More pics from the great outdoors!

I think I had a record today of taking 21 mins to dress and get 8 kids and myself out the door!

not to bad!  considering it was 36 mins yesterday with  10 kids! 

Anyways...

here are some pics of the kiddos hanging around outdoors!!

Balloon Craziness

Balloons are some of the cheapiest things that will bring hours of entertainment!  Just blowing up a balloon with get a child's attention!  Realeasing the air out of a balloon with bring cheers and yippies and maybe a few tears if you catch them off gaurd :)  Then when you add music, rules, and candy it becomes even that much more fun!  And this time we made paddles and the kids had a blast with the paddles!

Here are a few pics of our balloon fun!!

 paddles = paper plates with a plastic silverware tapped to the back!

 personalizing the paddles! 

finished paddles!

 don't let the balloon touch the ground!!

 lots of smiles and laughter with this acitivty

keep the balloons in the air!

We did everything from don't let the balloon touch the ground for a whole song

can only touch the balloon with your finger

bounce balloon on your head, elbow, arm, knee

use the paddles to pass the balloon back and forth between friends,

don't let Jill get your balloon! :)

We had a blast and used up lots of endergy since it was to cold to go outside! 

What do you do when its to cold to go outside?

Keeping Busy on a Friday

So my fellow readers, I am going on vacation!  I leave on Sunday morning and am SUPER excited! 
But I promised myself I would not slack off just because I was going on a vaca!  I needed to stay focused and keep the kids busy doing projects!  So today we were busy!

The first thing we did was very similar to what we did last week but instead of the apples, we did leaves:

I don't have a finsihed picture I realized but I just cut out leaf shapes, with red and black paper!  simple, easy and fun!

Later on when the wee little ones took a nappy nap we made these:

again it was the exact same thing as the apples but instead of a red jello we used an orange jello (the obvious)

We also had a DANCE PARTY with these!

How did I make these awesome streamers you ask...well I cut the handles off of the milk jugs, punched a hole in them and tied some ribbon on them!  Let me tell you dancing is always way more fun when you have streamers!  (saw this at a training...did NOT come up with this on my own!)

I am learning to use the materails I have around me and coming up with some pretty fun ideas but always looking for more!  Please share with me fun things you make with items found right in your home!

You will prob not hear from me for the next week since I will be laying on a beach, soaking up the sun, reading a book! 
Have a Happy Week!

Linking up with Whatcha Making Wednesday

Bounce Around!

On days when the kids are going crazy and using me as a jungle gym are the days that this bad boys gets put to use...

Today was that day and the kids used up their energy in this bounce around house! 

What do you do with your kids when they are going crazy and you can't get outside because weather isn't allowing?

SUPER HERO

What child doesn't want to be a super hero, especially boys?  If you have boys or girls you have a great desire to be a super hero or if you just need a reason to cut up old tshirts and give your kids something to do to occupy themselves for a few minutes than this is the project for you!  It literally takes minutes to make!  All you need is a T-shirt and a scissors!

here is my old t-shirt

cut off the sleeves

thencut off the front of the t-shirt and around the neck!

and there you have your Superhero cap! 

these photos are VERY old but couldn't find any recent photos of the children wearing them now!  But these pictures brought back so many great memories of these precious kiddos!!

The boys wear them the most but every now and then the girls throw them on as well! 

They are worth the 5 mins that it takes to make!  I would also recommend if you have 1 or 2 kids to let them personalize them!  Having a daycare its better for me to just have a dozen and let the kids pick and choose the color they want for their specific mood that day!

Also its very important when the kids are wearing their capes to shout things like:

"To infinity and beyond!"

"Look, there's the bat signal!"

"This looks like a job for Superman!"

"Shazam!"

"Here I come to save the day!"

and

"Up, up, and away!"

I

Things you can do with .... Thursday

I am gonna try find "household" type items and then find things I can do with them with the kids throughout a week or two.  And I will be calling it "Things you can do with....Thursday.

