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...

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!!

Christmas in the day home!

 

 Christmas in the day home!! Sorry, you will just have to turn your head or your computer from some pictures, i can not seem to rotate them!

so of course, we had snow in the water table. many many times!!

 we had styrofoam chips in the water table when it did not seem as though there would be snow!

 we decorated sugar cookies, baked christmas cookies, and so on!

 the books!

 We did some sewing, the styrofoam chips were sewn on to string to decorate our christmas tree.

 ta-da!

 we decorated orniments, painted orniments, glued, cut, colored, hung!

 this is the birthday cake i made for blake and kaylas birthday party! i forgot about the cake so sadly it was not eaten at the party. spiderman and a princess are doing snow angels and strawberry shortcake and a ninja turtle are on the tobaggan hill. Blake loved the cake! i was very happy with his reaction as i really did not want to bake and decorate 2 cakes since i had to bake and decorate cupcakes for his school and bake 6 gingerbread houses for the party! one cake seeemed like enough to me!

 tree decorating craft.

 we used cookie cutters and news print to make our own wrapping paper.  The kids also made a picture frame with a picture of themselves in it, wrapped it in their very own hand made wrapping paper and took it home for parents.

 Styrofoam balls and paper bags made up a snow ball toss game.  This was a big hit!

 Santa masks! i did get this idea from pinterest.  they were super cute!

 The day home children also helped decorate the christmas tree that Blake picked out!  We danced to christmas music, a lot! a favorite song was Santa baby!
we sang jingle bells, with all kindas of bells ringing!  We decorated windows with removable stickers....hmm...im sure there was more, but as it is now the middle of january i just cant remember!

 Candy cane hop.
and we decorated our own christmas hats.