Drizzle. Drizzle. Hop Scotch.

         One of the kids favorite things to do is to go into the garage and play with the bikes and cars. We have it all set up for them to play in and drive around but lately they want the door open and drive in the driveway which I can't always do unless I can sit outside with them the whole time.

         When we are rained out like we have been all week I am SOO grateful for the garage and driveway for a nice NON mud place to play and get some steam out. I place a blue line (a strip of blue paint tape along a line in the drive) where they are not allowed to pass. I let them bring out the bikes, & I grab the bubbles and chalk (& of course my beach chair) and post up for some sun and fun. Bummer that today was drizzling all day. But they didn't seem to care and to be honest neither did I.

         It's hilarious to me how the kids go right and sit along the blue line to color. It's like they are born to push their boundaries. ;)

Sitting JUST close enough to the "blue line"

So excited to be with the "big kids"

The Star of the Show!

Dances around as SOON as she notices Im taking pics!

I drew a hopscotch and started to teach the kids. The girls of course already knew ALL about it. && the boys love the idea of jumping and jumping ;)

Hopscotching in the rain!

1.2.3...

:"I can do it too!"

uh oh, its about to get wild...

everyone running in different directions...never works!

Friendship Bracelets & Circle Time Mats

It has been such a RAINY week so far. Like ALL day rain, not the normal Florida afternoon storm. I think it's making the kids crazy or me, or all of us. :P

I'm excited that the cool things I added last week still are continuing to hold their attention. But they are just getting so wild without being able to go outside! They need to climb, they need to run , & they need to YELL! You can imagine I don't allow those things in the house so its making the day challenging for ALL! lol

FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS

On Monday we made Friendship Bracelets out of toilet paper rolls. As usual the boys didn't want to nearly do the job the girls did, but that's why I have Payton and Shaelynn!! The more colors, stickers and steps the better for them. With the boys its like what can we do to turn this into something so we can fight each other. lol

I cut up some paper towel rolls that I had hoard*ishly stashed away for some sort of project. Its a constant battle with me being the anti hoarder I am VS. the daycare hoarder you HAVE to be if you want to have craft stuff at hand. 

<3 that face!

They colored them with markers and added stickers. I cut slits in them when they were done so they could wear them as bracelets! :)

Learning to click it shut (the markers)!

Please pay NO attention to that AWFUL tablecloth, just protecting
my table from tots with new markers!

Jax working hard!

" I can see you CoCo!"

The boys just liked clicking the caps! 

They added stickers :) 

Princess Payton showing off her new bracelets.

CIRCLE TIME MATS

I have been trying to find something easy for the kids to use to create a circle time area wherever we happen to gather that day. Depending how I set up all the different centers throughout the house that day, we had been doing Circle Time in different places. Recently I put up our weather chart & calendar so that we have a designated area to do Circle. Since this is new to the kids in general I have been coming up with ways to get them to stay in their "spot". I wanted to find scrap pieces of carpet because that is what I had used in a previous classroom, but just never did get it. Low and behold I had a long piece of scarp carpet in my garage. I was excited to cut it in to 4 squares. Since that carpet was there wayy before we even moved in I decided to wash them after I cut them into square. I'm glad I did! They came out clean and supper soft!

I painted each child's letter on their carpet and then had them help me add a hand print for a personal touch! They LOVE getting their hand painted!! & they came out SUPER cute!! <3

Toddler Tangrams: Thanks Breadmore's!!

A special thank you to the Breadmore Family for another wonderful donation to the playhouse! Payton's Mom, Kim always checks with us before sending old toys to charity. She knows how I am about clutter and mess, so she was at bit reluctant to give me this set because it comes with SO many pieces. However, this box came so neat and organized, I couldn't refuse.
Tanagrams as you may know are puzzles for children using shapes to create pictures. I had these really cool space shuttle worksheets last week but no tanagram shapes to use with it. Ms. Kim was happy to share their "toddler" set with us. The kids really took a quick liking to this game and really enjoy using the puzzle sheets as well as just playing with the pieces. It was really cool for me to see how many shapes they know, most of them know all of them! :)

Rice Table, Writing Books, New Chalk, OH MY!

I'm really happy with my decision to NOT have a specific theme this week. I had some new toys and activities to introduce to the kids for the "school" year so I chose to do that throughout the week instead on focusing on a topic.

