Ice Treasures

"WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?"

this is what I heard as I set that blocks of ice out with toys frozen inside!

My reply was

"So you can have fun trying to get them out!"

50 minutes later the toys were unthawed, water EVERYWHERE, and smiling happy kids proud of their hard work!

Here are some pics of the kids working hard to free their icey treasures!

hammering with different utensils



 Pouring warm water to see what happens!

thinking oh he looks soooo cute and he is sooo busy!

then i turn my back and he dumps the bowl of water on himself :)

Happy Friday Friends

Hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend!!

Play with Your Food

I LOVE table manners

(i don't have them myself)

but I do try to teach the children about table manners

so playing with food isn't always an option!

But today I encouraged playing with food

and then eating it :)

What you need:

and fruit loops

-i forgot those in the photo-

what this is are little dixie cups with a scewer stuck in them and a quarter piece of paper the colors of the rainbow/fruitloops

I then placed the cups on the table and the fruitloops in the center

and had the kids match the fruitloops with the card under the cup.

--this was very easy for my group so I added numbers to the cards and had the kids match the correct number of fruitloops with the card number and color--

The girls matching the cups to the paper

matcing the fruitloops with the paper

 hmmm i think this is a good match!

working hard!!

I even had the little guys do this project, i did not have them do the color matching but just focus on the fine motor skills of getting the fruitloop onto the stick!

HUGE HIT!

not very often can I get the little boys to sit still for more then 48 secs

so the fact that they did this for 30mins is WONDERFUL!!!

It helped that they could snack and learn at the same time!!

look at the concentration on that face!!

one at a time!

 look Jill, I did it!!

taking a quick snack break!!

Happy Friday!

Hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!!!



Blow Paint

This is awesome!

so cool!

can I do another?

I love this!!

--these are a few of the phrases that I heard during project time--

It was a hit!

What you need:

paper

straws

paint

and a few good lungs!

Its pretty simple:

squirt paint onto paper

give each child a straw

and use those good lungs to blow the paint around

DONE!!

After blow paint was done I took out a bunch of stickers for the kids to use up

Never did I think that between blow painting and stickers that an entire 2 hours would be used up!

This kids were crazy about both activities.

I didn't take pictures of the kiddos playing with stickers and I am kinda kicking myself for not!

They were so into it and made some of the neatest things with their stickers!

These kiddos NEVER stop to amaze.

Even the very little kids sat perfectly still as I handed them each a sticker one at a time since they were not able to peel the stickers themselves!

It was the PERFECT activity!!!

Here are a couple of the sticker projects that were created!

Lots of time and energy were used on these photos!

I am soooo in love with them!!



Sweet Pictures from sweet kiddos!

This weekend has been a whirlwind!

My little brother was in a serious car accident on Thursday afternoon

so days and evenings spent at the hospital, along with just being a mother and wife!

Friday to keep my mind busy I had daycare

and told the kids about my brother/my kiddos uncle.

We prayed for him and talked about how cool he was

(they had just seen him since he was here working on the Basement)

Today I wasn't in a project mood kinda mood.

so I just took out some crayons, paper, and letters to trace or do crayon rubbings on

The kiddos got busy on their stuff,

when a child mentioned that we hadn't prayed for my brother

so we stopped what we were doing and prayed!

The kids then thought it would be fun to draw him pictures to make him happy!

here are a few pics of the kids hard at work!

I was given these letters awhile back ago and didn't think much of them and then I realized that would be great for a writing activity!

tracing, crayon rubbings or just covering your paper in them!

 Here are a couple pics of what the kids drew.

 one of the little girl drew a picture of Natalie (my daughter) and her uncle Kirk!

so sweet!

I told the kids that Kirk loved doing puzzles so another little girl drew a bunch of puzzle piees for him!  to cute!!!

It was so sweet to see the kids remember my brother and want to draw pictures for them!  It meant so much to me!  They made sure to sign their names so that Kirk would know who the pictures were from, they are sooo sticken cute!

