Our Christmas work has begun. I am taking a break from the Alphabet for the month of December to have some christmas fun as we learn. Here are a few things that we are working with.

Above is  Rudolph color nose matching cards

 I cut out these little felt snow men and the kids have already had fun putting them together.

We are going to try stamping for the first time

 
Everyone already loves lacing so I thought we could use bells and pipe cleaners to make our own jingle bells.




 
 We are going to use these foam stamps with paint to make some wrapping paper

 Tonging is always a favourite so we are going to be tonging bells

 This is the advent calendar that I made it's just a shoe rack with card stock numbers and close pins I filled the pockets with enough candies for each child to have one a day. I found the template for this advent here

More tonging with pom poms

I hope this inspires you to create some christmas activities for your little people.

Christmas Post

Christmas Crazy

So I am a little bit of a christmas nut. It's my Dad fault he made christmas magic for us every year, then we talked about it all year long. He even keeps a christmas journal! We tease him but really he has made it so that even in my adult life I feel like each year Santa is going to come down the chimney and bring me everything I wished for. This year all my little people are old enough to understand Santa and I am so excited to fill them with the magic. My little man loves getting the mail with me so I came up with the idea to make our own mail box and let the kids write letters to Santa.



All I did was take an old box, paint it with glitter paint and apply some letter stickers I already had. Then I found some left over envelops and card stock that look christmassy and the kids will be able to write letters to Santa and mail them. I made a little door at the back of the box because I know they will want to be able take the mail in and out a few times.
I'm just going to set them up with the supplies and see where they take it.

I will be posting more christmas fun as we get closer to the big day! I'm trying not to go over board but already my head is spinning with idea's.
I would love to know what you are planning for christmas activities or what traditions you already have.

Happy Holiday planning

Menu's

I decided I would post a menu every once in a while I know myself that it is hard to come up with new and exciting things for them to eat! Mostly I just try to keep it simple so that everyone will like it and it's healthy!


This week’s Menu

Monday
Snack: banana, arrow root cookies
Lunch: veggie pancakes
Snack: Yogurt Graham crackers

Tuesday
Snack: raspberries, arrowroot
Lunch: Nuggets, fries, Fruit cocktail
Snack: toddler granola (dry cereal. raisins, and pretzels)

Wednesday
Snack: Banana bread Dried fruit
Lunch: chicken and rice, Yogurt
Snack: apple slices and dry cereal

Thursday
Snack: cut veggies, gold fish
Lunch: Ham, pasta & veggies
Snack: Teddy graham’s

Friday
Snack: Grapes and cheese
Lunch: Pizza’s apples
Snack: cereal bars


I love the book Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld click HERE to see, so I try really hard to use as many of her recipes as I can. I also make things a head of time to make sure that all I have to do it pull it out heat it and serve it when the little ones are ready! Lunch is always a crazy time no matter how many kids you have, I just always pray that more food ends up in their tummies then on my floor! Thank god for a swiffer vac. You Can also check out a creative lunch post at Loveable Lunch

Recycled Fun

So clearly I can't afford to supply new toys for the kids on the regular basic I'm not sure anyone doing home child care can nor can many parents, so I am taking an old fashion approach to play and being more creative with what I give them. I'm going to sound old saying this statement but when I was a little kid we really used to find our own fun and I want to encourage that in my own kids as much as I can. I'm dying to throw out all of our plastic and one dimensional toys and replace them with puppets, and silks I found here, more wooden toys and the imagination that will come out of that! I'm in love with the blog Salt and Chocolate and inspired with her simple approach to play check out her blog here So like I said in a past post I have been saving my recycling and decided to ad some of it to our play kitchen. Since all my little people are starting to talk and understand each other they have been thrilled to play with containers that they recognize and enjoy making food and calling each other to dinner. It also turned out to be a fine motor activity learning how to open each container. I love when something so simple and free turns out to be endless fun.

Happy Friday

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Snack Time

Today we tried serving ourselves our snacks including our drinks. I had everything set out in trays to help them stay in place and put our snacks in containers that wouldn't be frustrating for the kids to scoop from.

Everyone was very careful

waited their turns

enjoyed scooping

and pouring

and drinking from big cups

I hope tonight when they go to bed they feel proud of the big steps they have taken today!!

Living The Letter

Living the Letter B

This week we are living the letter B and I say living instead of learning because that is what it has become! Here are some of the B things we have done!



We Blew Bubbles in Blue cups with blue straws!

We Baked Bread (pizza dough) in our little oven. I baked it upstairs after they were done and they were thrilled to have it for lunch! Until they realized that I over baked it and some were like little rocks!

We made Ball painting with marbles and paint!

We read, sang and danced to Brown Bear!
Brown Bear Brown Bear trun around Brown Bear Brown Bear touch the ground,
Brown Bear Brown Bear reach up high, Brown Bear Brown Bear wink one eye
Brown Bear Brown Bear slap your knees, Brown Bear Brown Bear sit down please.

We Balanced trucks on Blocks and Brushed them with water. This is something I didn't come up with I had just set out a bunch of stuff on our table that started with the letter B and the boys started making little car washes. They asked me for water and did very well keeping it in the bowls. When we did have a spill they knew to grab a towel and clean it up.

We Buckled Belts

We Batted Balls with Brushes ( this also was something they started doing on their own and the loved)

We used nuts and Blots! This is a fine motor activity we have been working on for a while. I found this idea over at counting coconuts blog you can fine them HERE

I found with this weeks learning it was easy to find things around my house to fill our days with and sometimes the things I had intended on the children doing with the object they didn't end up doing, instead they were able to come up with their own idea's and learned through play!

