This has been a BUSY week. Easter was the theme for the week and well, I'm good until next year for all things bunnies and eggs! We had a fun April Fools and we even got to attend an event one evening. Homeschool was easy peasy as we took the week off from science. The minis finished their required curriculum in the subject, so teacher took a week to prepare for the human body unit (that she'll using her own curriculum to teach--yikes!) and the minis took the extra time to do activities with daycare, play basketball, and read. Daycare was kept extra busy with art projects, coloring sheets, imaginary play, egg hunts, and sensory activities.
Reading books while I set up their next activity. They each took a turn "reading" a book to everyone. I made set up take a little longer, so everyone could have a chance to read.
We had our annual Easter egg lunch. Yes, their lunch is hidden in the eggs. They open them up, find out what they're having for lunch, and then they eat.
Monday was a perfect day to spend outdoors. With the entire backyard available to them, they all crowded in the mud kitchen to play.
The picture below had me laughing hysterically. They were playing Statues in the Garden. The child covering her eyes was it. When the person who is it says, "ready!" they have to catch someone moving and not being statues ("that's how you lose Ash"). One child got as close as possible to the counter, so when she opened her eyes...well, to put it nicely, she was scared shitless! I wish I had gotten a video of it!
Cute bunny faces for the week's art.
Dollar Tree finds! This foam was a perfect, quick sensory activity while I got the next project ready. These can get messy and the beads can come apart, so I don't recommend this for anyone under the age of 3 or if kids have a habit of putting things in their mouths.
These were supposed to be salt dough Easter ornaments, but the kids freaked about having holes in their decorations (for the string to go through). So, they were just salt dough Easter decorations.
Sooooo many basketball games have been played the past two weeks.
This egg sorter was a popular toy this week! It's great to work on hand-eye coordination as well as shapes and colors.
Wild Lights Festival at the Blank Park Zoo was awesome! Get info here.
Thanks to my April Fools prank of covering brussel sprouds in chocolate and telling my kids they're cake pops, my minis are now leary of any cake pop! Nasty "cake pop" pictured above; actual cake pops + trepidacious kids below. Read about our April Fools here.
I decided to try something a little different for Easter cookie decorating. Cookie decorating hasn't been the same since Covid. Gone are the days of putting frosting, spreaders, and tons of sprinkles out on the table for all hands to grab. It's not as fun to put everything they need on their individual plates. I grabbed edible food coloring pens, dipped the sugar cookies in melted frosting, let the frosting harden, and then the kids got to decorate their cookies!
While fun and cute, these weren't the best for younger kiddos. The harder the pens were pressed into the frosting, the lighter the colors would appear on the cookies. The littles don't understand, "color gently and lightly." I would recommend these for elementary age kids and older. The bigs loved these so much that we'll most definitely be using these for cookie decorating in the future!
The kids played so nicely together with the cars and trucks. I'm not completely sure I understood the game, but this is how a four year old described it: "it's car family. They have to drive and watch their kids and babies and then they crash and die and then they come back and get their kids." It was a lot of information to take in.
Lucky dog and lucky kids, who get plenty of exercise each day. The dog gets walked multiple times each day and the minis walk at least 2 miles a day.
The bigs set up the egg hunt for the littles. The hidden eggs were empty (just in case a curious black lab helped himself to the eggs), so after the littles found the eggs, they turned in their full buckets for a goodie bag. This was MUCH less work than filling all the eggs, I didn't have to worry about some kids getting more or less eggs than others, and everyone got the same thing.
The kids watched a video about Passover and then we learned about the Seder Plate. We completed the activity by eating matzah, lettuce, and apples (I didn't make charoset this year and a jarred version was sold out at the grocery stores).
Play dough with cookie cutters, plastic knives, and the egg sorter shapes. They LOVED stamping the shapes into the play dough. I had a lesson to teach my homeschoolers, so I set the activity up. The room was nearly silent the entire lesson because they were so busy concentrating.
Everyone was wound up from our busy morning. I put on Raya and the Last Dragon for rest time. After the week we had, I had a hard time not participating in nap time!
I'm excited to start our spring time themes next week with the letter K, kites, karate, kickball, and our homeschool lessons on the human body.