Please Pray for My Little Brother a he has a long road ahead of him

here is his caring bridge page if you want to see his progress.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kirkbleyenburg



The stick just wasn't so sticky!

One of my new year resolutions was to plan my daycare projects in advance!

I have not missed a single day!

Everything has been ready and prepped for when the time came!

well last night I look at my calendar

and do a check in my head to make sure I have all the materials

well nope I do not because of the the flood!

I don't have all my yarn, not much tissue paper, no felt

BUT contact paper YES! 

It was on a top shelf!

So I gather all the supplies that made it and have them ready for today!

a BIG piece of contact paper pom poms, a small amount of tissue paper, buttons, sequence, a few pieces of yarn and string and some other small light weight odds and ends!

the kids go to work!!

hang the contact paper on the wall!

set out supplies and let the kids start the decorating process

hmmm where should I put this?

The finished product!

Also not sure if it was because the contact paper has been sitting in a super moist basement or if it was bad contact paper but the items had a hard time staying stuck!!  I am assuming it was because it sat in the basement but who knows! so all day I have been picking up the pieces that are slowing falling off to the ground!!

here one of the kiddos made a face

you can see the eyes, the button ears, the sequence mouth and the yarn for hair!

Too cute!!!

This was a HUGE hit and the kids were busy with this activity for over 30 minutes!  I love when we can get up and moving with our project time!!

I highly recommend this activity with energetic kids! Because there was lots of walking to be done if you stick the supplies on one side of the room and the contact paper on the other! 

I leave you with this picture

I was finsihing lunch clean up and walked into our "new" daycare space and found this little dude sitting at the table reading a book (upside down) just smiling away like he was the biggest kid at daycare today!  It just struck me as super funny and I had to get a picture of it! 

Happy Monday!!

Here are a few more pics of my daycare space as of today

this is a pic of the back bedroom

and this is a pic of the main daycare area that I use!

The carpet is offically dry and waiting a little longer on the wood!

so we are almost ready to start repairing everything!

Sparkle and Shine!

Since my basement is FAR from being sparkling and shining

This was at 630 am on Thursday January 26th

This was at 12pm today January 27th

Slowly but surly the progress is being made!

We are trying to stay positive!!

Anyways like I said before

Since my basement is far from being sparkly and shinny 

we had to do a craft to brighten up my mood

(the kids are THRILLED to be having daycare on my main level!)

So I stole asked my husband for some of his cds that he wasn't using

and we decorated them with gems, and sequence!

look at those big ol brown eyes!  How do you not love her!!

even through the sass, I love her!

working hard!!

Here are a few of the finished products!

the plan will be to string them up somewhere!  

we just haven't decided where yet!

Simple, easy, fun and sparkly!!  

and who does love a little sparkle in their life!

Happy Weekend to everyone!

I will hopefully be taking daily pics so that I can remember all work we went through and hopefully in the very near future my daycare will look AMAZING!!!

linking up with a sparkling and shinning link over at The Sunday Showcase

be sure to check out the link which is FULL of great ideas!!!

Build a Snowman

It is FREEZING outside today!

There will be no going out to build a real snowman

so we are staying inside and making our own little snowmen!

First we read the Story

Sneezy the Snowman

Very cute book about a snowman that has a cold and his friends give him their clothes to keep him warm

but Sneezy just can't seem to regulate his temperature...

you will have to read the story to find out more

After we read the Story we made our own snowman!

What I did:

(there are many many ways to make a snowman!)

I cut out 3 circles, small, medium, and large

the children didn't need to use one of each but I wanted to provide them with options

gathered some pom poms for decorating

I also cut hats, scarfs, orange triangles, and sticks from felt

set the items on the table

and let the kids go to work!!

I love how creative they can be!!

 Here are a couple of our Final Products!

What Kind of Snowmen are you making??

Linking up with Mingle with Us