We have been working hard this week!

Thaddeus worked for about 1/2 hour opening and closing this latch!

Gavin is practicing rolling!

Landon practiced reading!

Lexus sang us her ABC's.


Katie and Sophie working on their trapezoids and hexagons!

At the beginning of the month, we read Stone Soup and decided to ask every one to donate some food to the Isabella County Soup Kitchen. Our families are very generous! Look how much we were able to donate! Thank you to everyone who donated.


Gavin and Jack hanging out!

The karaoke machine has been a big hit. They like making up their own special songs.

Katie did a great job remembering this story as she "read" it to Odin.

Silly Sophie!!

I'm back! Here are some fun pictures from October.

We loved singing 5 Little Pumpkins

We taste tested yellow, green, and red apples. Kaylyn likes red!
Miss Gala made us these fun spider treats!
Dressin' up is so fun!
Kaylyn and Lexus hanging out.

Are you ready for super cute babies???

Gavin "Mr. Wiggles"

Jack "Mr. Social" or "Mr. Bubbles"
Landon "Mr. Smiley"

We love to stomp and sing "We are the Dinosaurs"

This month, our themes are centered around being thankful for the wonderful things God has given us. This week we were thankful for family, friends, our home, music, and art.

Ah! Back to school time! We had a back to school week and celebrated with a school bus cake.



I am already missing all my big kids!

I've started a new type of curriculum since now my oldest child during the day is 31/2. My storytime and project time is not as elaborate as it used to be. We start off with singing and signing the alphabet.

Katie knows the sign for "L".

Then we learn a new song. This week and last week was "God made my ears!"
Next we do "stART" which is a story and an art project that goes with it. For instance on Friday, the theme was "My Toys." We read The Velveteen Rabbit and then painted with different toys.


Odin printing with a lego.

The rest of the day, we point out shapes, colors, and letters, and sing, sing, sing! One of their favorite songs to sing is their name to the tune of 'Skip to my Lou'. Like, "K-A-T-I-E, K-A-T-I-E, K-A-T-I-E, that spells Katie!" By the time they go to Kindergarten, everyone knows how to spell not only their name, but every other child's name too.

Thanks to Sophie's mom for juice boxes and Brody's dad for lots of veggies!

Busy week, even busier weekend! We are helping our friends move this weekend, so I will post pictures and more at a later date!

What a fun, busy week! We had new friends join us and two more birthday parties! Our new friends are Katie and Sarah. They are so much fun and love to play outside. Landen is now one year old and Odin is three. Everyone is growing up so fast.

This was the last full week of August, so we decided to do one more summer theme week. We made hula skirts and played some fun games.

Odin going fishing.



Kaylyn playing pin the bee on the flower.
Yum, peanut butter bait!

Also this week,Thunder, Elijah, and Alex performed an interesting commercial for their store. Apparently, their main competitor is Walmart.

Thank you Brody's dad for the tomatoes, Lexus and Landen's mom for the cookies and Madison's mom for the cake, ice cream, and fruit snacks!

This week was shape week. We looked for shapes everywhere -playing I spy, playing with pattern blocks, and making pictures with triangles. We found lots of things triangles can be including castle flags, beards, shark teeth, mermaid tails, pizza, and of course, pumpkin fish. I love their imagination! This was a special week. Baby Gavin joined our group, he is such a sweetheart! We celebrated Shane and Brody's birthday and Kaylyn came back and introduced us to her baby brother Landon. Another sweet baby! We also played a game called Remember When..... Here are some things we remember:

"Remember when we were eating apples in Emily's room and a big loader thing brought woodchips?" (Alexa)
"Remember when I never knew Shane and then I played with him lots?" (Peyton)
"Remember when the iguana was in the mulberry tree?" (Miss Gala)
"Remember when Kaylyn was sooo little?" (Makala)
"Remember when Kaylyn used to say "YEAH!" and do the 'cool beans' dance?" (Emily)
"Remember when the bird pooped on Alexa?" (Me)
Lexus reading to Gavin.

Thaddeus and Brody jamming!

Alexa cool shape car.
Sophie and Kaylyn hanging out.
Reminder again: We will be closed Labor Day!
Karla

Happy Friday! The summer is going by way too fast! This week was all about bears. On Monday we read Corduroy and made cute little bears with button overalls. We also played "Hide the Button" with a huge button. Everyone loved hiding the button for their friends to find. On Tuesday we read Berenstain Bears and the Eager Beavers, then glued tiny bears to the letter B. We also found lots of words that start with B. On Wednesday we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear and did a super fun activity. The kids picked a color paint and then put some in the middle of a piece of paper. We folded the paper and smushed the paint. When we opened it up again and looked at the blob, we used our imagination to see a picture. Take a look at Alexa's!!

That is totally a red elephant ballerina!

On Thursday, we read Goldilocks and the three bears and made yummy oatmeal cookies. Everyone got to put in ingredients and stir the batter. Here is Sophie adding some baking soda.



Today we read Little Bear and made bear masks. We also had a lot of fun making towers and forts with the brick blocks. Madison made a perfect little reading spot.

Also- don't think those big kids have been sitting around doing nothing- this week we have seen many concerts. (You haven't lived until you've seen Zack dance with a slinky and Elijah dance with a light sabor!) For only 30 cents we get admission into the lego craft show, the antique store, and the concert. We can pay extra for homemade comics or to play a game. Oh-Alex wanted me to mention that this month's "Employee of the Month" is Zack because he helped Alex do his most hated chore-recycling.
The Lego Craft Show.
A big thank you to Madison's mom for watermelon, cereal, and bananas!

My first post! I'm so excited! I'm using this blog to let you all know what we have been working on at daycare all week. I'm hoping to post every Friday. I will also post reminders, thank yous, and basically anything I would have put on our monthly newsletter. Oh-one more thing I am going to be putting pictures on here but it will be mainly pictures of the childrens hands, projects, or games-like this one!




On Monday, we made magically made secondary colors! They first painted a handprint with one primary color, then painted the other, then rubbed their hands together and said "Abracadabra!" A new color appeared! Magic.
Tuesday, we learned a new game called Back to the Box (Mailbox Magazine). We put different colored sheets of construction paper around the room. The children stood in the middle of the room in the "crayon box." I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The children went to a different colored paper. When I got to ten, I called out a color and opened my eyes, the kids by that color went back to the box. We repeated that until someone won. They LOVED this game. We played it a lot!
On Wednesday we graphed our favorite colors and played a color matching game.



Also this week we played some rousing games of croquet. Peyton- you should take up golf!!



On Friday we made some awesome Flubber (thank you Peyton's mom for the recipe!)
The kids played with this for hours.
So, we had a fun week. I want to say thanks to Peeper's mom for the yummy cereal sticks, and remind you all that we will be closed Monday Sept. 7 for Labor Day.
Karla