oodles and noodles of fun!

POOL NOODLES!  who would have thought pool noodles would bring so much joy to ones day and we didn't even go in the water with them!  But, here is what we did with them! 

First I cut 3 noodles up.  The kids thought this was the coolest thing ever to watch me take a knife to a pool noodle...because in daycare destroying toys is always more fun that playing with toys...right?!?

The first activity with the cut up noodles was painting!  Like I have said before my kids LOVE to paint, so they were SUPER excited when they learned they got to paint with noodles!

Even baby Eli got to join in on the fun!

We talked a lot about patterns today while painting, the kids were to busy painting that they really didn't grasp the concept of patterns so after the painting we decided to build with the noodles!

We will have to keep working on those patterns,but the girls had fun seperating all the different colors!

(of course my Natalie would have all the pink)

Finally we worked on stringing the noodles! A great fine motor skill!  The girls were pretty quick at it, but it was a challenging fun activity for the little guys!

That was our fun exciting day with pool noodles!  Now take your noodles cut them up and let your kids have fun with them! I am ALWAYS looking for more ideas so share with me what you did with your pool noodles!

Bye, Bye, Butterfly!

Baking 101

Today was baking day!!  I have decided to bake at least once a week with the kids.  Last week we made rolo cookies and this week we made lemon burst cookies!  The kids love helping and learning about recipies and measuring.  I am a horrible baker but now when things dont turn out I can blame it on the kids! 
Today we made Lemon Burst Cookies (thank-you pinterest)
Only 4 ingredients!

A box of lemon cake mix,coolwhip, an egg, and missing from the picture is the powdered sugar!

Crack open egg!  Today was one of the kids first attempts at cracking an egg and he did awesome!  No shells went in!! 

Add the coolwhip!  Yummo!  Of course lick the container clean and when kids say "Hey can I have a lick?" say "bummer it already has my germs!"  yes i did this!  I LOVE coolwhip and I have a hard time sharing it!!  Also let the kids slowly scoop it in one scoop at a time because it means the kids are having fun!

Add cake mix!   I know this is really hard to follow but try your best to keep up! :)

Form into balls and roll in the powdered sugar.  The mixture is REALLY sticky so making balls is a little difficult but we did our best!

Bake the balls at 350 degrees for about 15 mins maybe longer or shorter depending on the size of the balls you make!  We had a large variety of different size balls so they all baked at different times! 

Let the kids do this because you feel bad for licking the coolwhip bowl clean!  :)

Can't stay, Blue Jay!

Lets Talk About Felt

I LOVE felt board stories and so do the kiddos!  I am not gonna lie, I kinda forgot about felt for awhile and then thanks to pinterest I have been super busy making LOTS of felt board stories!  I will be sharing a couple with you today.  I think I might have to start something like Felt Board Friday...hmmmmm...

Frist off my felt board is the back of a white board.  Very easy to make I just got some felt and used push pins to hold it to the back of the white board.  This way I can use the baord for multiple things! 

This first one is 5 Red Apples. 

i am not an artist!

The second one is 5 little Monkeys.

 This one I printed pictures of a monkey and an alligator, but then I use the same tree that I made for 5 Red Apples.  I colored and then used contact paper so they will last longer and glued some felt to the back!  I let the kidlets take turns being the alligator and snapping the monkeys off the tree!

Finally I am going to share this one.  Its not a story or a song, and remember I am NOT an artist, the kids don't care how bad it is so I hope you don't care as well!

I made felt people and clothes (kinda like a paper doll) Let me tell ya I pull this bad boy out and I have kids quiet as ever dressing and undressing these dolls forever!  Girls and BOYS love this activity!!

I snapped a few pics of Natalie playing with it this morning!

My people dont have faces...its a work in progress people! 

Notice how they are all holding hands!  I love my little girl!!

Hit the road, Happy Toad!

How may I take your order?

Today was a fun and busy morning! We started off by painting our hands and making hand prints on a basket for a special friend.  (no picture..sorry!)

We then headed outdoors to enojoy this BEAUTIFUL weather!!!  Where the kids did a little of this...

 "Welcome to McDonalds, what can I get for you?"

"I want chicken nuggets, french fries, and a strawberry shake!"

Then it was project time!  Simple, and fun! (thats how i like project time to be!)

Initials

I cut out the first letter of each kids name from a cereal box (my cupboard is now full of cereal bags).

I then took glue and water (because waered down glue works just as well as regular glue!)  I take a baby food container and do half glue and half water and have the kids paint the glue on rather than have globs of paint everywhere!  It saves glue and the kids enjoy painting the glue and it take time!  And ofcourse blue glue (add food coloring) is way more fun that white glue!

