Stories from Daycare

No my blog is not looking liek what I want it to look like, and I just haven't put m uch time in it to be honest, but I should keep posting anyways, right?

So today while sitting downand watching the kids play outside, one little girl came up to me with a stick and started running it through my hair! "T--" I said "What are you doing?" then she looked at me with a very serious 2 year old face and told me "I Comb your hair!" I laughed and thought it was too cute to tell her to stop, so I let her continue 'combing' my hair, and when she was done, she looked me over and I asked how I looked, she said "You look booful."

I love my job.

Diaper Changing Activities - MISC

I don't have any new diaper changing activities really, I've just been bringing in new things for them to explore, and not really an activity. I didn't think these deserved their own post, but I'll just put a bunch together in one.

Glitter bottles
Food coloring+glitter+hot glue; got the idea from HERE. They love them, and it's good practice naming colors. I often find them placed in random spots around the room, like on our bookshelf.

She loves her glitter bottles! 

Bouncy Balls 

Simply gave them some fist sized bouncy balls, they went nuts! In a good having fun way, not chaotic mess way! 

Rubber Ducks
They went around saying quack quack for 30 minutes!

Basically just brought in something new that they don't see everyday so I can focus on diapers, and not misbehaving kids.

I think that's all I got for now...wish me luck in the giveaway!

Until next time, which might be a while...

Cotton Ball Painting

A couple weeks ago I strained a muscle in my back, and boy was life hard at work!!! I haven't been as active with the kids as I usually have been, and over all everything is simpler and less involved on my part. Not necessarily a bad thing though, maybe I can let them do their own thing a little more even now that my back is better.

This day I just gave them a bowl with different colored paint, and cotton balls to paint with. I've been trying to introduce new ways to make art, and cotton balls is the texture I choose to go with for this activity.

 Isn't that texture just so pretty and fun? Can't make that with a paint brush. 

Vivien still preferred fingers over the cotton balls, but the projects turned out beautifully. I'm now debating whether or not to cut them into a specific shape - we are after all learning what a square is this week - or leave them as is. what do you think???

Mess Free Art

So I had tons of extra page protectors laying around and decided to have a mess free art project! You have no clue how happy those 3 words make me! I cut out flower shapes for each child. 

Then had them pick out 2 colors they wanted.

Taped the top closed, and let the kids smush the paint around! 

Addison asked for a brush to help her do the smushing.

 So did Vivien. 

At this point I noticed page protectors are not very flexible, and this would've worked a little better with a large ziploc bag. 

I hung them up to dry, but because I used acylic paint I ran across a problem removing the flowers...

Ya...not so pretty, but that wasn't going to ruin my mess free fun. I just traced a smaller flower on the back, and cut it out!

I think they came out cute! 

Massive posting is going to happen today!

In an effort to win a give away at one of my favorite blogs,delicateCONSTRUCTION I am going to post all the projects we've done at school recently today! I have a few art projects and things I haven't posted just yet, and was planning on spacing out over the week, but when I was going to link op my Indoor Water Play post I saw she has a fun giveaway, and you put in entries by linking up activities so I am going to be doing excessive amount of blogging today, and probably not have much else to do for the rest of the week. Oh well to post numero uno!

This was just  ashort and sweet activity I did. At school I was left with only 2 of my kids earlier than usual and decided since I needed to sit down [I strained a muscle in my back the other week, not FUN] to just give the 2 of them some paper paint and glitter to go crazy with. I let them use their fingers and then cut the finished product into a heart, because this was right before mother's day. They had a blast painting the paper, my table, and themselves HAHA and I enjoyed being able to sit down in an adult sized chair for 10 minutes. The floor was absolutely covered in glitter afterwards, and it made a real pretty pile when I swept up afterwards. I think it turned into a real cute and personal little gift.



