birthday!! Dayhome

 

So last year in my day home we had a birthday theme.  The children spent the week planning a birthday party, we went supply shopping, decorated, made a pin-the-tail on the giraffe, made a pinata, made invitations, caked and decorated a cake. This year i have different day home children, and the birthday was such a big success that i decided to do it again! but a little different;

 

we wrapped presents.

 I had a party table set up for dramatic play with party hats, plates, cups, forks, invitations and some fun party dress up clothes.

 I had flour and measuring cups, spoons, spatulas, muffins tins,ect in the granular play. it was a mess but a hit!

 Kayla wrapped a present!

 Kayla just LOVED the flour!

 Isn't she pretty!

And now covered had to toe in flour, as you can see this is the second outfit, it was the same day she just got SOO covered, twice.

of course the books!

We also decorated the tree out front with streamers, baked cupcakes and had a birthday party.  The children decorated the cup cakes at the party. it was a hit again!

things that go- DAYHOME

so i am a little behind on my blog, but the good news is!! i have FINALLY completed my Early Childhood Education diploma!! 6 years and 2 babies, but i finally have my 2 year diploma!

anyway, to recap what we have been up to! i had to pick a topic based on the children's interest for a big school assignment, so i did alot of day home planning around things that go, and here is a little of what we did!

well of course firetrucks go! we took a trip to the westside fire station, which was basically the kids climbing in and out of fire trucks. they loved it!!

 We made fire trucks,

 I colored a chalk fire on the fence and had the children put out the fire. this was a hit!

 and the books.

 We made cardboard box cars.

 the painted boxes!

 Washing the 'wheels'

 boxes are always fun to play in.

 my cars poster

 this was a play area, there was bike races a stop/go sign, 'tire' hopping and musical cars.

 here are the finished cars, we had a drive in movie in the basement, the kids loved it, although i dont think they actually know what a drive in movie is, do they even have those any more?

my assignment poster. i know we did many more 'things that go' activities but this was a month ago now!

zoo and father's day- DAY HOME

 So in my day home i have several boxes of toys that i store in the basement and rotate through to help keep interest. in these boxes is a BIG box of zoo stuff! Which for some reason i have never planned activities to go with.  So here is what i came up with.

I made a memory/matching card game, with small zoo animal shapes to go with. i was searching on line for pictures of animal tracks that i could use to make a matching track to animal game but had no luck.
I also put out several zoo puzzles that are not pictured and a memory game from madgascar movie, it's actually a cool one, it has close up pictures of the animals fur/skin to match to the animals cartoon version, and real version.

 This was inspired by pinterest, i put a collection of small stuffed animals in and the children could guess what zoo animal they found.  My day home 5 year old loved this game and asked to play quite a few times.

 Animal tracks in play dough, this was not as successful as the tracks in paint. the children used this as an invitation to bring whatever toys they wanted in the play dough.  I do set limits for the children in the day home, there are play dough toys specifically for play dough, and other toys are not to be in the play dough.  Its never been a problem until i did this activity.  For some reason doing tracks in paint never caused issues, but tracks in play dough i don't think i would do again.  Maybe some of you are thinking who cares if they put other toys in play dough, but then it's hard to seperate the play dough toys from not play dough toys and basically you end up with playdough crumbs everywhere or squwished into the carpet.

 pin the tail on the zebra and lion, Nic thought this was lame (it's supposed to be a donkey!), put it was a hit! They even wanted to be blind-folded to play.

 The books!  Every theme i display a collection of books on the theme, to further their learning, encourage interest in the theme and again change things up!  The children would actually be more then happy to read the same books over and over, but i get bored!

 The zoo toys, our display tents went perfect with the zoo theme.

 more toys! There is zoo puppets (so we put on a zoo puppet show), zoo toys to go with toys in above pic, zoo stuffies and those funny heads on sticks that you can close their mouths, we had fun trying to clean up the play room using those.

 animal track painting! this is a huge success! i have done it before with dinosaurs too.

the zoo masks i made!  I also have a small collection of animal dress up stuff that was pulled out.  I decided i need to make a zoo keeper costume for next time.

 i just like this picture!

 This was our father's day craft.  first the boys had to take wrappers off, then line up the pretzels and place a hershey kiss on top. then i raced them into the oven (this project would be easier with 1 or 2 children, or if you used a work space closer to the oven.)

 Then when the hershey kisses were softened they pushed an M & M in them.  Because i only had a small amount of hershey kisses and wanted to send the gift home i told the boys that we would snack after we were done, i counted out the right amount of hershey kisses and pretzels for each boy then had counted a few extra M & M's, i told them that when they were done making all the pretzel's they could eat whatever m & m's were left in their bowl and it worked just fine!