If you live in SW Florida & ESPECIALLY if you are at home with young toddlers, it is vital to have cool and "new" activities to do indoors when the daily storms come.

I was excited to turn our water table into a rice table, but since I didn't have that much spare rice and I wanted to use old stuff and not waste new food; I went ahead and added old wacky shaped pasta (Christmas Trees & Snowflakes) and old elbow macaroni. I gave the kids all sorts of spoons, spatulas, and ingredients to imagine our way into a  FULL Restaurant. I added things from they play kitchen to really get their imagination running!

the Water Table goes DRY!

These pictures were taken the first morning I did this. Later that day (and still currently) we have moved the table into the house where clean up is easy and moisture wont mess with the pasta! The kids have added using my pots and pans today as well as serving each other. haha. I always like that towards the end of the playtime they add the chairs bc they want to keep playing but are over standing.

Writing Books
I found these $1 write & wipe writing booklets in Target and couldn't resist getting them for the kids. I don't at all expect them to know what they are doing but pre-writing & literacy skills are all about introducing the kids to it.
Id say just in the past 4 months or so the boys have began enjoying siting down to draw or color. Before they would do it for a few minutes, bore quickly and run off. Now they can spend  at least 15-20 minutes easy playing with the different writing and coloring materials I have been incorporating in our day.  Which if you know my son, or if you know toddlers in general is a LONG time to work on an activity.

The girls however have been into crafts and art here at the playhouse since they each started! Possibly because they are girls, but also because they are older. They loved the new writing books. They already get the concept of tracing the lines and they are doing so well! I was majorly impressed!!

New Chalk:

Chalk along with bubbles and water play are everyday activities here at the playhouse. But no matter what we do on a regular basis, if we get a new or better version the kids are always more into it. And it never ceases to amaze me how they always know what is new and what has changed! In my opinion Crayola makes the BEST sidewalk chalk. Its writes really good (dry or wet) There are so many colors & they are are so vibrant!

Astronaut, Astronaut, Alien

Today was a really FUN day! The kids really had a blast dressing up like Space Rangers & Astronauts. We played some fun games and made cute puppets.

Circle Time: Space Video
Another cool video find thanks to youtube, courtesy of NASA. I showed the kids bits and parts of this movie. They LOVED watching the rocket ship take off. They couldn't understand where the "rocket ship" went once it was out in space. I had to explain that weird looking contraption is still the rocket ship, it just needed to loose its parts so it could land on the moon. They were amazed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YblxcFFcTw
I was able to get a sound clip of them watching this video, Im still not sure how to get it up here on the blog but I know I can figure it out!

Song/Rhyme: 5 Brave Astronauts
5 Brave astronauts took off to Outer Space.  
The first floated away without a trace.
The second somersaulted past the moon.
The third one sang a funny space tune.
The fourth started counting 3. 2. 1.
And the fifth said "oh what fun!"


Special Activities: 


Astronaut, Astronaut, Alien
This game was a BLAST! I really wish I would have set up the video camera, the kids were hilarious. The game is played just like Duck Duck Goose, except, yep! you got it. You say. Astronaut, Astronaut, Alien. It took us a few turns to get the hang of it. But once we were going they kids did NOT want to stop! lol


Moon Rock Toss
I took scrap white and yellow paper and had the kids scrunch and ball them up. This was an activity in it's self, and it's a very good exercise for their fine motor skills. Once we had LOTS and LOTS of "Moon Rocks" I took tape and basket and created a game with 2 teams. & thanks to some previous additions to the dramatic play center we could dress up! It was Astornaut & Buzz Vs The Space Rangers. Ha! What fun they had!!

Art: Astronaut Puppet
I glued a drawing of an astronaut to card stock paper. I then had the kids color them. While they napped I cut them out and added them to popsicle sticks. They were so excited to have puppets when they woke up! 

Dry Erase Rocket Ships

Constantly I am reminded of what a blessing it is that my Mom is such a wonderful resources in my field. This week was no exception. Thanks to the cool files she brought me a few years ago packed with old lesson themes form PreK, I had a file on...you guessed it SPACE!! :) I used these cool already laminated sheets in the file to create rocket ship dry erase sheets. I taped them to the table and the kids used their crayola dry erase crayons (which btw I  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! and will buy in bulk next chance I get. lol)  They loved it and the best part is tonight I can erase them and they can do it all over again tmrw!!