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!

Program Update

I apologize for my inconsistent postings on our blog, but hopefully will be able to do more updating now that we are getting a little more organized.

We have taken time off from most of our curriculum planning for the month of June in order to spend as much time outside as we can and have some free play time. Also with the transition of losing Christian and Olivia and gaining little Malia, it takes a bit of time to get everyone back on a schedule. So next week will be our last week of full free time. Then we will be getting back to the grind of our curriculum during the hotter summer months.

Starting July 1, we will be starting a new curriculum based program for preschoolers and toddlers provided by Reach for the Stars. The author of this program is also the President of the Child Care Share group for the Omaha area. Her program is very in depth and laid out day to day on things to learn and topics to teach. It covers not only the favorites like ABC's and 123's, but it also encompasses each learning subject such as cognitive, creative, fine and large motor skills, vocabulary and verbal, etc. I think it will be a great program for our kids and it will also help keep us on track when it is already laid out for us!

We will still of course have our free play time with toys and our outdoor recess time. Many of the day to day activities that go with the program include, art, exercise, physical activities, dancing, singing, playing, motion, coloring, etc. If you have ANY questions about what we will be doing, please don't hesitate to talk to me. Also with this new program in place, I feel I will be able to better evaluate your children's progress as they learn and be able to better report to you the things that they are accomplishing!
Also as a reminder I will be closed Friday July 4 at 4pm until Tuesday July 8. I will be back from vacation and reopen on Wednesday July 9.

I still have one full time spot available during the day for any kids you may know that need child care for ages 18 months - 5 years. So please send them my way if you know of anyone!

I wish you all a happy and fun weekend! Here are a couple of fun pictures of our "crazy" days at daycare!

Zoo Days!

Last Friday we made our annual field trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo, which I think turned out great. It was supposed to storm in the morning but ended up being one of the most beautiful days of the year so far.
We toured the whole zoo minus the elephants and rhinos, which frustrates me because they are a zoo favorite in my opinion and that is one complaint I have about the Omaha zoo, is the placement of these animals. They are way out in the boonies! Anyways, despite this fact the kids didn't really seem to miss them this year.
We at a picnic lunch in Bear Canyon and then finished our day touring the inside exhibits.
The kids were well behaved and very active and enjoyed the trip, I think. We took our wagon and the double stroller but really no one rode in it, so they got lots of exercise. I got some good pictures of the group.

In other news: Christian and Olivia will be leaving our daycare after this week. After two years of being here they are moving on. Olivia is starting Kindergarten in the Fall and Christian will be starting a preschool closer to home. So we will miss them, but that will leave me with one available spot for any kids over the age of 18 months if you know of anyone looking for full-time daycare Mon-Fri.

We will also be doing some "All About Me theme" stuff this week where we will learn about ourselves, our names, our parents' names, our address and phone number. These are things kids should really know before they start kindergarten. So we will begin working on them. Maybe you can help them practice at home with so that they can memorize these things and teach them a code word so they don't go tell strangers these important things.