On a plane trip

Today was a pretty calm day, I only had 7 children. At this point when they started building the airplane there were only 5. Olivia was in charge. She set it up, directed everyone where to sit, and was in charge of getting them there safely. When I asked "Where are you going?" She bolted out "ALABAMA! We are going to see Daddy Hall. I am going to show everyone pictures in a minute so they know who we are seeing. Everybody sit down, here we go!" Notice she filled all the empty seats with animals and babies.

Armaan is making sure the squirrel is okay and Loralei is holding on tight to baby. There was alot of play and imagination that went on here. Not to mention the amazing negotiation skills that Olivia has. Some of the kids would get tired of sitting there, but Olivia made sure she inticed them with something new and exciting. When Dylan and Lexi got there, they were very excited to go flying and they uped the anti a bit by getting dressed up. So then everyone was getting dressed and undressed and dressed again for the plane ride to Atlanta. Then the play took a dramatic turn..........
They crashed. The crashed hard and everyone was dead...and alive, and dead, and alive, and dead. I love how Dylan placed the chair on top of himself. They played crash for a while and eventually moved to something different. They were in this airplane mode for a few hours. It was great. I loved listening to the stories they made up and acted out. I didn't really involve myself too much unless someone was going to get hurt, I just let them be. All this role playing is great for them to try things out in 'pretend' that they might not be able to try out in real life. It gives them different senareos to try out...see what works, see what doesn't work. It is also very important for them to act out death, pretend someone is hurt...or dead...so that when real sitiations come up they might have better skills to deal with it.

I loved our morning! So did the kids. :)

Eggs!

It is that time of year again where we crack eggs. 2 rules...keep it in the bowl, and DO NOT put your hands in your mouth. We watch them closely and for the most part they follow the rules. Of course....keeping it in the bowl is hard, and I know that, so I don't care when they get it on their clothes, the floor, their hair...etc. I just keep giving them gentle reminders to keep it in the bowl. I do this every year and the children love it. This is about an hour project. They work in 2s and between them they crack about 3 dozen. When they are done cracking they start mooshing and dripping, and exploring their bowl full of eggs. It is quite the experience to watch. Olivia, who has been with me for over 3 years now....looks forward to it!! Even Lainey who is now 8 came to join in!

At first they cracked all the eggs into the bowl and put the shells into the crate. When they were done cracking they added the shells!

I am pretty sure Alondra would have gotten in if we let her :) Of course...Quinn is the last one. I think he was the last one last year too. I will have to go back and check. Here he is pretending his hand is a claw of some sort of bulldozer.....and here he is picking it up with his 'claw'. I washed all the clothes for you parents! :) I didn't think you would like dried on eggy clothes.

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.