flowers and butterflies, DAY HOME

To celebrate spring, and mothers day we did a week on flowers and a week on butterflies.

we have not yet finished all our butterfly activities as we are still waiting the butterflies arrivals!

We have 9 little teeny tiny catepillars above that the children have been watching grow and change!

Here is the flower shop, a cash register and flowers, great fun in dramatic play!

Blake selling his sister some flowers.  There was also aprons and shopping bags included, though they were not really used.

the children added packets of flower seeds to their shop that they got from a birthday party.

here are the cocoons! this process is taking alot longer then i thought it would! we are still waiting for the butterflies to emerge.

We made placemats out of dye cuts and fancy paper, then i laminated them.

our mothers day craft was cards and cup cake wrapper flowers. I did think that there would be a little more decorating of the wrappers, but they were happy with what they created!

 Our flower science experiment. We put the flowers in colored water, the baby breathe did not change, but the roses did.  The green was the quickest to change, the orange and blue took longer.

 Books.

Some of the placemats.  I had the children's names in dye cuts, so these are all just Kaylas! She really like this activity!

 

A few other things we did,

-painted butterflies and hung them from the windows.

-went on a nature walk, collected lady bugs and played with butterfly nets.

-played hide the butterflies with foam shaped butterflies.

-flowers in the water table.

-flower petal college.

 

I do have a couple activities planned for when our butterflies emerge to celebrate!

 

oh and Blake and Kayla got to end off butterfly week with a butterfly themed birthday party for Carley!

 Heather had a very talented facepainter come! Kayla LOVED her facepainting, and cried when I washed it off the night.

Butterfly wings too!

the drive thru! DAY HOME

So first off, of course I got the idea of making a PVC pipe 'house' from pinterest, really with a site like that who has their own ideas anymore! So, my daughter and her day home friend are often playing 'house' and started placing orders, usually for double doubles. (this might have something to do with Nic and I's addiction to roll up the rim...) ANYWAY! I thought it would be fun to set up a 'drive thru'.  I got this idea when it was BEAUTIFUL out and thought we would do it on the patio and they could drive up on bikes, however, the weather of course turned. so inside it was!
So the above picture is the door, i had a shopping cart and a collection of purses close by to extend play.

 So here is the inside, it was a little bigger then i had intended on making it, so the whole kitchen fit in the house.

 The drive-thru counter, stocked with a phone (the children added this!) ice cream serving stuff, disposible coffee cups, a cash register and a basket full of credit cards. (Like my previous mail box post, these are mostly collected from junk mail! you know when a credit card company wants sends you junk mail and there is a little fake plastic credit card in the envelope? well, i keep the card for play!)

And here is the drive thru window, there was ties so they could tie the window open, or leave it closed.

SO! i was thrilled that before as soon as I put the house structure out, before i placed all the 'drive thru' items inside, the children instantly went in and started playing like it was a store, placing orders, passing things back and forth through the window.
ANYWAY! it's a hit! and the best part, this PVC house can easily be taken a part and stored.

post office DAY HOME

So for the month of April Im loosely planning around the theme of community and cars.  The children have started to move the interest back towards cars a little bit so i thought i would expand on that and add community, or in our city.  Also, my daughter and youngest day home child have been playing store and ordering coffee and such so i thought i'd set up a drive thru which ties together the community and cars!
So heres where we started, the post office! I have been collecting envelopes everytime i get junk mail i keep the envelope and recycle the rest, i've also collected some cards and letter sets and had a giant stack so i put this out, with some stickers and labels (also have a ton of these from countless charities).  Then i made a mail box out of a cardboard box, the mail slot was a little high, but seemed to add more fun for the children!

 this stack looks alot smaller in the picture.

 as you can see, the mail slot is quite high!  Kayla LOVED this activity! i had an opening at the bottom on the back so they could get the mail out again, she spent the entire week writing letters, putting letters in the mail box, taking them out, handing them out.  she LOVED it!!

in they go!
As an add on to this activity I had the children write 'real' letters, they wrote a letter to each other and to their parents then we went to the post office, bought stamps and mailed those letters in the real mailbox! and the next day their mail came! This was also a big hit, and really fun because the older 2 (blake and my day home child) decided to write letters to each other but not show the other person their letter so it was a surprise when it came.  unfortunately i brought a camera with a dead battery to the post office so no pictures of this, but it was so cute!!

another extension of the project, we painted the mail box!

nothing to do with the post office just something we did that week, sewing with beads and plastic needles.

 ok, again, not related to post office. BUT i had to big long boxes and couldn't just send them out to recycling, so we made a bean bag toss game out of the second one!  I cut out the shapes, then the children decorated the boxes, then spent the ENTIRE day playing bean bag toss! for some reason i dont have a picture of the full box, but it was long and skinny, so they started with the box laying horizontal, then decided they needed more of a challenge and stood it up and aimed for the highest slot on it.  They climb in the box, they laid under the box while others threw beanbags in. Seriously, an entire day spent playing bean bag toss!!

 

eggs, bunnies and more! Day Home

For the last 2 weeks in the day home we have mostly been focusing on eggs and bunnies, and Easter, but also a couple other things that the children were interested in or i just thought would be fun! Here is what we did!

Bunny lunch!

 

The first week we just had eggs and egg scissors in the water table.

This is the material for our easter wreaths, tissue paper, mini styrofoam eggs, and flowers.

The slightly over cooked 'easter' bread.

Of course you cant have a bunny week without making bunny ears!

Blake's ears!

Some Q-Tip painting, great for fine motor skills!

