Something Fun for Kids

Welcome Malia!

Congratulations to Jared's family for the arrival of their new baby girl today. Malia Slechta was born today to Jeff and Amanda, parents of our friend Jared. We are all very excited for you! I can't wait to meet her! Welcome to the world!

Rainy Days

Last week we played alot outside, trying to take advantage of the warm weather and the spring air. One day we even grilled hamburgers and ate outside at the table. The kids had a lot of fun with this. When we play outside the kids can play on the swingset, run around the yard with toys, play with the playhouse, and we also play games.

Then when we had a rainy day, we learned about rain and played some rainy day music in the playroom. We tried to have some fun and make instruments and music out of the toys in the playroom, and Owen and Raymond had their harmonicas. It was a jamboree of music! The kids had a lot of fun.
This week we will be working on the letter K and the number 13! We will also be working more on our workbooks and if it warms up a little more, will have our recess time at a scheduled time this week. All of the time we spent outside last week was more than we usually will in a day unless we have scheduled activities or a free day, but I wanted the kids to shake off some that old winter feeling by being in the warm sun! So have a great week.

The pictures are of our bee craft and our rainy day music!

New Things going on!

Well last week we finished up with the letter 'J' and the number 12! The kids learned the sound of the letter, how to recognize it and did some letter J worksheets and coloring pages. We practiced our counting up to the number 12 this week. Though, I know that some of the kids can count higher than this already, I want to really work on recognizing the numbers and letters and being able to associate that when reading and when counting. So we did some counting games and hiding the number 12 around and having to find the right number. Whoever found the number 12 got to hide the numbers the next time. This was alot of fun.
This week we will be taking a break once again from our letters and numbers to celebrate Spring! We are going to learn about spring and what things happen during the season. We will be doing some spring projects, reading some books, and taking some nature walks around the neighborhood to see spring in nature!

Glitter Graphics

We will be talking about bugs, flowers and how they grow, trees and leaves, grass, rain, birds and new animals, and the months of the year spring is typically associated with. It will be a fun-filled two weeks of activity.
Another new activity I am going to try with the kids is reading a chapter book to them so they have something to look forward to each day. Every day we will read a minimum of one chapter per book (or however long they will listen for) and then talk about ideas from the story. This way they have to learn how to wait for the next chapter until the next day and get excited to find out what happens. We will maybe try and do a little project for each book too, kind of like a book report to some extent. This way they can learn how to remember parts out of a story. I will choose books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, James and the Giant Peach, etc. I was an English major in college, so I am very excited to start this new venture with the kids and hope they will be too. We will start that this week.
I think this is all of the new updates that I have for now. Please let me know if you ever have any suggestions or ideas that would be fun for the kids to do. I am always up for new ideas!
Have a Happy Week!

April 4, 2008

Dear daycare parents, I apologize for being absent from the daycare blog for a few weeks. It has been a busy time getting back into a routine with everyone and just finding time to even get to the computer.
For the first week back we had a free play week, where we all got used to being back together and meeting Judd and testing out our new routine. We also made some St. Patricks day crafts and some Easter crafts over the last couple of weeks that the kids got to take home.
This week, we got back on our curriculum plan and started with our weekly letter and numbers again. So this week we worked on the letter ' I' and the number '11'. The kids completed some worksheets and coloring pages on these and we played some counting games and find the letter I games. We also spent a good deal of time this week, catching up on our workbooks that we've fallen a bit behind on. I think we are pretty well back on track.
Hopefully everyone got a copy of the tentative April calendar, but if not let me know. I have also updated my online calendar too. As a reminder, though I only list the letter and number of the week that we are working on, we are still working on colors, shapes and other concepts throughout the days, but I find those are easiest learned during play time and story time, etc. As I'm sure you have noticed, in the next couple of weeks we will be doing another theme week, this time to celebrate Spring! We've already begun to point out the signs of Spring as they start to appear and talk about how things are growing and coming back to life. I'm hoping that on Earth Day we will spend time talking about recycling, planting trees and flowers, and cleaning up garbage and littering - to help the children understand how important it is to keep our Earth clean. We will be talking about how their families help keep the Earth clean and healthy too, so maybe you can offer them some things you do as a family that they can share with the rest of the group!
I hope that everyone has a great weekend and enjoys the very nice weather! Hopefully when you come on Monday, my yard will be free from its leaves and winter debris and look a little more "springy".

March 14, 2008 Update!

Sorry to everyone that I haven't updated the blog in awhile. It has been a little crazy around here with new little Judd, trying to establish a new routine and getting organized again.

So, I will be open on Monday with normal hours. Please let me know if there is any new information that I should be aware of.

About little Judd. He was born on March 5, 2008 at 4:08 pm and was 8 lbs. 5 oz. and 20 inches long. He looks a little like both Owen and Raymond. He sleeps all the time and only cries when he is hungry. (Hopefully this will last!) Owen and Raymond are very excited to have him here. Owen took Raymond and Judd to preschool today for show-and-tell. He was very excited to show off both of his brothers!

I will try and have an March/April calendar ready for this next week to hand out. We will be spending time this week celebrating Easter and doing some fun Easter crafts. I hope everyone had no troubles with their back-ups this last week and a half. Time to get back to our routine! :) I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday and showing off our new little addition! Have a great weekend.

February 29, 2008 "Our week update"

This week we spent our time working on the Letter H and the numbers 9 and 10. Once again we had some worksheets that we did and colored, flash cards that we used and the counting bears. We played games like find something in the toybox that has the H sound, then we'd write those words on the dry erase board to see what they looked like.
We also started talking a little bit about the beginning of Springtime and what to start looking for as it (hopefully) starts to warm up a bit!
No baby yet, but by Wednesday at the latest! I'll keep you all posted and I will post pictures when he arrives. I look forward to everyone getting back from vacation and meeting him! It'll be a lot of fun to have the kids learn about helping with babies and how to take care of people smaller than them.