France Week: Bonjour!

School is out. Time for a daycare staycation- this week France. 

French food:

We served French toast, crepes with homemade whip cream, baguette, chocolate croissant, Madeleine tea cookies, French fries and for dinner one night, homemade French onion soup (amazing but not beloved by the youngsters). 

Fun cheese tasting activity:

Brie was the winner and goat cheese caused scrunched noses. So proud of the kids for trying something new!

Art projects:

Art by Joel has AMAZING paper cities to print and cut. Free! But not free- you should send a donation. Talent!

Monet water lilies 

Paper square collage flag 

Make your own flag!

Eiffel Tower of straws (idea Cutting Tiny Bites)

Some of our favorite books:

Gus on the Go - a fun vocabulary app from the Apple Store is only $3.99 and very easy for the kids to play. The 6s had fun as well as Mr. 11 year old. The website also has a few free printable a that go along with it. 

Raccoon Hearts

The children loved making their raccoon heart art and gobbling up heart shaped quesadillas and chocolate covered strawberries. 

I still love Pinterest's never ending supply of holiday art project ideas. 

Fall Crafts

We used food coloring and water with cut straw pipettes to make our own apples. "Where do apples come from?" I asked. My favorite answer, "The apple store!"

We talked about acorns this fall. The children see tons of them falling near our park. They are always tempted to take pocketfuls home but I encourage them to leave them there for the squirrels. I cut out tops and bottoms and they matched upper and lower case. 

Then, after hiding some paper

acorns around the playroom, the children glued them into the tree-hide-out for their squirrel to save for the winter.

We talked about pumpkins growing on vines. The kids drew their own crazy vine and glued pumpkins to it. We practiced upper and lower case Pps.

We made these fingerprint turkey prints (thanks for the inspiration, pinterest). And the sort of token thanksgiving gratitude paper turkey.

Valentine's Week

Chocolate covered strawberries and heart shaped watermelon from our favorite Mr. C.

Heart "blooms" on our spring trees.

Practicing letter Vv with hearts and crayons.

Baby Shower Farewell

Match the mama to the baby animal. Color them all pink because let's face it, girl babies are better!

Teamwork: diapering.

We talked safety during this memory game: We NEVER give medicine to a baby. And we never take medicine from anyone except mom, dad, or doctor.  The girls took turns being "it" while the others hid one of our memory items out of site.

Multi-tasking like a real mom! Hanging clothes to dry, reminding dad what to buy at the store, and keeping baby happy all at once.

We said goodbye to Ms. H. She will be a BIG sister! She will be mama's special helper at home. We will miss her, but look forward to due-dates, play dates and updates.

Christmas Art: Catching-Up

Fingerprint candy canes and elf-shoe countdowns. Some day I will be able to find the rest of what we did for the holidays.

Olympics: Week 2

Rhythmic gymnastics: The girls designed their own leotards. I had no idea that the leos designed for the US Olympic team are completely custom, one of a kind, and cost thousands of dollars and many months to design and create. Some ladies think of them similarly to a wedding dress (!).

We made ribbon wands and danced around the house. So elegant and fun.

The next day we watched a little bit of the shooting. We also talked about gun safety...

me) "What do you do if you find a gun?" (I was a little worried after I heard some of the replies!)

"Hide it in the bushes so no one can find it!"
"Play with it! Fight the monsters!"

I mentioned that we should never touch a gun we might find- they can be dangerous. We should tell an adult right away. If we find a gun and we don't know if it is a toy or if it is real, we should ask a big person before we touch it. Never point a gun (toy or otherwise) at anyone's body.