I have one more thing to ad about our week in the letter B. I am a little addicted to planning and last night when I should have been sleeping I couldn't stop thinking about how much fun the boys had with there car wash, so I decided today we would make boats and I would be very brave and let them float!! It was a whole lot of messy fun!

I keep a lot of our recycling so that I can use it for crafts and activities so today's boats were made out of our recycling. We just put some of our home made play dough in the bottom of the boat and then a straw and they could pick between a foam sail or a felt sail. These were so easy to make and the kids were able to put them together with little to no help.






Happy Sailing.

Picky Eaters

I have a handful of picky eaters and I have been determined to make sure that they learn to eat healthy, I refuse to give into there pickiness. I am always trying to think of or find new idea's to encourage them to try new things. This weekend after unloading our groceries and my 2 year old asking what each item was, I decided I would put a bowl of fruit out on our kitchen table and see what happens. I know this is rocket science...... but normally with having five 2 years olds in my house I keep most mess making things under lock and key. This, of course is not the montessori way and something that I am working on.
So this morning at snack I gave them the apples that they all love and just sat back and watch what they thought about the new fruit on the table.

It worked!!!! They wanted to know what each one was, they wanted to touch them ,bite them, talk about them, and eat them. I love when simple idea's work!


I'm going to start a food of the week and see what happens.

If they put it in their mouth I'm happy!

Name Recognition

We are learning our ABC right now through a wonderful program called abc twiggles you can find them here and kids are starting to recognize words so I thought it would be fun for them to learn each other's names

It was really simple I just mounted a photo of each child on some card stock and laminated it then laminated each of their names.

We have a white board in our playroom and they all love magnets so I added them to the back of each photo and name. I'm excited to see how they will enjoy this!

Organization

I am constantly trying to find new ways to keep things organized. Running a business from my home where my little customers destroy things daily drives me crazy! I have a tell myself a few times a day to let them make messes and that it will be cleaned by the end of the day.There are a few things that I can control that do help make things easier for me.

Diaper stations: I bought 2 hanging shoe racks from ikea and have one in my upstairs closet and one hanging from the ceiling in our playroom used my label maker to write each childs name beside there slots.

I have a diaper drawer in my living room as well with wipes and creams!

Cups: I bought 5 different color Nuby cups and put the kids names on them as well. They each have the same cup everyday and now they know who's is who's based on the color, funny because I still look at the names!

We have a little yappy dog and she loves to bark so to keep her from barking during nap time I made a sign and laminated it to ask people not to knock during nap time I also have one that asks parents to come around the back gate so that I don't have to leave my front door unlocked if we are playing outside during parent pick up.

Payment: to keep track of each parents payment I do it a really simple way, I have a stack of note books at my front door one for each kid, I simply write the week and the amount owing then if I am busy when parents are picking up they just slip their cheque in the book and sign beside the amount, I know there are fancy printouts that you can use but this was just a simple way for me to collect payment and keep track at the same time. 

I also love forms and hand outs for parents and I will post about that next week!

Dress Up

 I just wanted to share these inexpensive dress up toys that I got from ikea! The kids love them and I love how economical they were! I think I paid $1.50 for each a mask and hat and we have had them for about a year and a half and they get used a lot and they are still in great shape! I am always on the hunt for user friendly and wallet friendly daycare supplies So these were an excellent cheap buy! I would love to hear what toys you love and found you got your moneys worth!

Sensory

So last winter we were all going a little bit nuts staying indoors as much as we did. The group was all about 20 to 22 months and if I did take them outside they lasted for about 10mins and most of it was crying from the cold and a lot of falling down. I'm hoping this winter will be a lot different! To keep us busy I brought our water table inside and filled it with beans. I prepared myself in advance for the mess but was willing to risk it to keep them happy! It turned out to be great fun and kept the kids busy for hours! I switched the toys daily so that some days we were pretending to cook and other days we were using diggers and trucks. They did make a lot of messes but that also led to fun because I let them use the broom and dust pan to clean it up and believe it or not they sometimes fought over that job!
This Halloween I did a sensory table that had the same results! Even I couldn't resist playing in it a few times! I am going to try to do monthly sensory tables so check back for idea's!

Dionsaurs

A few weeks ago we did a week of Dinosaurs and the kids had a blast! I thought maybe they were to young but I kept this really simple and let them learn through play and they couldn't get enough! Also it helped my picky eaters try new things all I had to do was tell them it was Dinosaur food and they ate it! YEAH Dino's!


A few things we did
I used home made playdough with little dino's hidden inside as eggs and let the kids hatch them while we read a book about baby dino's
We talked about where and when Dinosaurs lived and what they ate, the kids were not to happy when I talked about the carnivores so for this year I decided it wouldn't hurt if all the Dinosaurs were herbivores.
We went for a walk and pretended to be Dinosaurs
We learned about how big Dinosaurs were by cutting out a giant Dinosaur foot and painting it with our own feet by stomping in the paint like Dinosaurs!
We used the playdough to make a Dinosaur environment along with the stuff we collected on our walk
We talked about Dinosaurs skin and used egg shells to make our own dino's with bumpy skin!
I feel like we could have done weeks and weeks of dino fun I can't wait to do it again next year or maybe sooner!

What is your favourite theme!