (that we put in the water table; more for the benefit of the younger kids).



The kids played some kind of pick up game with the water beads (I didn't even attempt to interrupt their game to find out more because they were getting along so nicely! I decided to just be left wondering).



We've gotten on a science experiment kick. Our Pop Rocks Experiments kept the kids hypothesizing, watching, and recording for an hour. Read more about these awesome experiments here.


One afternoon activity/snack was make your own mini fruit pizzas. Several of the kids had never had fruit pizza before. All of the kids loved creating their own designs with the fruit.



Max designed bugs out of the Duplo's (the green is a praying mantis and the yellow is a hornet). Then he put on a show for the little kids with the "big Lego bugs."



Chips and guacamole for a morning snack was a surprise hit with all of the kids.


The kids ate a picnic lunch in the living room nearly every day so they could watch Olympic's coverage.


Another favorite activity/experiment: Find the Toy. I covered figurines in our baking soda snow mix (baking soda and cold water) and then froze it overnight (on a baking sheet in the freezer). The kids used droppers to put warmed vinegar onto the baking soda covered toys. There was a lot of fizzing and misting going on, and it took nearly an hour, but they finally uncovered their toys buried inside!

Harrison happily did his volcano kit he got for Easter. The kit came with a sand plaster to use for the volcano but I couldn't get it to de-clump. Instead we created our own volcano using baking soda and water. This was an AWESOME idea! It made it so much more fizzier. The kids were ooohh-ing and aahhh-ing over it for the rest of the day.


Thursday night I went to a Moonlight Madness sale at our local learning store (Learning Post). There I found some excellent deals; one of them on this kit. The kids had an excellent morning or chipping away at their dino eggs to find their dinosaur. Then, because these kids love to learn, they looked up information about everyone's dinosaur (where it was a herbivore or carnivore, what time period they lived in, and how they protected themselves from other predators).



The big kids got outlined and they were able to decorate themselves (on the paper of course). 



Rainy days means little figurines ALL over the floor.


We ended the week making model made with Crayola air dry clay. Once they are fully dried, the kids will have a chance to paint them.

The highlight of the week was not the new toys I got from the learning store, but the two African dwarf frogs I brought home with me! The kids have them named Walter and Wilma. We've already gone over how we won't kill them with a marble (like the fish), how no one will feed the frogs but me, and how the frogs are never allowed out of their tank....we'll see how this goes!