Monday 25 February 2013

day home-no school!

I'm on a roll!

Last week was teacher's convention/family day/other days off for children that parents love!

So to keep the children busy here are a few things we did!
Inside picnic! We had some friends over, sadly Blake decided he wanted to have his own picnic and did not join the rest of us on the other blanket!
 So I kinda stole some ideas from Blake's preschool, teddy bear picnic...anyway, we decorated teddy bears, some children cut theirs out, some glued, colored, it was a pretty open craft!

We had a PJ day, since normally someone always has school I thought it would be nice to have a stay at home  PJ day. 
I can not seem to find any pictures of the fridge box that was the biggest source of entertainment for the week.  That's right, a fridge box!  My hubby brought one home from work, and it has yet to leave the playroom!  For an activity one day we painted it, which went surprisingly well with no paint on the floor!
This is our tape spider web, that the children threw tape balls at.  Next time I do this activity I will have to remember not to buy tape from the dollar store as it was not very sticky!!
Well going with the colors month we also did some more color matching activities.
We took a little field trip to indian battle park (love it down there!) and then stopped at my hubby's work.  (he is works construction)  We sat and watched them work for a little while, the boys seriously would have sat there all day! I however was cold and bored.

So...that's about it...library trip, colored water in the water table.  Really, it was last week and I'm already drawing blanks trying to remember what we did!

day home-january?! snow!

Playing a little catch up here, I guess I never posted about January.
January my theme was snow, and a couple book studies, sadly there was more snow talk then actual snow on the ground!!

 Shaving cream painting! kinda a little bit like snow!  This is really so fun, I just can not resist getting my hands right in there too!
 This is an earlier pictures obviously...
 Some artic friends in the water table.
 Snow!!
 So i wanted to make igloos, i could not come up with anything better to make them with then marshmallows (i thought they would be better then sugar cubes!)  And I thought about using glue so it wasnt really an 'eating' craft. but of course, using marshmallows, they are going to eat them, so icing it was! and then course i just had to get penguin candies...
 Snow man college!
 Our snowman parts..
 Snowflake mobiles, the children were assisted in glueing the popsicle sticks together as i used hot glue.  And then we used this werid textured snow paint.
 This went along with our book study, i remember taking a picture of all the snow books but i can not find the picture, and can't remember the name of this book! it had something to do with penguins, so we made penguins, i had a penguin color matching game, penguin dye cuts to make a college, hmm....this was a few weeks ago! So i can not remember what other activities went with the book. Oh, of course we read it!  I do seem to remember not so successfully trying to teach the children how to penguin walk, this looks particularly ridiculous when you are largely pregnant....
 Ice bergs in the water table!! and of course a naked barbie...only one this time!
Nothing to do with snow, just something we did in January, a big giant fort!!

Well again, there was other activities, but...drawing blanks!
Oh i had a package of foam snowflakes, which we did the same as the hearts from valentines day, snow flake hop, snow flake search, then snowflake art! And we did use white paper and scissors to cut out snowflakes, unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the giant pile of ity bitty pieces of paper that was the end result of that activity! I though maybe we could hang out snowflakes but there was no flakes big enough to even try!

red week/valentines-day home

Our week started out with a package of fun foam hearts from the dollar store, oh the possibilities!!
We did a heart hop, this involves taping the hearts to the floor and having the children hop from heart to heart!
We did a heart search, same foam hearts, hidden around the playroom in all different spots, i hide them a few times and let the children find them and then they start hiding them for each other.
Then of course we did crafts with the hearts!
I sewed to hearts together to make little heart envelopes.  The valentines college stuff was out all week for art, there is ribbon, tissue paper, smaller hearts, flower petals, and more!
Of course we also made valentines! My son decided to make valentines for himself while all the other children were making them for their parents!
 Hmmm!!! Fruit salsa with heart shaped tortilla chips! Perfect valentines snack!
 So every year that I have had my day home I have planned a valentines party with extra friends.  This year with so many bugs going around and being just pretty worn out in my current pregnant state with just my 5 I did a slightly more low key valentines party, as in just my day home children!  Which was perfect because I ended up having the quietest day at the day home with 2 children not quite sick but just not their full energtic selves.  ANYWAY!! I felt so guilty about just doing pita pizzas instead of my usual heart shaped pizzas, until of course i served them and the meal that is normally devored! was mostly thrown out.  SO! speaking of pizza, this is an excellent opporunity to sneak veggies into my son!!  I either make my own crust or use those little tiny whole wheat pitas, then do a layer of pureed red peppers under the pizza sauce, and wa la! my son eats veggies!! He has actually seen me put the red peppers on, and yet still eats the pizza knowing there is an extra ingredient, but ask him to eat a red pepper! yea right!!
All right, moving on!!
 I served as many red/pink things as i could come up with for snack along with more heart shaped tortilla chips (home made, there is cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar on them). 
 Valentines pancakes!!! Sadly they looked nicer on the pan then cooked...
xoxoxo 
see what i mean?
Anyway! That was valentines week for us!!

dayhome- february color month!

 So for the month of February we are focusing on colors.  Here are a few of the activities we have done to start the month of.
First we made colored rice! This was a great activity, we measured the rice and vinegar and food coloring into ziplock bags then the children shook and mixed the rice around the bags while they watched the rice soak up the color.  Then we baked the rice, which only took 10 minutes i believe? and the best part was that the rice took no time at all to cool, we were instintly able to put it into the water table to play.

 So of course, we played in the rice!
of course, as always there was naked barbies in the water table.  They cant go swimming in their clothes right?! (Kayla may just start recieving barbie bathing suits as gifts in the future...)
 This activity lasted SO much longer then I thought it would!  We mixed colored water, pouring it from cup to cup, taping the sides to make music (that didn't last long) but the pouring and mixing of colors lasted a longer time!  I kept getting demands for new water, more water, more colors!
 Blake sort of looks like he is casting a spell with his colored potion water in front of him...
 Play dough! We tried color mixing play dough, it doesnt mix easily but still we sat and played play dough for a full hour one friday morning!!
of course we did painting, coloring and other colored crafts.  For color activities i also pulled out mega blocks and built color towers with the children, and our colored magnets.
Well this is week 1 of colors, still a couple more to come, eventually!!