I did not get pictures of this because it was such a hectic Friday, but I thought I would tell you about the mother's day cards we made. I just started them out with some construction paper and a marker. I don't often give them markers so it was a treat for them! Literally a treat, I looked at one child and her mouth was green! AHHH, I washed it out and switched her to crayons. Continuing, I then took their cards, made phrases in Elmer's glue lie, I Love Mom, or Happy Mom's Day, then let the child dump glitter over it. They looked so pretty, BUT my favorite part was I took a pen, and one at a time helped each child write their name. I guided their hand and said the letters we were writing then told them what it said. They liked looking at their names, and the little wobbly hand writing was soo adorable. I know I know they're too young to actually learn to write, and they couldn't repeat that coordination on their own, but I received a card for teacher's appreciation week where a mom had done the same thing [helping her girl write her name] and I'm telling you my heart melted!!! Well here's the first of a few posts happening this Monday!

Until...a few minutes from now!

Water Play

So I re did my blog with the plan of getting serious about it, but alas I have just become more lazy. I was planning on sharing my healthy [and sometimes not so healthy] meals, fun exercising routines, and just writing about life in general! However once I get home from work at 6:15 all I feel like doing is curling up in comfy pajamas and watching netflix, with the occasional socializing with friends via facebook. Blogging has been put on the back burner and as a result I am left to write about the only thing I document in my life, and that is my job. Oh well this is a never ending source of material so even though I wanted to add variation to my blog, at least it is something. *if this last paragraph has left you in doubt of my semi-healthiness because it kinda sounds like I'm a slothful-lazy-bum, I would also like to add that I do in fact do many semi-healthy things during my day, it is just after work I become that lazy good for nothing. Do not write me off just yet! 


Now that I'm done making excuses, onto the activity! I do not have a water table at work, though I wish I did, so I have not done much [as in zip-nada-zero] water play in the past. Recently that has changed since made a fabulous find while perusing the dollar tree! I found a packet of those tablets that dissolve and an animal shaped sponge expands in water, and I decided this would be the perfect small scale water activity I could do inside. I used to love those things when I was a kid. I remember bringing a lot of them into the bathtub with me and watching them race to turn into animals.

I just set out a bowl for each kid with some warm water in it and gave them the tablet and instructed them to put it and leave it in the water. Ok admittedly this was not a well thought out plan for my age group because of course they wouldn't want to just leave it in the water! I really learn everyday at this job. Fortunately there were many tablets in the packet, and I am repeating this activity once a week until i run out. Week one took a while because the tablets were taken out and put back in the water many times, but week two I had a plan. I had also bought little squirt animals for another project, but decided to incorporate it into this one. When I gave them their bowls + tablet, I also gave them the squirt animals. This gave them something to play with while waiting for the animal to grow, and added a different dimension to the water play. I feel like my projects NEVER go as planned the first time around, but I'm glad I get chances to repeat without the original flaws.

I actually didn't get that many pictures...probably because half way through the water play gets more excited and water dumping intervention must be made by me before I end up with moldy carpets... All-in-all not so bad for indoor waterplay. I think next week I'll see what happens when we take the bowls outside. I haven't so far because there are so many distractions that I'm not sure if they will be interested in playing with their bowls, but I gotta try!

Well hopefully next time won't be so long from now, until then linking up to these places!

Diaper changing activities - Dry Erase fun!

Did you catch my post earlier this week about diaper changing activities? Basically it's a short, easy, CLEAN activity I can rotate through the weeks while changing diapers [or really any other time I need to keep them occupied for a short period of time]. Well this activity utilizes the same 4 page protector pages we used for the sticker activities, but this time instead of giving them sticker pages, I gave them dry erase markers. Make sure to buy the slightly more expensive non-toxic dry erase markers if trying this activity. 