SESAME street, not seAsame street

that is all.

seasame street! day home

before i start let me say my oscar game and cookie monster game are totally inspired from my very creative cousin!

we started the week with rubber duckies in the water table, can't remember if i took a picture or not but i can't seem to find one.

 then the buttons went in! Kayla was in love!

 the boys made there own puppets

 pretty creative!!

 this did not relate to seasame street but something i did with the children.  We borrowed a kit from the city of lethbridge and with Nic's help, went and painted yellow fish on the storm drains! this was actually more successful then i thought it would be, and blake keeps asking when we can go paint fish again!

I forgot to pick up a small garbage can for our oscar game so we just used a big bowl.  There was crumpled up newspaper that they threw in the garbage.  This activity again was created by my cousin, i just copied her wonderful idea!

Then i made beanbag cookies for them to throw in cookies monsters mouth.  Again, copied from my cousin, this one i changed slightly but still Heather's idea!

 marble painting! again not really related to seasame street just something that seemed fun.

there's my seasame street characters again! oscar looks a lot better then my sad cookie monster. and i didn't have a chance to laminate that one before playing so it took a beating. oh also note! if you make beanbags from rice, make sure they don't get wet!

hail storms! i scooped a bunch of hail from the last storm and brought it in. unfortuately the children decided to eat it instead of play with it....gross.

still to come, zoo! if i can ever get the pics off my camera card!

learn from my mistakes...

so if you don't already do this you should. remove pictures from your memory card and FORMAT your card! i am trying to figure out how to recover half a years worth of pictures off my memory card, including a recent day home theme, zoo, and some assignment pictures for my practicum! so in the mean time, we will skip over that theme...

Blake's preschool had a family potluck/graduation ceremony. Blake was PRETTY burnt out by the end of it.  We left for Calgary right from the school and he was asleep before we even left lethbridge.

 How cute is he!? Blake was so proud! and i was impressed that he sat and waited so nicely while the other 30+ kids were called before him!  And note his shirt...he was wearing a 'muscle' shirt and jogging pants before hand and was so relieved that he willingly changed!

 So in the last few months Kayla has just been LOVING the music programs we attend, which sadly none are running right now, and she has taken to trying to teach the boys the songs and singing them on her own, all she needs is a stage (drums) and a microphone!  Her favorite songs are twinkle twinkle and sleeping bunnies.

 tried out our new to us tent trailer last weekend. the good news is it doesn't leak! the bad news is it rained and rained and rained! But that didn't stop blake and kayla from fishing and nic and i from testing out our amazing kayaks from my auntie suzie! we are going to have so much fun with those!
side note-#1 reason it sucks to camp with someone in a trailer when you are in a TENT trailer- they don't consider where the bathroom is when picking a spot!
#1 reason it's awesome to camp with someone in a trailer when your in a tent trailer.  If it rains all weekend there is a bigger space to get away from the rain in!
the rain sucked, but it was nice to spend some time with nic's parents.  Kayla and Blake adore all 4 of their grandparents! and are always happy to see them.

where else would you read a book?

ps- why would you enter your cell phone number on your blog account?! it keeps asking for it when i sign in and i just don't understand why i would want to do that....

mothers day run!

I have been running in the mother's day run for years, i decided it was something that i wanted to do as a family, so Nic has been running with me.  This is only the second time i have taken our kids though!  because of rain and snow in previous years.  This year my niece adora came with us.  for some reason people kept thinking adora and kayla were twins...

 after the run we walked home from the train station, i think this walk took longer then the race itself.  This is adora trying to pick up a lady bug or ant. 

 One big happy family!

 chowing down on dessert.  My auntie brought a big bowl of berries for dessert, i am pretty sure kayla ate her weight in fruit!

 butterfly shirts!

 ok i guess i could see why people would assume the blonde haired girls are twins with their matching shirts, jeans, shoes and they had matching jackets too! this was actually not planned.

 Kayla and daddy!

This picture isn't great, but this is why kayla should not wear white.  Adora had the exact same milk container, same amount and everything, she did not get a single drop of milk on her!  Kayla, had milk ALL over her white shirt and jeans.
Kayla and Adora had such a fun weekend together.  My sister and i are trying to force a friendship on them, since most likely neither one will actually have a sister, we trying to make them like sisters.  But really we don't have to force it at all! These two adore each other! and are SOOO crazy together!!