Always up for ideas so please share them!!

Last week and this week we played a lot with Painters Tape!

 The first thing we did with painters tape was make and indoor hopscotch!

A week later it is still there and the kids are still hoping on it daily!

We then painted using painters tape!

I made the first letter of each kids name with tape, had the children paint their piece of paper and then I pulled the tape off so the kiddos could see their letter!  The kids had a blast seeing their letter appear!!

Working on painting our letters!

Taking our time, trying to stay "in the lines"  I never push for children to stay in the lines so its always so funny that with age they start to develop it on their own!

The kids leave and I am left wit this!  oh the joys!

Our final product! 

I discovered that the kids that took longer to paint the tape did not come off as easy.  So I recommend if you do this acitivty to pull the tape off right away!  Also the kiddos that used LOTS AND LOTS of paint their paper also tore a little bit but for the most part they turned out just as I had hoped!

We also made a road on the carpet to drive our car on! 

Busy driving the cars on the road!  I ran out of tape so our road isn't very big! :(

This little dude LOVES to make lines so lining his cars up on a line, he was in heaven!

I love how busy they get with new things!

Here comes TROUBLE!!

Don't mind the road block!  The boys would just "fly" their cars over the road block! 

 

Our last acitivy with painters tape was a target!

Look at the form on that kid!

The kids were given permission to throw objects at the wall!  We only threw the noodles we had cut up earlier in the week!  So far no large and hard objects have been thrown at the target!

Well that was our fun with painter's tape!  Would LOVE to hear what you do with painters tape as well!

Hasta Manana, Iguana!!

OUTDOORS!

Alot of our time today was spent outdoors!  This morning we did a little art activity which I will hopefully be blogging about later this acitivty.  Think something like "Things you can do with ... Thursday" Hope you all stop back over for that!! 

But since the weather is so beautiful we took advantage of being outdoors because I know that our outdoor time is going to be gone very quick! 

The morning was spent playing "troll" think 3 billy goats gruff, well I am the troll and the kids climb up the slide while I stand at the bottom and then I say this little chant...

"I AM A TROLL IN A DEEP DARK HOLE MY BELLY'S GETTING THINNER(i wish) I NEED TO EAT AND insert childs name IS A TREAT, SO I WILL HAVE HER/HIM FOR MY DINNER! 

and then the child slides down the slide and i gooble them up!  We do this till I can't say the chant one more time!  But this gets the kids giggling everytime over and over!

Here are a few photos of the kids waiting to be goobled up by the troll:

After everyone was gobbled off it was time to play school!  Most of my "older" kids go to preschool so when they get back they want to continue to play and teach the little kids the rules of school!  Eventually school made its way to doing chalk!  They had lots of fun drawing people, and writing my name, and of course getting covered in chalk dust!  Here are some more photos of the artwork the children created with chalk! 

This is my name written by another child, she did a GREAT job!

This is a family of people!  I love when they start making people!  Its fun to see their circles with arms and legs coming out of their heads, and then with time children develop and more body parts are added to their drawings!

 This is Rapunzel...notice the long hair!

 Chalky butts!

And I leave you with this wild, happy boy who walks behind everything! 

Time to Scoot, Little Newt!

POOL PAINTING

Marble painting is a favorite acitivity for the kiddos, so I thought to myself how can I turn it up a notch?  Instead of an old pizza box and a couple marbles, i decided to use our baby swimming pool and balls.

easy, fun, and a little messy (espcially if a ball pops out!)

enjoy the photos...

Place some paper down in the bottom of pool, if i had thouhout this out better I would have taped it down but it still worked out just fine!

We used lots of different balls of different sizes!

Put in a variety of different colors of paint.

Pick the pool up and start rolling the balls.  We used lots of words like side to side, left to right, front to back, up and down!

Final product! 

Very fun activity and this will go on the list of things to do again!!

Toodle-loo, Kangaroo!!