Easter...around the room

We did many open ended crafts this week for Easter. Here we are painting on Bunny ears. We will wear them tomorrow for our party.

Painting eggs at the easle....

Stamping with a variety of Easter stamps...we just used paper towels and liquid watercolor for our stamp pads. You can also get 'make your own' stamp pads at www.discountschoolsupply.com. I have some, but am not sure where I 'organized' them to. :)

Boys glueing. At this time they are not doing anything specific...just gluing. I make sure to have plenty of glue on hand!!

Painting with Peeps!!
Armaan wasn't too sure about this one.....These girls Loved it! and loved how their fingers tasted!

Outside....

Oh...Quinn is so strong!

We are lucky to have a yard full of pinecones! Such a great free open ended activity!! These guys were collecting the pinecones into the bucket, dumping them out, counting them, putting them back in, and carrying them around the yard.

These guys made up a game. They put all their shoes into a pile, Dylan counted to 3, and then they hurried to put together as many matches as they could. I love it!!

Counting pinecones into the bucket.

We have chicks!

We went to the grange for bunny food. We came home with chicks. We got 5 different colored ones, two of which will hatch blue and yellow eggs! The others will give us brown eggs. The kids love them!! They are pretty easy to care for so far. We will be building a coop outside along with the bunnies. My youngest son is so excited to get fresh eggs. He was bummed it takes about 6 months. They are growing fast and Korina built on to the box to make it bigger and better. They now like to perch and see what is going on. We just added a stick across the inside for them to perch on as well. They are very curious little gals.

Quinn

Some of you may think 'oh my gosh, no way'....some may think 'very cool!'....I think 'so much learning is going on right here', not to mention Quinn is very engaged, calm, quiet, lovely, and green. We did this with the older kids and it lasted about 15-20 minutes. They used up stuff quickly and got a little invested, but not like Quinn. Our lil Quinn was here for over an hour!! What we had here were mounds of baking soda in a tin container and baby food jars with yellow and blue vinegar with pipettes.

It started out like this.....

Mixing blue and yellow together......

He is also working on his fine motor skills with the pipettes....and finding out what happens when blue and yellow are mixed together, and what happens when you add vinegar to baking soda, and 'what is that funny smell anyway?'....vinegar

Hmmmm, what would happen if I put it up here on my arm? And not only is he watching it fall from his arm in different patterns, but when it drys it leaves a different pasty feel on your hand that cracks and peels...he liked that too!

Here he is pulling it up from the bottom and dripping it back in off his fingers, because it is watery on top and gooey on the bottom.....Don't EVER let anyone tell you this little one is ADD cuz he's not! You just need to find what interests him! :)

'Washington' our pup

We are doing a pen pal program with a daycare in London called 'cheeky Monkeys'. I have yet to post it, but we went to build a bear and made this pup and named him 'Washington'. We are taking pictures of him with the kids at their houses and around our daycare room. Well, Lexi LOVES him. I might have to go again so we can make another friend! Our goal is to put a book together and then send Washington and the book to the daycare in London. They also have a bear named Wellington that they are going to send to us.
Here, Lexi is reading him a story.

Again, she is sharing some quiet time with him. Everyday she comes in and asks for Washington. :)

around the room....

Olivia designed and created this train track and she was very proud of her self. "Annie, Annie, you have to come see my train track! It is really cool!" And it is really cool. Quinn especially loved it!

It's hard to see, but lexi has all 3 paintbrushes in one hand. Such creativity this girl has!

Oh my goodness....Quinn has a Mr. Potato head arm and a small Mr. Potato head Santa cape. He sat on this fluffy little rug for about 25 minutes playing with these two little things. He would carefully wrap them up and upwrap them, then wrap them up again. So sweet and careing!

Somebody was bothering these two so they took their food into the box. Notice Lexi has our dog Washington close by. I lifted the flap to the box, right in the middle of a big bite!

I set these out today and Dylan is loving them. He was here for a good 25 minutes and then would come back periodically throughout the day to work a little here and there. Good math going on here.

shamrocks....

I put out some shamrock shapes, gold tinsel, glue, and some paint.

Olivia wanted something 'sparkely' so we got out some sequins....I didn't have the energy for glitter that day. :)

around the room.....

Wes carried this hat full of people around with him all morning. Here he is observing a couple other kids passing out food to each other. He soon left and joined Dylan who was drawing. ...he took his people with him.

Dylan has recently become very interested in drawing. I am so excited about this! He is drawing some very detailed pictures with some great stories and here he is doing something so exciting! I was outlining something with a sharpie and when I was done he asked to use it. I let him and he started tracing something that he had drawn with pencil. Some people see just drawing...I see, writing, writing, writing! And...doing it on his own terms which means he will love, love, love it!

Alondra has also started wanting to write, EVERYWHERE! So...we set out some more clipboards and she carries it around with her! She can draw/write wherever she is!

Korina is reading some of our new Library books.

Library Bus!

Each Month on the first Thursday, Jim comes in his big ol bus. The kids get so excited to see his happy face! And Jim is always excited to see the kids. One day he wore a big silly hat! Here he is reminding the kids the rules of the bus. They each get to pick out one book that stays at daycare and I get to pick as many as I like. :)Wesley is following one of the very important rules...hold on to the handles when you are walking up or down the big huge steps!

Got Mail?

We are talking about mail this week. We are talking about things like, where does mail go? Who takes it there? The fact that we need a stamp (and where to put it) or the mailman won't take it. Talking about addresses and names. We have some new friends in London at the Cheeky Monkey Childcare, and so we sent them some valentines! They have a Loooong address compared to ours.
As we were taking our mail out to the mailbox....We had mail!!! Armaans mum sent a package for Armaan and a package for the other kids. Thank you!!! They were so excited to open it and we worked on the activity while we were waiting for lunch to be ready.

Armaan LOVES his photo collage!! He keeps going back to look at it!

Valentine collage....

Korina set out paper, doilies, cut out hearts, heart stickers, heart puffy 'sayings' stickers, and red straw pieces...with glue. Olivia asked what all the sayings were on the hearts. They said things like....LOL, BFF, Love You, Text Me, and Be Mine. She memorized them and read them back to all the kids. :) She will be reading by the time she goes to school!

Q-tip painting with all the Valentine colors.....

We got out tin foil...I thought to paint on, Olivia had a different idea. She cut it up and glued it to her painting....very good idea Olivia!

valentine....

This is part of our new science area. I want to do a few more things to it before I totally blog about it. They really like what is already there! Right now I put in pink playdough that smells like vanilla and cinnamon, smooth shiney rocks, large noodles, copper cake pans, heart placemats, and later I added heart cupcake papers.

In the sensory bin there is a variety of colors of rice. I made it simply by adding dropfuls of liquid watercolor from www.discountschoolsupply I added heart playing cards they can match up and heart containers.

The easle has pink, white, purple, and red....They all decided to come into the messy room this morning. I did just put out the playdough...nice and warm. The other table has some stamping. I just added some liquid watercolor to paper towel strips and let them stamp away with heart stamps.Armaan and Alondra are sitting in the reading area and Alondra was reading him a book. Of course she moved before I could take the shot. She loves to 'take care' of him!