Playing Catch Up Again!

Our Red Day! What a bunch!

This is becoming more of a monthly blog rather than a weekly blog, but sometimes it is easier to do my posting all in one block!
We have been busy the last month, finishing up our Back To Basics month in September, where we reviewed our ABC's, Numbers, Shapes, and colors. This month we have been working on safety. We started out on Fire Safety, then have been working on stranger safety and playground safety. The last week of this month we will be having a Fall theme week, where everything is geared toward the Fall season. Then we will be having a Halloween party on the 31st, so make sure the kids wear their costumes if they have one! You don't need to bring all of the accessories to the costumes if there are some, just to be on the safe side, we can stick to the major costume itself.
I will be working on the November newsletter the next couple of weeks, so look for that in the future.
I know we had set up a fire station visit this month, but because Oct. is fire safety month, they had to cancel due to their schedules and they recommended that I reschedule sometime in Nov. So that is what I will try to do!
The letters of the month are ABCDE and the numbers 1-5. We are working on the shape Circle and the color orange! So look for upcoming reminders. I hope you are all enjoying the fall weather and the beautiful fall colors!

Back to School.

I know that it has been a long time since I have posted again. Life catches up with you and you get a little behind sometimes.

We have had a great few weeks. September 1st marked the beginning of our "school year". We began our first week with a brush up on manners, play room etiquette, sharing and being nice, and please and thank yous. Then we jumped right into a review/introduction of the ABC's. We were able to color, do some alphabet puzzles, play alphabet bingo, talk about the sounds of the letters and words, and we read our ABC books. We sang the alphabet song quite a few times and worked with flashcards and our ABC border in the playroom.

One activity we did was to use an ABC puzzle and coloring page to match the right letters and color them the same color as what they were on the puzzle. The kids actually did very well on this task. It allowed them to practice their letters, matching, and their colors. The worked very hard on it. This week we have been working on reviewing and introducing our numbers, 1-20. We have done a lot of counting with the counting bears, coloring pages and numbers recognition, numbers books and flashcards, and counting everything! We also reviewed shapes this week and did some coloring pages and what items are what shapes. All and all I think we have had a great few weeks.

Luckily it has been really nice outside so we have been able to play outside everyday for awhile, and even on a whim take a picnic to the park and play on the playground on Tuesday of this week, which the kids LOVED!

We celebrated hat day last week and I got some good pictures of that. The only die hard hat person was Mila. She graciously wore her hat all day, while everyone else decided that they were tired of their hats and only half-heartedly put them back on for a picture!

Hat Day!

In our upcoming weeks we will be practicing our colors and then we will be jumping into October where we will be having our Safety month. During October we will be learning fire safety, stranger safety, and playground safety. October 1st we will be taking a field trip to a fire station by my house for a tour and hopefully sometime in Oct. we will be taking a field trip to Vala's pumpkin Patch, but this is still in the works. We will also be having a Halloween party and costume day on the 31st. So look for more details for these upcoming events. I have posted pictures of our last few weeks below! Enjoy.The two evening kids I watch, Madi and Nelson.

The gang getting ready to take Owen to preschool.

Playing outside by the big tree.

Coloring our ABC pictures

Our Playroom Picnic

Mila cooking for our playroom picnic

Olympics Week - Finals Tomorrow!

This week has been filled with Olympic triumph. The little athletes at my house are all going to win the gold!
Monday we started off the week with our track and field events. We begin with a softball toss, where we tried to throw the softball as far as we could make it go. Then it started to rain so we had to move the events indoors. Once inside we followed the softball throw with a few more events, the long jump, the hurtles, the frisbee throw, and the relay races. Our relay races consisted of the crab walk race, the dog walk race, the snake slither race, and the frog leap race. At one point the kids were laughing so hard they kept falling down. It was pretty fun despite the fact we were stuck indoors.
The second day was our water events. We filled the swimming pool in the backyard and played in it most of the day. The kids were having so much fun just playing we didn't accomplish all of the games on the list, but we did dump all of the soft bath tub letters in the pool and had races to see how many the kids could grab in 30 seconds. Also we practiced our letters and numbers trying to find the right ones. The kids also practiced putting their faces in the water and floating on their backs. So we did accomplish a little swimming practice after all!
Wednesday was our gymnastics day. We practiced our somersaults, cartwheels, handstands, headstands and rolling. The kids really enjoyed "flipping" with some of the moves, but I think I got more of the workout being a spotter! Today was our "Sports Day". We tried to do as many of the major Olympic team sports as possible. We shot free throws, dribbled and passed a basketball. We kicked goals, practiced "dribbling" the ball through an obstacle course and bouncing a soccer ball on our knees, we practiced hitting a t-ball, running the bases, catching and throwing a baseball, and lastly we practiced serving and bumping a volleyball. By the end we were all hot, tired, and sweaty!
Friday will be our grand finale of events. We will hopefully (weather permitting) be taking a field trip to Fontenelle park by my house were we will set up an obstacle course consisting of jump ropes, buckets, balls, slides, climbing, and more on the playground. After we complete the obstacle course we will stay and play for a little while, then the kids will be presented with their gold medals for the week long completion of Stacey's Daycare Olympic Games 2008! I will post more about the obstacle course tomorrow after it is all completed!
Below is a slide show of the week so far in pictures! I hope you enjoy and you should be proud of your children's Olympic accomplishments!