After the glue has been painted on we added scraps of paper!

The final product!

Whats that spell at the bottom...don't mind if i do! I kid I kid...but I will enjoy the peace and quiet while the kiddos nap!

In a shake, Garter snake!

Bubble, Bubble, POP!!

What kid doesn't love bubbles!  So I thought today would be the perfect day to do Bubble Painting!

It was a super fun activity that the kiddos and myself LOVED!

To do this activity you need very few items, containers to put your paint bubbles in, straws, dish soap, and paint.

We used 4 different colors of paint.

couple squirts of paint, couple squirts of soap, and a little water and you get this!

We then took this outside because I had never done this activity before I figured it would be best to do it outside!

when you get this, it means you have added enough of everything!

then gently lay a piece of paper on top and let the bubbles pop!

and you get these lovely pictures!  We did LOTS of them!  At first we kept getting the rings of where the cups were on the paper which didn't look bad just not what we wanted so I had the girls keep blowing bubbles while I held the paper and then we didn't get the rings!

The kids LOVED blowing the bubbles and seeing what the paper looked like! 

so of course when the paper has run out you allow this to happen...

They were covered in paint and so was my kitchen table and floor...whats that?  You thought I was smart and did this outside?  I was but then it was to windy so we had to come inside! Oh well its washable and it all came out..except for that pink spot on my table...norwex time to do your magic!

Be Sweet, Parakeet!

Ribbit, ribbit!

PAINT!

i say this word and I have 8 children at my feet yelling and screaming with delight!

Painting makes me a little anxious but I still do it 3-5 times a week. 

Why do I put myself through this...

because of happy little faces!!

 On Monday (and part of Tuesday) we made these...

cute!! 

See ya soon, Racoon!

Ooey Goey cookies

Devil's Food Cake Mix

+

Rolos

+

and a few other ingredients

=

A little bit of yummyness (if thats even a word) in your mouth!

So I am trying to be better about baking and cooking for my family and daycare kiddos, but since I am not so good at either I have been trying very simple recipies to get me started and because this one just sounded amazing we gave it a try...yes, WE gave it a try!  5 of those wonderful daycare kids got to help with this fun!

We all washed hands and then after the first 5 cookies were rolled, the hands got licked and we had to re wash the hands and then have a talk about not licking our hands while baking.  Well that gave my daughter the idea of just licking the ball of dough instead...its all good the germs baked off in the oven...right?!?

 the dough made 30 cookies...only 8 were left :)

 YUM!!!

My natty patty enjoying her yummy cookie!

Gotta go, Buffalo!

Parks

Natalie loves to go places and we try to get out of the house as often as possible since we don't leave a whole lot during the week.  So last weekend we went to a couple parks.
Friday night we meet up with an old "penpal" at The Falls.  Natalie loved it but was confused as to why there was no slides or swings since I said we were going to the park. 

We took a family photo since we very rarely findthe opportunity to take a family photo.

It was a beautiful night of catching up with an old friend and meeting her family!

Sunday after naps we went to another park.  Natalie was amazed by this park because it had so much to play on!

Here are a few pics that I was able to get while chasing my none stop moving children.

after while, crocodile!

busy busy busy

This week has been super busy!  The babies, toddlers, and preschoolers AND schoolagers have been keeping me on my toes!  We have been super busy with crafts, and making preschool stuff for when school starts and we had a lemonade stand!  (i will get better about posting pics very soon!)  I hope to post pics of all my fun crafting stuff soon! 
I am going to leave you all with these words of wisdom from one daycare kiddo..."If you swallow your gum, your butt cheeks will get stuck together!"

see ya later alligator!

here it goes...

Well for the 5th time,or maybe the 6th time I am attempting to start this blog and keep it going a couple times a week.  I am struggling because I want to come off as ME, but when I know someone might read this I tend to try to hard and then I am no long me. :( 

I want to use this blog to remember each fun day with all my kiddo, different crafts and activites that I will do with the kids, and maybe even some food blogs( i am a horrible baker and an ok cook but I am trying) 

dear babies

I am starting the blog so I can remember everything that goes on each day!  I love scrapbooking but it doesn't always hold the memories of writing my life down to look back and remember!  I want my children to remember all the fun we had, and all the hard times they gave me!  If you are reading this blog you will learn quickly I am NOT a writer and will make few LOTS of horrible grammer mistakes but you may possibly learn a little about me, my family,my daycare and a little of what I call CRAZY!!

jill