Childcare Chronicles

Can you believe we still aren’t all well at childcare yet?  My cold is lingering and the flu (vomiting kind) has kicked in.  UGH.  We can’t catch a break.  I think everyone has been sick with this or that and our bodies are so busy fighting that off-then we get hit with a different bug when we are already immune compromised.  Spring has got to come soon and make it better…at least that’s my hope.

March here has been a bit crazy.  We’ve had 2 hour school delays because of ice, teacher in service days, days off because of snow and days off because our local high school girls basketball team advance to state playoffs and school was cancelled because of the games….we’ve had an early out because of that too.  Our schedule has been completely up in the air!

I’m telling you…if you’re a childcare provider and you expect anything to be “normal”…you’re going to be sad because the “normal” is “not normal”.

Anyway…here’s what we’ve been up to.

Kayla was home one day.  She had a teacher compensation day and decided to hang out with me and the kiddos.  Carver monopolized her time.  She didn’t seem to mind…he didn’t either.

Sadly, Kayla caught my cold when she was here.

That same day I got a package and it was fabric from Carolyn in Texas (more on that later).  I opened the box.  The kids love when boxes get opened.  As Kayla and I were talking they each grabbed a quarter yard cut of fabric and went into the living room.  They ran in circles waving the fabric behind them…crazy kids.  They did it for about 15 minutes before they got tired.  Who needs toys??!!  (P.S.  No fabric was hurt in this activity ;) ) They sure had fun…. Isn’t this adorable?

Carver finally got into a good groove.  He was a perfect until he was about four months old.  He slept through the night…never fussed.  PERFECT.  Then four months hit and he got fussy and just wasn’t happy all the time like he previously was.  Now, finally he’s back to his happy self.  He’s predictable and content.  Of course I’ll take him anyway he is but from a childcare stand point, his new happy disposition has been a blessing.  His hair looks red in the photo but it’s more brown in real life.  I love his little button up shirt.

Here’s something really fun, easy and the little ones liked.  I took a paper plate and drew circles on it in the color order shown (like a rainbow).  Then I cut the plate in half.

The kids took Do A Dot Art! Markers in the appropriate color and stamped on the line.  They made cute little rainbows.  It was a good activity for them.  Being 2 years old they worked on following a line and matching the line color to the marker color.  We worked on recognizing the color names too.  As they stamped I encouraged them to say “orange-orange”.  They love dot markers and we use them LOTS!

Here’s a project we did when all ages were at my house on a no school day.  This was a HUGE hit.  When the little ones weren’t watching I took a big piece of white construction paper.  I used a white crayon and made a paper for each of the little kids.  Then I gave them Washable Liquid Watercolor Paints and had them paint the paper.  As they painted, the picture “magically” appeared.

There’s this paper mid process in the painting.  You can see some images are starting to appear while others are still hidden.

They LOVED this.  For the older kids I told them what made the paper magic (the white crayon).  So I gave them a paper and white crayon.  They had to design their own images and then paint the paper.  If you do this, make sure to tell them to press hard with the white crayon.

This is a project we’ll like to again and again.  They had fun with it…it’s easy to prep and the images can change.  It would be easy to draw images that are seasonal or holiday related.  It’s also great because multiple ages can partake in it..including me who had fun drawing the images for the little ones!

Another project we did was to make these lions.  It all started when I was going to have them paint a large paper plate yellow and we’d make a lion head out of it.  The five year old preschooler who only comes on Wednesdays said she wanted her lion to have a body.  Well that prompted me give them two paper plates a large and small.  I cut a lion body out of the large paper plate and the small plate became the head.  For impromptu, they turned out pretty cute.

These were great because it gave my two year olds some much needed scissor practice cutting the lion’s main of the paper plate.

That’s the wrap up of the childcare chronicles.  We did make it outside a couple days.  I can’t wait until outside play is a regular part of our day!!  In the meantime, we have more time for crafting…that’s fun too!