We enjoyed a fantastic week with marvelous weather this daycare week! We spent a majority of our time outside later in the week and continued with our Easter and Spring activities when we were inside. Take a look at our week:
The kids painted suncatchers--two days in a row! The first day we just used regular washable paint and that did not work out so well. I typically use Crayola washable paint on these and just spray them with hairspray when dried to keep from peeling, but I used a different brand of paint and it peeled as it dried. The kids were so disappointed about their suncatchers, that I broke down and let them use suncatcher paint.
Suncatcher paint is NOT kid friendly at all. It takes a while to wash off of their hands (but it does wash out of clothes decently) and it's definitely still all over the kids table and chairs. It will slowly peel off in the next couple of weeks. If I let them use suncatcher paint again, it will be outside on newspapers.
Despite the mess and the rough beginning to this project, the suncatchers came out pretty good!
Dance party to "Best Day of My Life"
Finally some quality outside time! Funny story about the Captain America mask Max is wearing: he asked me to grab it from his closet for him, but I told him I didn't have time to grab it and leave the kids unattended outside while I searched for it. I made the mistake of telling him that it was on the highest shelf in his closet in the costume/dress up clothes container. Several minutes later he emerged outside wearing the mask (and the shield in his hand as well). I asked him how he got it and he replied: "oh it was easy. I got onto Harrison's bed, climbed onto my dresser, walked across my dresser, leaned up into my closest and grabbed my mask. I found my shield too! Things like that are easy when you're Captain America."
The boys digging in the dirt. We were thinking of putting grass in this area, but the kids have loved digging in the dirt and filling up the dump trucks. We may have to keep this dirt area through the summer.
Easter stamps.
Easter Handprint Sheep. I had the kids make handprints with black paint. Once the paint was dry, they glued on cotton balls. Some turned out cute.....others not so much!
An "Easter bunny lunch!"
Play Doh time with Easter and Princess cookie cutters.
A little fun and popcorn before bed.
Crayola window markers are always a hit. The kids loved it even more because I let them color on the screen door.
The kids painted toilet paper rolls. The ends were covered with masking tape because inside was pasta. Once dried, the kids had a blast playing with their new "instruments."
Lunch outside happened several times this week, although it may not happen too much. There are too many distractions outside for toddlers and preschoolers to eat! Between the birds flying above them and the "gross bugs" flying around the table, not a lot of food was eaten.
Dirty butt! I think little Miss E may be going through a lot of shorts this summer!
The kids used Crayola Fabric markers to color bags (found at Dollar Tree). They'll use these decorated bags to find eggs during our daycare Easter Egg Hunt.
The ball pit came out this week. The kids had a blast running and jumping into the balls. Leave it to my oldest Max to put the slide into the ball pit for some added fun.
We put the mini's bird houses out this week. The kids are quite excited about the possibility of birds living in the houses they painted.
A potty outside??? Of course! Only in this house would this be so taboo.
This also happened in front of the t.v. while she watches Daniel Tiger. She's been doing a fairly good job on the potty and is on her way to Pull Ups. I can't believe how big all of these kids are getting.
Painting hard boiled eggs. The next day (after they were completely dried) they ate them as a snack.
Another Dollar Tree find. The kids were not fond of the stickiness of the Foam, but it's easily molded into shapes. Because of the stickiness it wasn't played with much and still sits in a ball on the table waiting to be played with more.
We tried our hand at squirt gun painting this week. Please note: DO NOT buy cheap-o squirt guns from Walmart! The trigger mechanism was broken on a lot of the squirt guns. I liked these squirt guns a lot because they had a bigger opening to easily fill with paint.
With the one squirt gun that did work, the kids had a blast squirt away! We'll definitely be trying this again this summer with new and better squirt guns.
Max of course had to paint the house too.
Just chillin'
Yet another Dollar Tree find, this time by Harrison. It took a while for the kids to understand this, but overall thought it was cool that all they had to do was wet their brush with water and the paint was already on the paper.
Easter cookie decorating time. The kids did a really great job with decorating, played with the frosting a little, and ate quite a few cookies in the process.
Friday evening was apparently so warm that the boys had to take their shirts off while they ran around the yard, which of course meant, little sister had to follow.
Next week we will be working on sharing and NOT using the word "MINE!!" This has been a difficult concept for the kids to understand the past couple of weeks. As much as I enjoy breaking up the fights regarding "he took my toy away!" we'll be putting a stop to this behavior asap. We'll also wrap up our Easter activities during our shorter week (thanks to preschool conferences) and keep an eye on next week's forecast for our sunny warm weather to return!
