You know it's going to be a good week when you start it with NEW toys! Nearly all of the kiddos were feeling better and we took full advantage with lots of activities. We started our week with a few last Halloween activities, did our annual fall collages, had sensory activities for all ages, and some cute crafts. Here's a quick look at our daycare week:
Ghost feet prints for all of the kiddies.
We did a grow bat....which grew to five times this size by the end of the week! I totally forgot about it and shoved it to the back of a counter. The kids were impressed by how big it grew.
Of course Halloween Day requires dressing up a bit, even if it's using your sister's Wonder Women headband and a blanket for a cape.
We also played with pumpkin guts that we saved from carving pumpkins. The kids LOVED it, but I had to keep a close watch to make sure no seeds were consumed since they were not cooked. Hence the reason there's no pictures of pumpkin guts playing.
I had plenty of help unpacking the new toys (a few are daycare Christmas presents that they'll start to receive the week of Thanksgiving. Read about my daycare gift giving policy here). I brought the tool bench (that we've had for six years) in from outside. It's been outside for the past two summer's and hasn't been played with much. However, as soon as I brought it indoors, it was as if the kids had never seen it before. I did get some new tools for them to play with and the kiddos are becoming very knowledgeable with hammers, screw drivers, pliers, and wrenches.
The new Little Tikes sink was the hit toy of the week. The kids words: "it's amazing! It even squirts water at me!" $14 well spent!
We went outside to gather leaves around the yard. Then we came inside and made leaf collages (using clear contact paper). The bin of leaves was a great sensory activity for the babies/newly turned one year olds. They loved crunching the leaves!
The kids love reading books, looking at books, and reading books to each other. I love when we read a book and then the kids "read" it to each other.
Candy corn pumpkins. Usually for food based art projects I make a "glue" using water and powdered sugar, but I didn't have enough powdered sugar so we used regular glue. I spread the glue on and the kids put all of the candy corn on.
I had to make a run to Petco one evening. Elizabeth found a kitten that she wanted to adopt and make it "a daycare cat for all of the kids!" That idea didn't fly.
See Instagram for the explanation of this photo.
We ended the week playing with pumpkin "sand" (flour, vegetable oil, orange paint for color, and pumpkin spice for smells). It was messy and the kids seemed to have it everywhere (diapers, hair, ears, in one kid's arm pit), but it kept them busy nearly the entire day!
This upcoming week we'll be beginning our Thanksgiving activities. I'm quite interested to see how our Thankful Wall looks like with one, two, and three year olds! We'll also break out our Thanksgiving books and read about how Thanksgiving started. At the end of the week we'll have our Pilgrims and Indians dress up hats to play with.