July 30 - August 3
As soon as August 1st hit, I felt the craziness of summer weighing down on me. Not because it's been a really crazy summer, but because summer is coming to an end. The kids must be feeling it too because they suddenly started talking about everything we haven't done this summer yet. They even began planning Christmas break activities because they know there's not enough time to do everything they'd like! I had assumed the Bigs would be too big for some of our tried and true activities. They hadn't said anything about them all summer (plus I was having a pretty good time coming up with new activities for everyone) but now that our summer vacation is down to a matter of days, they MUST do them.
One of their favorites is slime. We hadn't made slime weekly as we have in the past, so we made up for it this week. We tried several new recipes and (my favorite) let the kids come up with their own. Here's a look at the last days of July and beginning of August:
My phone is now filled with slime recipes. I told the kids to find their five favorite and we'd make them. As you'll find out below, our favorite recipe involved Model Magic. So it's not the cheapest way to make slime, but gosh, it lasted a full two weeks and had the perfect amount of stretch to it.
Cicada catching is where it's at. But did you know that if you catch a live cicada and put in the butterfly net, that you're supposed to give it food and water??? The kids learned that one the hard way. Now the net is for all dead cicadas and cicada shells they find in the backyard. Live and learn I suppose.
Watching them catch live cicadas was my favorite part (until the kids realized they couldn't keep them alive easily). There was one fearless girl who the other kids put in charge of jumping up and touch the cicada's wings as it flew through the air. This caused the cicada to fall to the ground and the kids would snatch it up.
Christmas In July was a hit day! Read about our fun here.
I went on a toy ordering spree and the kids have had all new toys to play with. Our new forest friends (these and these) found a home in the sensory table. Although, the beans were almost instantly spooned up to be "food" in the kitchen area and the animals quickly found a new home with all of the other animal figurines.
So, the 10 year old swallowed a Lego piece. Yes, you read that correctly. The 10 YEAR OLD choked on a Lego piece he was trying to break apart (obviously you use your teeth, even though I've told all of the kids dozens of times not to do it this way because it's a choking hazard) and swallowed it. He did legitimately choke on the piece and I almost had to use the heimlich maneuver on him, but everything turned out okay. Minus the fact that he did this in front of all of the younger kids. Of course it would be one of mine that did something this spectacular during daycare.
The kids free read every afternoon right after lunch. Even the younger kids do it too. You can barely walk through the room at this point because nearly everyone insists on laying down to read their books. Even the littlest of littles.
Mom's night out for the week was to a local mall food court. This food court has amazing little restaurants that are all local. You can choose from pizza, Mediterranean food, classic Iowa comfort foods, Mexican, Vietnamese, or BBQ. It's delightful and highly recommended. I used it to get ideas for next summer's theme: celebrations from around the world (the oldest mini gets all of the credit for this idea).
The kids have been playing a lot of board games lately. Our What Should You Do? game provided lots of interesting answers that gave us plenty to talk about. The answer I got for this card was "D, none of the above. You should ask a lot of questions, then if they don't sound right, go tell somebody. Like, not a full stranger, but just someone you kind of know and you know that they're kind of okay." I felt like a failure in this moment, by the way.
I rarely buy Pop Tarts. Of course I bought some for our Elf spaghetti. Elizabeth was beyond excited that they were chocolate (she didn't know they existed before our Christmas in July day) and begged to eat one after dinner. By that time of night I'm usually too tired to put up much of a fight about it.
I'm not really sure what I had hoped to accomplish with our 50 States theme, other than getting the kids interested about the country we live in. These kids surpassed my hopes and learned all of their capitols, random facts about every state, and can identify quite a few states on the map.
The kids asked for a Wacky Wednesday. So we read the book, then went on a wacky scavenger hunt. They found a muddy foot print at the bottom on the sensory bin, a shoe hanging from a tree, pens on the walls, and (clean) underwear in the books! All ages really seemed to enjoy this one.
I gave the kids my phone to take pictures of what they found.
Slime making with Model Magic! I LOVED this recipe.
I have a group of little girls who LOVE to put on make up (mostly my daughter). I was not amused when I discovered my favorite lipstick had been destroyed. Seriously, what happened to it? I don't even want to know.
We got a new neighbor next door and, being the small world this is, the little girl that moved in knows several of the daycare kids from school! My rule is no neighbor kids over during daycare hours....but playing through the fence totally doesn't count. So far they've shared slime, a few small toys, and stories from school.
The kids asked for the pool AND the sprinkler at the same time. Done and done, especially on warm afternoons.
Sliding into a pile of stuffed animals is pure joy. I love that they asked for all of the zoo stuffed animals in the backyard and instead of actually playing zoo with them, they used them as a cushion for the slide, the tire swing, the trapeze bar, etc. I love seeing what creative things they come up with on the daily!