 Another not quite so successful science experiment (did work slightly better then the juice and ice)  Shaving cream, water, food coloring, certain colors are supposed to go through the shaving cream faster then others.  I think the problem was my shaving cream layer was too thick, but it was still entertaining briefly, and then we scooped out the shaving cream for this....

Shaving cream painting! The kids just never get enough of this!!

So the boys lately have been showing interest in cars again, and races, so we propped up a sheet and they had car races down the sheet, this was a hit!

Bunny cards!  Blake and my day home boy decided to make the body of the bunny into 'computers' and use the bunny heads to make cards for their moms.

 Here's Blake and his computer!  Look at all the buttons mom!

 Kayla making a bunny card.

Bunnies and Computers.

 We made a box house, cereal box, kleenex box, i thought they would decorate the walls a bit more but they were just ready to play, and play, and play! with the box house!!

super hero bedroom...

 

 egg nest cookies. I try to do at least one baking project with the kids each week.

So our second week of bunnies and eggs we added easter grass.  There was also a collection of easter baskets in the playroom, we lined up the easter baskets and tried tossing the eggs into the baskets,

we hid the eggs and went on egg hunts,

we lined the eggs up in egg cartons, counted eggs, stacked eggs, and so on!

 So week 2 baking project was cookies, and of course we had to decorate them!

Another art project, easter grass, eggs, flower petals, egg stickers, tissue paper.  The eggs are actually 2 eggs hot glued together with an opening at the top, so the children could use them as envelopes or whatever!

We also had some bunny songs, bunny foo foo, did the bunny hop, and well, it was BEAUTIFUL out so we did a LOT of playing outside and park visits.

 

farm! Day home

 

So for the month of March I started with the theme of Farm, then will be moving on to Easters, eggs and bunnies. Some of my activities though have nothing to do with farm, I just had a few ideas i wanted to try.  Also, I recently attended the Early Childhood Education conference at the Lethbridge College, and got some new ideas from there I wanted to try out!
So here is a little of what we did....

First non farm, I attended a session about recycled materials, the 2 women who lead it had some awesome ideas HOWEVER! They do work at a center, have access to many families recycling and have places to store all their finds that they can one day retreasure.  So anyway, i got this idea from that session, CD's made into spin tops.  I cut out white paper and glued it on to CDs, Nic and I bought the wrong kind so have a stack of useless (to us) CDs...so, tops and clocks were made!

So on the bottom I glued a marble and on the top a milk cap to make them spin.  Blake decided to glue pipecleaners to make a spinning top clock.

 Lucky ducks!!  Everyone knows this carnival game, I bought a pile of rubber duckies and after many attempts hot glued colored shapes onto the bottom, the ducks were floating in the water table and the children could find the matches.

 

 Jillian Jiggs!!! This is a really fun book, with instructions on how to make your own pigs out of stockings.  I have done this before with dayhome children using stockings, this time I decided to cut up a perfectly good (but never worn) polar fleece top and use that to make the pigs.  The children stuffed their pigs then glued on pom pom's for legs, a button nose, felt ears.  Kayla wanted a princess pig so I made hers a tu-tu.  Blake and my dayhome child wanted ninja pigs, so we used felt to make ninja masks and then Blake glued green buttons to the back of his pig to make a shell.  This is only 2 of the pigs,  there were 5 made in total, Blake and Kayla asked for baby pigs.  The next morning Blake asked for more pigs (he needs all 4 ninja pigs!) i have yet to make those ones though...Anyway, Blake and Kayla brought their pigs to the pool the next morning to play with while the other had swim lessons (their lessons are back to back, not at the same time).  The pigs have also been brought to the grocery store and they were SO excited to show their babysitter!! So anyway, the pigs were a huge hit!!

 Felt bean bags.

The children glued their animals together then i sewed them and they filled them with rice.  I made a ton thinking that they would want to make more then 1 each, but they didn't, so I made a few as well.  We played farm bean bag toss with these on another day for a different activity.

 Aww!! Blake and Kayla cuddling watching the I pad after a VERY busy day with the day home kids!

 Again, not farm related.  I just decided to put out beads, an ice cube tray and pip cleaners and see what they would do.  Blake made a bracelet and ring, my day home children made a ring, and Kayla made a ring, bracelet, necklace and tiara.  No one sorted them or paid any attention to the ice cube tray.

 Fish! Grandpas farm has a pond with fish in it.  So I got a fish ice cube tray from Ikea and froze colored water then put the fish in the water table.  Of course they are quite small fish so they melted quickly, but we just kept re-freezing fish and putting more in the water table.

 Sheep! paper plates, foam legs, pom pom's, eyes and cotton balls.  I gave the children no instructions just put the materials out and let them figure out their sheep. 

 Sewing,  I have a Melissa and Doug set of laces and farm animals, the children did some sewing.  Kayla made hers with a long strap then wore the pig around calling it her purse.  I also had out farm puzzles, many many farm toys, and tractors galore!  We had tractor races, did farm animal track painting, sang old McDonald, read lots of farm books.  Did a puppet play with 5 little ducks.

 Here is our failed experiment!  Making slushies, I got the experiment from a kids science book.  I thought each child would like to make their own, put I did not have enough ice, so...anyway, did not work.  But the children enjoyed stirring apple juice and then drinking it!

 The books!

buttons! again, nothing to do with farm, just something else to do!

Hmmm!! what else did we do!  Oh we played the frog hop game, you have to jump the frogs onto little lily pads.  We had foam ducks to decorate, well, that is all I can remember!  oh some farm animal dress up...