Olympics Week 2008!

In honor of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Bejing, China, we will be having our own little Stacey's Daycare olympics. We will be doing such events as field and track, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, and volleyball. Each day we will "train" for an event and then have a little healthy age appropriate competition. Then at the end of the week we will be going to Fontenelle Park to have our final event, the obstacle course of the playground!
I am going to try and make some little ribbons for each event and it should be a lot of fun! I am really excited for the kids to participate. So this will be our weekly theme.

Homework: if time permits in your household and it is okay with you, please allow your children to watch a few minutes of the Olympics while you tell them just a bit about what it is. Even if your children are not normally t.v. watchers, or you don't normally celebrate the Olympics in your household, it is a major world event that has never before happened in their young lives, and it's pretty exciting and fun to see! Thanks.

Second video clip of sprinkler Park

See the post below for more pictures and video of the Sprinkler Park today. This is the second short clip! Enjoy!

Sprinkler Park Revisited!

Today we were fortunate enough to avoid the rain so we could take our trip to the sprinkler park. Last time we went, Jared wasn't with us, but this time we had him to play with too. We all had a lot of fun. Tony was off work today so he was able to stay home with the babies so we could play just a little bit harder, and they were napping when we wanted to leave for the park.

Unfortunatley we had one little incident of Skyann and Jared running smack into each other, but beyond that it we had the park to ourselves.

I have posted the couple of pictures I took today and a video clip of them playing. I hope you enjoy. I love being able to share our days with you all, so you can see how much fun your children are having!

Our Busy Days!

As you are all aware, it has been VERY hot out the last few weeks and therefore difficult for us to play outside too much, plus it has been very rainy this summer. To make up for our days we were stuck inside playing we have been busy on the go and will try and continue to do so for the remainder of the summer.

Friday, we were fortunate enough to be able to load up the kids and take a field trip to Leavenworth Park to play on the playground and have a picnic. It got hot right before we left but the kids had a blast and got really sandy and dirty, which is always fun! This weekend it came to my attention that there is a free sprinkler park and playground only about a mile from my house, so seeing as today is supposed to be the nicest day this week, we decided to take a field trip there too. The kids had so much fun. We played in the water and then got really dirty in our swimsuits on the playground and then went back to the water to wash off and play some more. It tuckered the kids out! They were falling asleep over their grilled hot dogs afterwards. We missed Jared, he would have had fun, so we'll have to go back again real soon!

In my previous post I discussed how when and what type of curriculum we were going to be starting. As it turns out that curriculum wasn't currently available as I had thought. However, I have decided that our preschool hours and work will fall in line with the regular school year (Sept. - May). This way the kids get a summer vacation like most other kids. They are too restless to pay much attention to a lot of learning, and we want to get as much outside time as we can! But I am already working on our Fall curriculum and we will have some fun new things planned such as color days where we all wear a certain color and learn about it and get our picture taken, and letter days, and show and tell, and movie days, and pajama days, and hopefully some new field trips that I am working on. We are going to hopefully have some guest speakers with my daycare provider friends about Fire Safety from a Fire Fighter, a Police officer to discuss stranger danger, and more! I am very excited. So August will be our last summer month then we will start our preschool days! Please let me know if you ever have any suggestions for activities, crafts, meals, snacks or themes. I am ALWAYS looking for new ideas and I want to know what you would like to see your children doing this year!

In January and the end of May, I am also going to provide you all with a sort of parent teacher conference to tell you what we've been learning, where your child is in the learning process, show you their portfolio, go over the parent handbook as a refresher and cover any questions or concerns you may have!

This is going to be a great year I hope and I look forward to teaching our kids and having lots of fun! Please enjoy the slide show below of our most recent adventures!