Tuesday, Wednesday

Tuesday we made holiday greeting cards. The littles dipped their hands into white paint and stamped the covers of folded card stock in an assortment of holiday colors. We embellished with ribbons and stamps. There is something so classic and beautiful about a child's handprint! I'm pretty sure I could have them do a craft a day in just using their own handprint! I should have photographed the little's sets of cards- they each made several. But, if you're reading this you are most likely close to one of the littles in which case I can only hope you'll receive on of their cards for the holidays!

We also made cake balls, while not the healthiest snack they were yummy. The children had a morning of pretend play in which they all used bristle blocks to build birthday cakes that they served to each other and complimented each others skills! I figured some real cake would be suitable for our day!

My favorite quote of Tuesday:
All but one of the children were asleep (it was gloomy out so mother nature had her way with them all). Little G, the non-sleeper asked to see the chickens so we went out in the drizzle to feed the girls. I believe this was Little G's fist encounter with chickens...
"Oh, they are SO cute. I love them! We're going to eat those chickens, can you imagine that?"
"No, those are our pets, we won't eat them!"
"Oh, okay, we will just eat the dead chickens that are in the freezer!"
I laughed so hard over "can you imagine that?" I keep quoting Little G.... Ah, I love the way kids think and talk.

Wednesday brought another gloomy day and three days of being kept indoors was enough! We had already built forts (nap mats work great for this) and tents (extend table legs, drape sheet over, illuminate with christmas lights), constructed tons of block towers, played pretend grocery shopping, we had story time, snack time, and it was still 11am! We did a craft, ate lunch, took naps... And I felt the day just dragging. The kids were tense and snatchy grabby fussy. We needed a change of scenery and luckily a warm front came in. So, they puddle jumped in one huge puddle, the overflowed fountains. It was ice mounds last week. Now it's overfilled from melted ice and added rain! The kids jumped hard, got soaked, we came back inside... Everyone's mood was lifted especially when we put on clean clothes and sipped warm cocoa and warmed apples and pears with cinnamon.

I still can't believe I let the kids play in the fountain in December! I'm hoping it's unrelated but my own two littles are taking a sick day today after taking turns being stomach sick last night. :( I'm thinking stomach bug... and hopefully we will be back in full swing tomorrow!

Monday's Happenings!

So, I didn't keep up with my posts in the month of November. We did a lot of crafting and fun fieldtrips but I found myself caught up in other projects that left me unmotivated when it came to blogging… My camera might need repair so our pictures here are iPhone quality, eh. Our weekly menu is now posted in a page tab.

Our week is off to a great start with two little ladies joining us for the week! New company is always extra enjoyable- the more the merrier, literally. It seems that the more children there are playing together the less conflict that arises. Today was very peaceful :)

Everything I fed to the littles was gobbled up with more being requested which makes me feel great. I was especially worried that I'd put so much effort into making the kids roasted chickpeas and they wouldn't like them. BUT, the chickpeas were gone within minutes! The kids loved them!

The littles engaged in block building of all kinds for a large part of our morning!

Working together making and serving bristle block birthday cakes :)

Painting wooden snowflake ornaments/decorations.

Supervised baby painting!

Sitting together, reading.

Displaying proper table manners while sharing a plateful of roasted chickpeas!

Our finished holiday decor.

We had a lengthy dancing with flowies and music making session. the littles built a block castle and train tracks, around it, and worked with Montessori materials.

Tomorrow we will be making homemade holiday cards!