I thought of this because whenever we color, I always give them crayons. Can you blame me though? The idea of marker ink all over the room, child, and mouth is scary, and pens just as bad. I wish kids did not recognize they were only receiving one coloring medium, but they do! Whenever they see pens markers or any other writing implement, instant curiosity takes over as they try to reach one and use it. Of course I swoop in and ruin their fun with the new found toy, but not without feeling bad. Then one day, while in the office supply department in Wal-mart, I saw dry erase markers, and inspiration struck! This might be the perfect way to let them explore a new coloring tool, without the terrible unyielding stains. I did a little research about the toxicity, and found that there is a type of non-toxic dry erase marker that is safe for kids to use. YAY! Dry erase marker cleans easily off of non-porous surfaces, so when their little minds wanted to test the surrounding environment with the markers, I'd have peace of mind knowing I could wipe it down later. It also cleans off of clothes easily so I wouldn't feel bad sending them home even if some of their drawing ended up on their outfit. 

They loved it, and were occupied with them for more than enough time for me to change diapers and prepare for the next activity. 

Look at her holding that marker like a pro! 

They enjoyed the erasable qualities of these markers.

The stickers from before are safely tucked inside the page protectors still.

After a while of coloring on the pages, Emery wanted  to try her skin. As I said double check and make sure you get the non-toxic kind.

She was then surprised that the marker did not wipe off her skin  like it did  with the pages. It does rinse off very easily under water so no worries!

This activity was so easy to set up and the kids could've played with it for another half hour if I hadn't transitioned to a new activity. Such a great, easy activity to set-up if you're trying to get some chores done around the house, or cook dinner, or in my case change diapers! 

Until next time...

Linking up to these fun parties!

Diaper Changing Activities.

As you probably know, I work at a center based child-care facility as the teacher over 18months to 24 months. I am the only teacher over 6 children and the most difficult time of my day is diaper changing times! 3 of my kids are still in diapers, 1 is in the midst of being potty trained which requires supervision in the bathroom on my part, and 2 in underwear. The 3 who sit on the potty go every half hour, and those times usually go pretty quickly and I'm able to leave the other 3 out to play freely with no problems. The problems arise once an hour when I have to get 3 kids to go potty, and change 3 diapers at the same time. I have had days when all heck breaks loose in my room during this time because I just can't entertain, change a diaper, and supervise toilet sitting all at once! Too often these times would turn into a half an hour ordeal of chaos and crying kids.

I had resorted to sitting the more feisty children next to me while I changed diapers, but I did not like doing that because I did not want them to feel punished when they had not done anything wrong [yet] but I also couldn't stop if they decided to push another kid and take their toy while I was in the middle of changing diapers. I discussed the dilemma I was having with one of the moms. She understood where I was coming from because she is an elementary school teacher, and offered to bring in some sticker books that her daughter loved from home to help during these times. From our discussion, it occurred to me that part of the chaos was because they play with the same toys week after week, and though we try to rotate the toys as much as possible, there's only so long you can do that and the children were getting bored.

It was from this that the idea of Diaper Changing Activities was born! I decided that I would come up with some new activities that I could set out for them to explore while changing diapers. Something that was clean, inexpensive, no set-up required, that I could give to each child to encourage exploration and play during these times instead of fighting and mischief.

The first diaper changing activity I gave was stickers. Imade a little booklet of 4 page protectors clipped together and put some sticker sheets in side, and foam stickers on the outside. I handed these out before getting ready to start changing them, and their interest was piqued - just the response I was hoping for. They enjoyed exploring the stickers and moving them around, putting them around the classroom, and I was able to clean everyone up without a hitch. SUCCESS! What a relief it has been to have happy playing children when I am unable to give them my full supervision.

 Here are the 6 booklets I made, real easy and inexpensive and I'll use the booklets for other activities to come. See the dry erase markers? Ya that's another activity that we did...

Having lots of fun putting foam stickers on her arm!

 Checking out the sticker sheets. 

Vivien enjoyed pulling apart the stickers than putting them back on the page.

I can't even express the relief I have experienced since I've come up with this simple solution. I cannot believe it took me as long as it did to think of this. Now at least once weekly I rotate a new diaper changing activity into the mix so they have new things to explore, and do not get bored with the same things over and over. This can easily be applied to trying to cook dinner, clean, or car trips.
Until next time, hope you can find a use for these activities to help make your life a little more healthy.

Linking up to some super parties here...